(i must admit that even after having bitter relations with some of the seniors in those days, after wards, almost all helped us and became good friends. it was just difference of opinion at that time. i must remember sanjeev rao and sajan nayar at this point.)
when our immediate junior batch arrived, we were just adjusting ourselves in the campus because that batch arrived within just six months of our admission to pramukhswami medical college. but since we had grown a bit, we had our own ideas of first time interaction with the junior batch. memories of our own ragging was afresh. we, especially, hemant, tapasvi and myself were highly against routine way of ragging.bimal, vimal, anish, kapil were with us.
when the new batch arrived, ragging re started like a routine college ceremony. some of the boys were made to do things which were highly demoralizing. it all disturbed us a lot and we felt ashamed of being senior students and doing nothing to stop this madness. even some of our good friends turned bad raggers as they became seniors.the girls' hostel was also not an exception to such activities.( beji, one of our best friend, was considered a good ragger. i still do not know for what reason!)
hemant being a highly idealistic man, complained about all of this to the authorities. naturally many of our seniors disliked his action. we had some good and fearless seniors like jagdish soni and amiruddin kadri to be on our side. there were some good teachers who wished to see good culture in our college. notably, dr rajesh mehta and dr bhalendu vaishnav.
it was not surprising to find most of the seniors and even our batch mates against our anti ragging ideas. while some of them just enjoyed ragging the juniors, others rationalized their actions in name of "good introduction leading to good friendship". some students had feelings of revenge translating into repeating what they suffered as freshers like mother in laws seen in tv serials! we saw our own batch mates, which were highly against ragging at the time of our batch's ragging, turning raggers when they become seniors. some wanted to rag just to prove themselves superior and authoritarian, while others believed to do such duty to save the culture of the college.
A few had an argument that since the world was full of bad people and experiences, they were just preparing their juniors for such a world by ragging them badly! they simply wanted to make the juniors bold. so in their opinion, they were doing a great social work!
we felt ragging an in human and cowardly act in which a group of seniors would order some weird and demoralizing actions to a helpless fresh junior.
but to our surprise, many of the teachers had pro ragging ideas. some of them used to ask seniors " teach some good manners to your juniors!" so, made up of such a students committee,even after hemant's official complaint, the authorities did nothing to prevent ragging. thus , in a way we were in a great minority and figures of dislike in the campus.
however, there was something more to happen. one day just when i was going to college, rao, our student leader,stopped me near the boys' hostel staircase.
"what do you believe you are? we are not going to tolerate you... understood?" he really was unhappy.i had no answer. he gave me a staring look for a few seconds and climbed the stairs making noise of his foot steps.
even today, i am not knowing, whether there was any relation of the following event with what rao said.
for some reason, hemant had to go to his home for a few days. at one good evening, i and tapasvi just were entering the boys' hostel. we were stopped by some strange looking outside boys.
"hey you both! stop here. are you friends of that white boy hemant?" one tall boy inquired. "where is that (...)!"
"what is wrong? he has gone home" i replied.
" he has assaulted our sister. tell that (....) we will break all his bones if we find him!" he warned us "take this as our last warning. tell him to behave well or we will create hell of his life... ok?". they went away.
hemant mis behaved with a girl? no one on this earth could believe that! in fact he was a boy never interested in any of the girls of the college or outside(except one- with whom he married afterwards.) he never spoke a single good or bad word for any of the girls.
it was very clear to us that the out side boys just wanted to have some point to start the quarrel. it was easy to blame any college boy for such a reason. any one would be furious to such a false accusation.
when he came back, we decided to not to let him go anywhere alone. he was a fearless man and nothing could deter him from what he was doing. despite threats, he continued to work against ragging. later, in his own secret ways, he met the leader of those strange boys and resolved the issue as far as i remember. they were locals from karamsad and were told to give threat to us, especially hemant.
since we were the minority, our movement probably could not do much in our perception. but definitely, it created a firm opposition to raggers which had effortless dominations till then. (only, students of our junior batch, chavli, kanuji, hardik, padhiyar,sejul can comment more on the impact of our opposition)
i remember taking introduction of some of my junior friends in my own way. sejul was one of them i still remember. i do not know how he remembers this event or if at all he has the memory!
i met him at old boys' hostel in bimal's room. bimal, not a flagship anti ragger but definitely a humanitarian, was talking to sejul and rajul. he asked me to have some word with sejul. i remember requesting sejul to come for a walk with me and we talked on the way. i asked about his native and interest, told about mine. we also talked about our hobbies and i offered him friendship which he accepted and remained so till date.
some of our seniors asked us a genuine question. " boys, if you are against the present way of introduction, how senior batch should interact with the freshers? the must be some way. or there will be no interaction between the batches at all. what kind of culture do you want in the college?"
But we had ready made idea- we wanted to arrange an introduction party to our junior batch. the idea was to invite all of the juniors to the function and let them perform on the stage any thing of their choice. our batch was already meeting every Thursday.so the idea clicked.(see my next blog story)
when our immediate junior batch arrived, we were just adjusting ourselves in the campus because that batch arrived within just six months of our admission to pramukhswami medical college. but since we had grown a bit, we had our own ideas of first time interaction with the junior batch. memories of our own ragging was afresh. we, especially, hemant, tapasvi and myself were highly against routine way of ragging.bimal, vimal, anish, kapil were with us.
when the new batch arrived, ragging re started like a routine college ceremony. some of the boys were made to do things which were highly demoralizing. it all disturbed us a lot and we felt ashamed of being senior students and doing nothing to stop this madness. even some of our good friends turned bad raggers as they became seniors.the girls' hostel was also not an exception to such activities.( beji, one of our best friend, was considered a good ragger. i still do not know for what reason!)
hemant being a highly idealistic man, complained about all of this to the authorities. naturally many of our seniors disliked his action. we had some good and fearless seniors like jagdish soni and amiruddin kadri to be on our side. there were some good teachers who wished to see good culture in our college. notably, dr rajesh mehta and dr bhalendu vaishnav.
it was not surprising to find most of the seniors and even our batch mates against our anti ragging ideas. while some of them just enjoyed ragging the juniors, others rationalized their actions in name of "good introduction leading to good friendship". some students had feelings of revenge translating into repeating what they suffered as freshers like mother in laws seen in tv serials! we saw our own batch mates, which were highly against ragging at the time of our batch's ragging, turning raggers when they become seniors. some wanted to rag just to prove themselves superior and authoritarian, while others believed to do such duty to save the culture of the college.
A few had an argument that since the world was full of bad people and experiences, they were just preparing their juniors for such a world by ragging them badly! they simply wanted to make the juniors bold. so in their opinion, they were doing a great social work!
we felt ragging an in human and cowardly act in which a group of seniors would order some weird and demoralizing actions to a helpless fresh junior.
but to our surprise, many of the teachers had pro ragging ideas. some of them used to ask seniors " teach some good manners to your juniors!" so, made up of such a students committee,even after hemant's official complaint, the authorities did nothing to prevent ragging. thus , in a way we were in a great minority and figures of dislike in the campus.
however, there was something more to happen. one day just when i was going to college, rao, our student leader,stopped me near the boys' hostel staircase.
"what do you believe you are? we are not going to tolerate you... understood?" he really was unhappy.i had no answer. he gave me a staring look for a few seconds and climbed the stairs making noise of his foot steps.
even today, i am not knowing, whether there was any relation of the following event with what rao said.
for some reason, hemant had to go to his home for a few days. at one good evening, i and tapasvi just were entering the boys' hostel. we were stopped by some strange looking outside boys.
"hey you both! stop here. are you friends of that white boy hemant?" one tall boy inquired. "where is that (...)!"
"what is wrong? he has gone home" i replied.
" he has assaulted our sister. tell that (....) we will break all his bones if we find him!" he warned us "take this as our last warning. tell him to behave well or we will create hell of his life... ok?". they went away.
hemant mis behaved with a girl? no one on this earth could believe that! in fact he was a boy never interested in any of the girls of the college or outside(except one- with whom he married afterwards.) he never spoke a single good or bad word for any of the girls.
it was very clear to us that the out side boys just wanted to have some point to start the quarrel. it was easy to blame any college boy for such a reason. any one would be furious to such a false accusation.
when he came back, we decided to not to let him go anywhere alone. he was a fearless man and nothing could deter him from what he was doing. despite threats, he continued to work against ragging. later, in his own secret ways, he met the leader of those strange boys and resolved the issue as far as i remember. they were locals from karamsad and were told to give threat to us, especially hemant.
since we were the minority, our movement probably could not do much in our perception. but definitely, it created a firm opposition to raggers which had effortless dominations till then. (only, students of our junior batch, chavli, kanuji, hardik, padhiyar,sejul can comment more on the impact of our opposition)
i remember taking introduction of some of my junior friends in my own way. sejul was one of them i still remember. i do not know how he remembers this event or if at all he has the memory!
i met him at old boys' hostel in bimal's room. bimal, not a flagship anti ragger but definitely a humanitarian, was talking to sejul and rajul. he asked me to have some word with sejul. i remember requesting sejul to come for a walk with me and we talked on the way. i asked about his native and interest, told about mine. we also talked about our hobbies and i offered him friendship which he accepted and remained so till date.
some of our seniors asked us a genuine question. " boys, if you are against the present way of introduction, how senior batch should interact with the freshers? the must be some way. or there will be no interaction between the batches at all. what kind of culture do you want in the college?"
But we had ready made idea- we wanted to arrange an introduction party to our junior batch. the idea was to invite all of the juniors to the function and let them perform on the stage any thing of their choice. our batch was already meeting every Thursday.so the idea clicked.(see my next blog story)
kindly hit like button if you like the story.thanks
ReplyDelete