Papa’s friend a doctor, as a freshie in medical school, he submitted to worse torment and is none the worst. If it was his son that came squealing home after the comparatively mild dose at the residential school, he would give the boy a belting and chase him back to school..
“Yeah” said papa who did journalism at the same university.
Papa: Ragging is good for the soul. It toughens you up and it takes the air and grace out of you, cuts down to sizes, makes you realize you are not all that grand to have been chosen to enter university or college or residential school.
Doc: Nowadays freshie hardly merit the name of ragging, wash clothes and bed sheets? Buy ciggaretts for their seniors or write out lectures notes. We in our time had to wash drains and lavatories and then get ‘washed’ in turn in these, the most dreaded method being the ‘royal flush’. Talk of obscene words, for my batch and I it was more than words. We get educated and learnt what life is all about that way and move on, a little less green.
Papa: Imagine, there are boys from residential school running home to mama just because they were made to stand on a table and break a few plates and had pieces of crumpled papers thrown at them.
Doc: What would they have thought of old time specials, like dribbling a piece of soap with their nose as hockey stick, crawling and lying flat in obeisance, doing the pumps till they collapse, going through the most ridiculous posture and performances, forming the front line in hostel panty-raids and later climbing a flag post to hang the trophy there.
And these two gentlemen looking back and viewed all these as fun and in their second year they gave what they took and more to the new first year.
The girls got it too, took and gave as zestful as the boys. Seniors dreamt up some weird ideas for them.
Mama: There was this guy from medic, had these cadavers (dead bodies for dissecting). He cuts off one finger and slipped it into my roomate’s handbag. She didn’t even scream when she took the thing out and hold it in her hand. She took it sportingly, fell for the guy and married him.
Doc: What do you say to that Nina?
The question is directed to me……The fact is I enjoyed being ragged in college that was because I was only made to sing, dance, lifted up my long skirt to show my ankles at a beauty parade, accept and reject boys freshie’s proposals, get signatures from the seniors, learn to say I love you in nine languages, and yell support for the university at rugby matches in between chanting army versions of nursery rhymes and school song.
No royal flush, no nose hockey, no crawling, no pumping, no climbing, nothing cruel or humiliating, nothing too idiotic. Certainly no dead man’s finger in my hand bag.
I fail to see the fun in that particular ‘joke’ but a chap who goes round putting dead fingers in a girl’s handbag is hardly my idea of a dream mate…..
The time for larks is when they have found their bearing and can give as good as they get, for larks are true larks only among equal….
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