"Give me 5 good reasons, why i should not slap you?". Yes, i still remember this billion dollar question thrown at me during one of the early ragging days by a senior from our engineering college. That was one stark example of 'emotional atyachaar' inflicted upon the freshers. "i am from your state, sir", "i am a good person who doesn't deserve to be slapped, sir". These kind of 'good' reasons that popped out of our innocent, nervous faces were never 'good' enough for the big bullies. So, the count till 5 'Good' reasons was an impossible task that would finally prompt us, after 15-20 minutes of emotional turmoil, to say "Sir, please slap me instead" and end this trauma:)
So, another mental torture that i had heard of was to be prepared with your bio data('Intro') in a predefined format.
As i memorized everything about myself to be told as 'intro' to a senior, i was shocked to find that each member was supposed to learn by heart the 'intro' of all others in the group(our group of 18 was named 'Punjab Party'). And so we started cramming things ranging from 'permanent address' to 'professions of siblings' for all our group members(again reiterating that we were a group of 18)
So, any senior at any given point of time 24*7 could suddenly ask you, "what is 'Mohit's date of birth?". And it never helped that there were three members of the same name, 'Mohit'. So, if you accidentally remember the DOB of one Mohit, the senior would be smart enough to understand that you do not remember the same statistic of other two 'Mohit's'. And expectedly, every wrong reply used to result in another emotionally draining activity like guessing the age/origin of a third or final year senior whom you are meeting for the first time:)
But, somehow, these remembrances bring a smile on my face. Maybe, many things in life don't seem so bad when looked in hindsight.
