Actually his description of ragging is quite funny:
We did many things in that one month that now appear harmless and amusing. We stood on benches in the dining hall and recited the national anthem; we crawled on all fours and barked like dogs; we brought cigarettes and Campa Cola for our seniors; we cleaned their rooms; we dropped our trousers so they could measure our penises; we formed human trains — each car holding the penis of the car in front — and whistled our way through hostel corridors; we simulated orgies; stripped naked; then wore underpants over our trousers to turn ourselves into comic book phantoms.The impact of these experiences are summed up by Sujit as, “After so many years, I can list all these forms of ‘ragging’ dispassionately, but no one should be misled. Brutality and oppression remain just that, no matter the name used for them… Ragging is a case study for Freud, nothing more.”
If Sujit belongs to the second group, I probably belong to the first. While he seems to have been traumatised by that experience, his words brought back many happy memories for me.
The first time I encountered ragging was when I went to submit some form at MAMC near Delhi Gate. A pimply seventeen, I was suddenly pulled into a small door at the side of their auditorium. Soon my pants were around my ankles and I was asked to wank. It was slightly embarrassing to admit but I didn’t know what wanking meant!
I knew the words all right, they were used often by boys, but I had no idea that you actually did something. Probably I was too busy day-dreaming or reading or playing, and though it had been many years that I had “wet dreams”, I hadn’t ever thought much more about it. I did have some vague basic ideas of what fucking entailed and that was my sex knowledge. I don't think that I thought kissing caused a women to become pregnant, but probably I was not so sure about it.
My raggers screwed up their noses but were not too surprised, apparently they had seen other ignorant boys like me before? Any way, I was shown the simple practicality of wanking and let off. I won’t bore you with the details of my experiments with that knowledge later that day, but just for that lesson alone, the word “ragging” brings a smile to my face.
The other lesson came in Meerut a few months later, in the hostel. Fifty or sixty boys, running around naked and doing hundred little things like the ones described by Sujit above, was an opportunity for close observation of the variations in that small appendage that is apparently supposed to the centre of men’s lives – the penis. It was the best cure possible for all those anxieties about is it too small, is it too long, is too thin or thick or whatever, that seems to afflict many of us. It did cure me of those anxieties any way. After the first two times of being naked with other boys, any sense of humiliation or shyness disappeared.
It was fun and a way to look at things that earlier, I didn't have the courage to ask or think about.
The third lesson was about female sexuality. Fed mainly on Hindi literature, where sex is hardly ever mentioned directly, I had an idea that sex was something pleasurable for men that was “tolerated or suffered” by women. Both, male and female students of the medical college had their “anthems” full of obscenities, and it was the women’s anthem that opened the magic door for me – sex could be something desired even by women!
Probably I can come up with some more lessons that I received from ragging that perhaps today’s generation won’t care about. I am sure that today’s twelve year old knows much more about sex than what I knew at seventeen. If they don’t know, perhaps internet is better medium to learn than other guys slightly older than them through ragging? I am not hundred percent convinced.
My parents never spoke to me about sex and with friends, one spoke about it but that was more to experiment with words and our developing identities as men, but at least, I was shy about asking any real questions. Years later, when I tried speaking about sex to my teenage son, I soon realised that he already knew much more about it and probably I could have learned somethings from him! How times have changed.
I know that some persons were really traumatised by that experience. One of our classmates, she left the medical college and went back to Delhi to join some other course. Yet, for me the memories are only pleasant.
In the end, perhaps it all depends upon how we react to situations or how we look at them?
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Do you feel uncomfortable with the word "fucking"? Try listening to explanations of Acharya/Bhagwan Rajneesh about this word at Gotham Chopra's blog that will cure you. On second thoughts, if you have high blood pressure and you feel strongly about this word, then don't listen to that podcast, probably you will burst some artery in your head!
