28 March 2012
By now, classes were becoming like second nature to us. Wake up, shit, brush teeth, drink coffee, go to class, sleep in class. My classmates personalities were also beginning to come out. Nisha was the cutest girl in the batch by far. She was a very intelligent girl who had trouble believing in her God-given abilities. Lekha was crazy like a fox. She was definitely the boldest of all the girls. When ragging was still going on, she would basically tell the seniors to piss off. The girl had balls of steel. I remember one biochemistry practical class where we were analyzing urine samples for protein and amino acids when Professor Kartha, the head of the department, came up to her and asked her a question. I guess she got kind of flustered because she knocked over the beaker containing the yellow broth and it found its way to Kartha's crotch. With a look of total shock, Lekha started wiping his genital area with her labcoat when a look of comprehension dawned on her face. That didn't compare to the look of appeasement on Kartha's.
"What is your name?" "Nisha, sir. N-I-S-H-A. Nisha."
Pretty quick thinking on Lekha's part, no? Three weeks into first semester of first year, our batch population received its final additions. The last of the NRI's had arrived. We had heard rumors of a beautiful girl NRI that was from Chicago. After seeing what the college had to offer in terms of aesthetic quality, there was little hope of a somewhat human looking girl joining our ranks. The girl from Chicago was Manju. She had an older brother in '93 batch named Peter. Apparently my family knew theirs but I didn't really know them. I just met Peter once or twice in the first few weeks. He seemed to be a very studious chap. His choice of cologne was Cool Water. It seemed every male NRI in 93 batch wore that stuff. But Peter doused himself liberally any time he left his room. You could smell him coming a week before he arrived. When the infamous Manju arrived, all hope left the room like a balloon slowly blurting out its gas and making a long-drawn-out farting noise. She was ok looking, I suppose. But there was something about her that didn't quite seem right. Her face seemed frozen in a perpetual pout. She had the kind of look on her face where if you asked her how her day was, she would start crying. Yeah, I could definitely relate to that.
And finally, there was Rajana. She was from New Jersey. She was 5'11 and looked like she had a mean streak. She could definitely take any one of the NRI guys, Ajit, Abi, Mike, or me, and tear us limb from limb. But once she opened her mouth, she was just the sweetest thing ever! She had a quiet, squeaky voice that belied her amazonian looks. Pretty soon, cliques began to form. Us four NRI guys were inseparable. We would always hang out at lunch and after class. We would spend countless hours talking and hanging out, typical guy stuff. The girls were also inseparable in the beginning. Since boredom continuously reared its ugly head, we had to devise ways to keep ourselves entertained. One of those ways was coming up with nicknames for our classmates. We started with the NRI girls because we talked to them the most. Lekha, Nisha, Manju, and Rajana became known as The A-Team. Lekha was dubbed "Murdock" because, well she was nuts. Nisha became "Hannibal" because she was the leader of this coterie. Manju was "Face" because that pout she did was a total oscar-caliber acting job. And finally, Rajana was "B.A." because she could beat the shit out of anyone anywhere anytime and she pitied the fool, let me tell ya.
Now that our class was complete, it was time to get to know the girls better. Not just because it was the right thing to do, but because the senior guys made us get their "biodata". We made up a questionnaire for the girls who we thought were worthy to know. We handed them out to the girls and asked them to fill it out. Besides the A-Team, we got the biodata from girls named Uma, Uma, Valarmarthi, Santhose, Kanaka, and others. The questions ranged from favorite movie to the real reason they joined medical school. Invariably, EVERY SINGLE GIRL'S DREAM was to join medical school. No kidding. We weren't the only ones trying to make a connection. The girls also got biodata forms for us to fill out. I thought I would be creative and give some cool answers to it. You never knew if there was a senior girl who could be your Mrs. Robinson. My questions were pretty much like the ones I gave the girls. One of the questions was, "What kind of girl do you like?". I thought about that for a minute and answered, "I want to be with a girl that I look forward to seeing at the end of the day, and I want to cherish her and take care of her and be her knight in shining armour. I want to do little things for her like make breakfast in bed, and write little lovenotes and leave them all over the place. I guess, basically I want to be with a girl who I would love to love."
The ragging began in earnest that night for me. Apparently my biodata was required reading in the ladies hostel. The senior girls passed on the word to the senior guys about what a smartass I was. As soon as I got back to the hostel, Anil the Crazed called me to his room.
"You fucker think you are so smart? What kind of answers did you write on that biodata?" "I just wrote the truth, sir. I answered the questions honestly." "Well I am honestly going to thrash you, you bastard."
He took my arm and started asking me the muscles of the extensor compartment of the forearm. I rattled off a few but there were so many muscles names extensor longus shortus thisus that I got confused. So, he offered to do an impromptu dissection. He took some cologne and rubbed it on my forearm to make a sterile field.
"Sir, what are you doing?" "Don't worry, Da. It won't hurt." "What won't hurt, sir?" "I'm going to cut open your arm and show you your muscles so you will never forget them. So next time I ask you, you will remember, right?"
Oh boy. This guy had me shitting bricks. I saw him take the rusty, tetanus-laden scalpel and make a small scratch in my skin, much like surgeons do some practice markings before the incision is made. I woke up an hour later on his floor. I guess I felt the scalpel on my delicate epidermis and just passed out. I looked up at him and he was laughing.
"Did you seriously think I would cut you open, boy?" "Uh....yes, sir, I did." "I'm not a monster, Bobby." "Yes sir, if you say so." "Oh so I am a monster?" "NO SIR!" "Good. Get out."
It was unfortunate that Anil the Crazed was my next door neighbor. Anytime I went to my room, he would see me and call me to come in. I became his own personal wake-up call in that I would have to get up, get him a cup of coffee, and get him the newspaper every morning. I guess it was nice to have a little bitch to push around. Hey, I wasn't complaining. Compared to the stories I heard about ragging, I was getting off light. Hell, compared to my batchmates I was getting off light. Some of the things they were forced to do made me glad to be an American. Abi also got a healthy dose of ragging. One day, he was walking around with his brother, Anand from '92 batch, when he met a senior named Winston. Abi was a very friendly and cheerful type of guy so he greeted him enthusiastically. Winston took this as a junior showing no respect. Therefore, he made Abi take off his pants and then his underwear. He had to wear the briefs on the outside of his pants, take a sheet from Winston's closet, drape it over his shoulders like the "Man of Steel", run around the hostel and yell, "I am Superman! Here I come to save the day! Up up and awaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!" Lucky for him, he never wore underoos. Mike never really got ragged because he had Sushil to watch his back. Ajit rarely got ragged because he was the elder statesman of our batch. Of the NRI guys, I was the gimp. My real nemesis was Sheebu, the guy who made me and Abi fake sodomize eachother. I really did not like this guy. He was an NRI who was very Indo-centric. Hey, I had no problem with people who were in touch with their culture. But he had a problem with me being so American. He ordered me not to wear shorts in the hostel, but a loongi instead (a loongi is like a male version of a long skirt. you wrap it around you like a towel and walk around). One day, I was walking towards Mike's room when Sheebu caught me wearing shorts.
"Hey, junior. Take off those shorts now!"
I dutifully did as requested.
"Now walk back to your room and get a lungi."
I started to put my shorts back on when he yelled, "No! Leave your shorts off and walk in your jetties (slang for underwear)!"
Fine. I was calm and collected and ambled back to my room. One of my classmates, Rajeswaran, saw me and started laughing.
"Eda junior fucker! What are you laughing at?" Sheebu yelled.
He next told him to take off his loongi and go back to his room and stay there. Rajesh was much more discombobulated than I was and he SPRINTED back to his room in his brown jetties (fobspeak for underwear). Local guys there wore brown underwear. I didn't see the appeal. Seeing me calmly walk back to my room only in my Fruit-of-the-looms made the seniors think I was partly crazy. Why on earth didn't I run back? Wasn't I embarassed? Wasn't I scared? To tell the truth, I didn't think about it really. I was (and still am) a very happy go lucky guy. It took a hell of a lot to phase me then. It wasn't a big deal to walk around in my underwear like I was Tom Cruise. It was all a bit of fun at my expense, nothing more. The worst part of ragging was getting water for the seniors. Like I said before, there was only one water tap in the entire hostel for potable water. When you turned it all the way, a phlegmatic spurt of clear, water-looking liquid trickled out. It took a good 10 minut
The A-Team and Toad Punting • Opuss № I