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First day, first show
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Ragging has stayed on down the decades. The form and content have changed though
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After the initial Fresher's Week, all is forgiven in light of their thespian efforts. — Photo: K. Murali Kumar
1970. It's the first day of college, for a new bunch straight out of convent school and the protection of Mother Superior's basilisk glare. They stumbled into the classroom, and found it occupied by the batch-mates from hell — casually-dressed, hip young men, with strange-looking cigarettes drooping from their lips, casually slouched in place, casually at ease with the world and their place in it. The confident young lecturer, who strode in, smartly turned out in a neat suit and tie, of course didn't bother them one little bit. While the girls hung on to the teacher's lips, and tried bravely to soak in his words of wisdom, the young men seemed quietly amused by everything. One sentence followed another leaving the freshers increasingly confused and out of their depths. Not so with the others of this strange new class. They stirred restlessly, and soon the questions began, then the arguments, until the class was a loud roar of dissent and raised voices.
The girls were horrified — until the penny dropped. The personable young lecturer was a senior himself, presently a much-respected NGO figure, doing developmental work in the Nilgiris. The louche young men were actually seniors, giving their fresh batch an object lesson in the importance of never taking anything for granted.
First day of college in Bangalore University of the 1980s brings back memories of an eclectic crowd. "There was a strange mix of Kannada and English speaking people," says Anuradha Kumar. "The JNC hoity toity types mixed with NMKRV college crowd. College suddenly exposed us to extremes," she says. "Even in terms of space, there were so many open spaces, you didn't know what to do with them," she remembers. One harsh reminder that the young students were now occupying a larger world was a ragging game, where freshers had to measure space with matchsticks, lining them up one behind the other. "I hated myself for doing it," says Anuradha.
By the 90s, ragging was routine in colleges, but the grand plots of earlier decades had, by many accounts, given way to smaller incidents of bizarre behaviour. "I had heard terrible stories about college," says Nayantara Abreo. "On my first day in hostel, I found the seniors weren't too bad, but my super seniors were terrible." All the freshies had to form a single line and do a different thing, she says. "I had to read a dirty poem in a Mallu accent, and sing twinkle, twinkle because my name is Tara. The seniors would play the Watermelon Prank — when they said watermelon, we had to shake our hips to the left, when they said tomato; shake hips to the right, and for orange, we had to shake our hips round and round. Then they'd start saying it quicker and quicker — "watermelon, tomato, orange, watermelon, tomato, orange" and on and on, they'd go. "In college she says she "felt like an alien" on day one. In hostel, she and her bunch would tiptoe out of their room, peering down the lengthy aisles of the corridors and when the last sounds of a senior had disappeared down the hall, they would run down to the canteen at meal hours.
The tension would repeat during the great escape from the canteen back up to the hostel without being stopped dead in their tracks by a commanding voice — "Hey, Freshie".
Through the years, first day, and indeed week, at hostel, almost universally, has meant walking around with a bucket on your head or wearing tee-shirts paired with salwars and oiled hair tightly braided, with "stinking, rotten juniors" having to hail the "almighty seniors" even if you thought they were the bunch with the least intelligence and imagination you had ever encountered.
First day in 2004, and Sneha Menon who has just joined Mount Carmel College says, "Ragging is really the only way to get to know your seniors." That bravado didn't accompany her on the very first day, however. She describes how she and her friends gave each other missed calls so they could perfectly time their meeting outside college gates in order to make that all-important entry together. The Mount's drive is notorious for seniors making themselves at home on it, cheering, and jibing the freshers as they nervously scurry up the path. "They made us recite their names, do the bow tables, and perform the dandia with our chappals," Sneha says. "I thought it was the end of the world." But she's getting used to it now, she says, and also getting used to the large classes. "I was head girl in school," Sneha says, "and was used to a lot of recognition, but no one knows you here, there are loads of girls in my class." Seniors who frown on any "cool" dressers are still telling Sneha what to wear to college everyday, but a muted salwar kameez generally keeps seniors happy. About her first day she says in reflection, "I was really scared about this day, but once you're there it's OK."
All the misery finally ends with the Fresher's Week where newcomers perform, and all is forgiven in light of their thespian efforts. Seniors welcome juniors (the word "freshie" is struck off the vocabulary for another year) with open arms, and the bond is marked by the periodic donations of old textbooks.
Till then, remember that next year, you'll be on the less painful side of the Great Divide.
(Some names have been changed to protect identity.)
H.G.
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