STARMOTE

Many of us, during our first years of college, would have experienced ragging and bullying. I too experienced ragging from my seniors, but fortunately I was a day scholar, so I didn’t face many serious incidents. Most of what I knew came from stories my classmates shared.

One story was about a friend who was given a bike key and asked to go buy biryani. The seniors never told him which vehicle the key belonged to. So the poor fellow went around inserting the key into every single bike in the parking area trying to figure out which one it unlocked. It took him nearly three hours to buy biryani from a shop that was barely ten minutes away.

If they had given me that task, I would have simply walked and bought the biryani in thirty minutes.

But that poor fellow genuinely tried every vehicle until he found the right one.

Another incident — they gave someone a matchstick and asked him to measure the room by counting how many matchsticks long it was.

Listening to all this, I was actually excited about what they might do when my turn came. I used to be a bully myself during school days — something I’m not proud of — though I had mellowed down by the time I entered college.

Still, I believed that if anyone tried to bully me, I would punch their face in.
They should know who they were dealing with — or at least that’s what I thought.

One day, I went to the college hostel to meet a friend. While we were sitting and talking, a senior walked in and suddenly asked me why I was there and told me to get out immediately. He even said he would punch my face.

At that moment, rage rose instantly inside me.

Before I could react, my friend tightly grabbed my hand and stopped me. He was afraid things would escalate if I hit a senior.

After the senior left, he told me, “They are seniors. If you hit him, they’ll all come together and beat you.”

I told him, “So what if they hit me? Even if they land ten or twenty punches, if I manage to land just one punch on a senior, it would be far more embarrassing for him than for us.”

At that time, it felt like the only logic that mattered.