My first and last day in Delhi University

By ATUL PRAKASH SINGH

It’s been almost eight years but I haven’t been able to forget the humiliation. In the summer of 1996 I landed in Delhi with a friend, to apply for admission in an undergraduate degree course in commerce. It was the first time I was going to a metro and that was intimidating enough. We managed to negotiate the initial hurdles and landed in North Campus for the mandatory rounds of admission offices in various colleges. I was already feeling lost. I was taken in by the hugeness of the city and the brash indifference of its people: I was shouted and cursed at three different zebra-crossings in the first 24 hours alone. Equally depressing was the sight of kids being accompanied by their parents and siblings. Having no one to guide us in the midst of this chaos heightened the already growing sense of helplessness and alienation.

In the middle of this struggle, we reached Kirori Mal College and as we were coming out of the building after submitting our application forms, a bunch of guys called out to us from a corner of the lawn: “Hey you, blue T-shirt... idhar, come here.”

Oh shit, muttered my friend under his breath. Both of us said a silent prayer in our hearts and approached the group. As we reached this group of 5-6 ‘seniors’, there were already 2 or 3 ‘freshers’ who were being questioned. My friend, who was tall, well-built, and quite adept at handling situations, did a perfect job. He gave his ‘introduction’ and then somehow managed to get excused on the grounds of being an asthma patient. That I was thin, looked younger than my 17 years, and had absolutely no idea about the whole thing, made me a perfect candidate to have a little fun with.

I was asked to give my ‘introduction’. As I started in English, I was told to ‘show some respect to the national language’. I apologized and switched to Hindi. When I finished, there were some other questions regarding what other colleges I had applied to, why I was only applying for commerce courses, which college had nice chicks, and so on. Finally, the leader of the gang, called Rahul, came to the point, “Dekh yaar, don’t feel bad about it. This is a tradition of every college. When we came here, we were ragged too. And we initially felt bad about it. But later those same seniors helped us a lot and we became really good friends. This is all about breaking the ice, you know. If you have any problem, just come to me. I will help you out. But before that, you will have to do something for me...”

In spite of all this ‘bhai-talk’, I was shivering in my shoes. I was not comfortable in the situation and I just wanted them to let go of me. But I also knew that that was not going to happen, at least not that easily. He asked me to remove my belt. Very reluctantly, I proceeded to do that. I was almost on the verge of breaking down. Rahul reassured me, “Oye, dar mat, teri pant nahi khulwaengay.”

I was told that I will have to dress-up as a gentleman. So, I was ordered to wear my leather-belt around my neck and I was warned to keep it on till the time I was on campus. My immediate thought at that moment was that as compared to all the tales of horror that I had been told about ragging in Delhi colleges, this actually amounted to nothing. Yet, I still haven’t been able to forget that next half-an-hour or so, when I was trying to hide myself from people on the streets of North Campus. It was as if I had been stripped in public. I wanted to remove the belt but I was too scared to do it. What if Rahul and his gang were keeping a watch? I had never felt so hapless in my life. I was so scared and emotionally hurt that I took off the belt only after I had walked a good distance away from KMC. And I never went back to KMC after that.

Now, when I look back, I know that for Rahul and his cronies, it must have been just a casual affair. Good clean fun. In fact, somehow I like to believe that he never meant to harm me or humiliate me on purpose. He was just following the ‘tradition’. And who knows, we may have become good buddies if I had taken admission in Kirorimal College. But even today, I would hate to be in that kind of a situation again. And I am dead sure that I would have never ragged my juniors, even if I was in KMC and Rahul was my good friend.

That’s my reason of writing and sharing this episode of my life. Since then several of my friends and acquaintances have narrated much worse tales of ragging. It seems to be happening everywhere. In spite of the new and much stricter laws and stepped up vigilance by the college authorities, there are victims all around us. The ‘tradition’ continues unabated.

firsthand@stopragging.org