First of all why this sort of name to it? Just to show how lively & fun this campus was. Being in the IIT , with some of the top brains of this country, lots of exams, assignments & CGPA’s ,SGPA’s ,study & more studies. Our life was not confined to just this only. It was night outs, party at chedis @ 3 in the morning, whole night carrom tournament with the looser paying the coffee bill(needed for staying awake), ‘Bondhur dokan’(a place to quench our thirst of rum,vodka & etc etc),” Boudir hotel”(cheapest food), LAN & DC (you name it & its available ,thanks to torrent) & the list will go on and on and on……
Ragging (Defn-a form of abuse on newcomers to educational institutions) is something which can have chills down the spine of every fresher .Since I did not have much past experience on this (in college 10-15 seniors came to rag a mere 100 freshers or more. So I thought they were more nervous than us & thus nothing considerable happened) , I was nervous, tensed & was literally cursing my parents for sending me there.
Like all engineering colleges the IIT’s were no different.
Here mostly the 2nd year BTech students were ragged coz in the 1st year all the freshers are kept in separate hostel (far away from the clutches of their seniors), but what about MSc people???
Later I came to know that MSc students(old people) did not have any eligible seniors to rag them. Our 2nd year MSc & PhD scholars (older people) were so much ragged by their project & research guide’s respectively that at the end of the day they did not have energy or enthusiasm to rag someone else.
But this was compensated by our ever enthusiastic teachers. Hey hey, pause, one second. Don’t imagine that they will be coming to our hostels & ask us to do a striptease or become superman (running in front of girls hostel with undergarments worn over the cloths). They had something which was much lethal than all of these. The Father of all ragging, the “Grand Viva”. It was a horrible experience which every student had to undergo before getting the release letter(the degree). A 30 minutes of torture sometimes getting extended to an hour where a student will be facing a pack of teachers ready with their arms & ammunition (the questions which we never imagined could be asked or which never came to our minds during the past 2 years of study). Don’t think they did all these alone but had accomplice known as “externals”. Here once the students enters the room (a seminar hall with the AC temperature lower than usual to intensify the chilling atmosphere) he will be asked what is his favorite topic. This is the first trap. If one says any topic then he will get the toughest questions one can imagine & failing to answer those will induce comments like ‘hey you can’t even answer the questions on your favorite topic, how can you answer the rest?‘
The scene was something like a poor sheep(the student) in front of a pack of wolves(teachers & external) ready to pounce on it or a lamb infront of the butchers knife.
But this don’t come to us as a shock since we get immuned /vaccinated to this torture by frequent doses of similar torture known as project viva, practical viva, seminars throughout the course.
Our first exposure to this came in the form of something termed as “introduction”. It took place just after we joined the institute. We were all taken to the Vikramshila seminar room. The audience comprising of professors , head dep , research scholars & MSc scholars and us(bakra of the day). One by one each of us would have to go to the stage ,introduce ourselves & clear all the doubts & questions coming from the audience after hearing our intro. At that day we came to know many facts such as Partha can sing rabindrasangeet in female voice(later we learnt that it was his original voice), kakima’s favorite food is “mayer hat er simui er payesh”, prateek wants to fly high other than doing his usual work (flirting), the extent to which Bodha can make a fool of himself ect ect ect….
It was my turn after sometime. Having watched most of them perform I decided that I will not make a fool of myself out there. Went on the stage , started answering confidently till that question came, “What is your hobby?” .Sounds harmless isin’t it? But…. well lets see what happens.
“reading & listening to music” I replied (the best answer I can think at that time)
“Ok then sing something” next question.
‘hey dude I told listing to music not singing‘ I thought but replied that “I am basically a bathroom singer & this ambiance is not suitable for me to sing”
“You physics guys should have strong imagination. Imagine this as a bathroom & sing” SB replied.
So I started visualizing & after a few mins sang a kishore number. But the reaction was not what I expected. I know that I am not Kishore Kumar but had this confidence that I can sing in tune. So seeing the audience starting to laugh was something what I least expected. They had listen patiently to some horrible songs sung by my friends before & clapped too at the end. ‘why should I be discriminated, this is unfair?’ I thought.
While coming back to my seat Momi(the show host) commented “nice joke“. ‘JOKE !!!! , is she mad? ‘ I thought.
Later came to know that while I was visualizing for my song impatient SB already shooted his next question which was “Ok ,then tell a joke.”
Everybody except me had heard that.
Now that’s what I call a “joke of the day”.
No comments:
Post a Comment