Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Ragging

August 8th, 1996

1650 hrs – Out of the Engineering Drawing class

1710 hrs – Meet outside the Saradharam hotel
1730 hrs – Take the point to point bus to Chennai and live happily ever after
No, this is not the plan devised by a couple to elope and marry.
More than 12 late teen first year folks (freshmen) were devising this amazing fool-proof plan to get the hell out of what once considered as an obnoxious cant-stay-for-even-a-week place. However, this place was later termed as heaven by the same folks. Annamalai University, my undergraduate institution, is the place that was accused to have instilled the Chemical engineering concepts inside me, instead in reality, ended up teaching the art of learning more than Chemical engineering.
Anyways, all these plans were to fly away from the senior pressure. To avoid ragging!

Everything worked out well except for the fact that we had two seniors who were waiting for us in the bus and tagged along till the end. The journey, itself is a big story all together, was filled with public dance performances, accosting a stranger girl, selling watches, asking the flight timings to the bus-conductor etc. Nevertheless, its one of the best trips we all had. As a matter of fact, this so-called interaction was entirely positive. Even though at one point of time atleast one of our gang member’s stupidities was glorified in public, every one of us enjoyed it. At the end of journey, every one of us had this same thought process if this is what ragging all about then I am having fun with it.
Unfortunately, that’s not the case, most of the time. Some people not only fail to understand the reason for the very existence of this culture, but fail to even listen. The attitudes of some of our forgettable acquaintances are astonishing, extracting fun by shear intimidation. Some of them get their work done in a harmless fashion. Whereas, some might get hurt in the process, if I can just use “hurt” for that matter.
I have heard suicide stories, homo-sexual encounters, physical abuse and even murder. For people from South India who knew about my institution, I am sure that the title of this post would have definitely popped up the shocking Navarasu story that happened in 1996. For others, in short, a first year student was murdered and his body was sliced into pieces and was transported to different parts of the state in order to create a diversion and escape from the murder trial. The reason was later found and was termed as ragging.

Following the incident, a very stringent Tamilnadu Prevention of Ragging Act was enforced in 1997. When he died on November 6, 1996, authorities found his severed body parts in a hostel room. Navarasu was a first year student of the Raja Muthaiah Medical College, Annamalai University, in Chidambaram. He was 19. Though his hostel-mate John David later admitted to ragging Navarasu to death and the Cuddalore district and sessions judge on March 11, 1988, awarded him a 36-year sentence, a division bench of the Madras high court acquitted him in October 2001. There was a furor across the state, and rumors of money changing hands between the judges and the defendant's family gained ground.

Now I see that the person who killed this fresher is outside based on the reason that circumstantial evidence was not sufficient to prove beyond reasonable doubt.

Well, let me not get deeper into this piece of information and digress.
Anyways, the point I was trying to nail here is the attitude and understanding. Most of us are blind followers of tradition. People for some reason, are happy following what was executed earlier and reported to be successful in extracting fun. If we pay a little attention, we can understand that the people who tend to go away from these unwritten rules called tradition and sill find a way to extract more positive outcome are called trend setters. Sometimes, we come across different kind of people who create a negative impact and assume them to trend setters. Ragging was one such activity. What was once an interaction medium was converted in to intimidation medium!
Some people claim that ragging helps in preparing the fresher to the more demanding life ahead of them. It instills patience and teaches them how to cope with the ever changing world around! Well, atleast for the professional colleges in India, the teachers themselves are behaving well enough to intimidate and tease the pride of the students to instill patience and all other sub qualities that we were supposed to learn through ragging. So, the middle finger is way up for this reason to promote ragging!
I don’t want to be the lord, preaching you to seek happiness in other’s peace. Get practical! Most of us forget to understand actions. If we take a minute and think, why are we doing this? What are the reasons behind our actions? I guess we would be able to get rid of the intimidation part out of this and start to extract more positive fun.
The best part of ragging in India is that the wrong culture is slowly disappearing. Let’s hope the wrong culture vanishes and positive ways of increasing interaction prevails.

18 comments:

B0Z said...

Thoughtful post. Keep up the good work.....

GS said...

hey we had to do similar things in the bus too. Additionally we had to read the news in Hindi for the passengers of the bus, sell eggs that didnt exist, do the quack dance, ... it was fun and even more fun the next year when I was the senior. :P

Soumya said...

wht is fun for seniors and juniors is sometimes problem for the general public ...
some aspects of ragging goes beyond general level of acceptance ... if losing out on the fun is the price to be paid for getting rid of the negative aspects of ragging then i think it is worth paying ...

BB said...

@ gayathri

I forgot to mention...that we had this newspaper thingies as well...where we had to addd profanities in between every word...it was fun!...so u a ragger huh? what did u make ur juniors do?!

BB said...

@ Soumya

Precisely!

Shouldnt hurt anyone in the process...let it be themsleves..or juniors ..or general public for that matter!

Arvind M Venugopal said...

if there are two things i would term as qualities i hate, they would be 'being dishonest' and 'lack of respect'... when i say 'lack of respect', i mean, at an inter-personal level... irrespective of the fact whether you are older or younger, richer or poorer, more educated or less educated, or any other criteria for that matter...

what differentiates a cultured human from an uncultured one, is the way he/she leads his/her life without having to do something which is against the principles of truth...

when introspected carefully, you'll realize that people who are upto such things are not even worth a shot at living this life... i hate to say this, as i feel we do not have the right to say things like these, but: someone who does things in the name of 'ragging' does not deserve a second chance, to lead a life...

exasparater said...

do u know onething?

iam in 1st year of college...

BB said...

"principles of truth"

I guess truth is perceptional nowadays...so whats true to us not necessarily true to everyone else...!

Does'nt deserve a second chance to live! thats too strong!

BB said...

@ Uma

Yep...it should be ..within the limitations of physical abusivity!

BB said...

@ exas

kewl..man!

Any raggin expericnes u want to share?

Jinguchakka said...

Ragging is where the beast in the man comes to the fore.

BB said...

@ Jinguchakka

If its physically abusive!

gP said...

when we made ragging a culture, did we forget that culture comes together with resposibility.

Im happy that things are changing, the culture is evolving, but sadly, the whole idea is like encouraging sadists to florish.

Ragging is well and alive in Malaysia too, and the ONLY race that do rag still are the Indians.

BB said...

@ GP

Again, Ragging is not completly outrageous...its obnoxious only when its abusive and intimidatory...when its on the target with fun and interaction in mind...its always fun!

Priya said...

Ragging is jus a way of breaking the ice between juniors n seniors if done with tht intention..
the rest have no goddamn right to command us.. and we r under no obligation to do wat they say!
cmon.. be a man n tell them to f*** off! handle it urself kid..
this is the message i have to tthe freshers out there :)

BB said...

@ Priya

It goes well with women as well..what abt the raggin stories in teh ladies hostels ...it as shabby as the mens ..except for the physical abusivities is in a lesser extent tho!

Shobana Jayaraman Srikumar said...

its not easy to say f*** off as loudly as you can hear your mind say it inside you. for one, there is fear associated with previous knowledge of tormenting ragging. to such an extent that the person being ragged can allow the fear to wet his pants. he's in new grounds, no immediate support system, though all the other newbies are sailing in the same boat, he doesnt know them enough to feel comforted. the best solution however would be to play along!! if you cant fight them, join them.. should be your motto. and dont have a sense of false security and be stupid in braving odds that dont fetch you any score..

barath.. i'm glad you write about things that make me and many others think about mundane stories in the paper with deeper perpective.

keep up the good work.

BB said...

@ shobz

Yeah exactly...!

and thanks ...will try my best and continue to be myself :)