Manipal, is a small town (eh.. university town), hardly an hour from Mangalore. So why have I dedicated a whole page to this town? For it was here that I changed from ‘innocent’ (debatable) teenager to an idiot who wants to change the world!

Now I call it a second home.

In this page I will write and write on my days in Manipal. For there are too many faces to this place!

First lesson - ragging

This post was made initially at tea time at press cart and was crossposted at micicgiri as well

Manipal taught me a lot about life.. how it goes.. right and wrong and a lot of other things.. The first lesson I learnt in Manipal was not sweet nor spicy but bitter!

Well it’s something I did in my first year.. It’s not exactly Tea time at Press Cart material…….. Going back in time now…

I am in my first year of BAJC (Bachelors in Journalism and Communication).. all MIC freshies were staying in the basement of 9th block.. we used to call it the dungeon, because of the low roof and the leaky toilets (more about this later)…

So what does every freshie have to go through? Ragging of course.. yes we too had to.. in small dosages.. Dosages so small that we never got high on them… doses so small that it never gave us nightmares.. but yes we still had ‘ragging.’

More than our seniors we were scared of the MIT guys.. as most seniors appeared to be a sensible lot.. so one such day I went to mess at 8 at night and was coming back to basement room with my roomy (Elvin).. as soon as we descended the steps to the basement we smelt trouble.. first of all there was this strange (read unknown) guy standing there and many of classmates stood in front of him, hands in the back head bowed down..

Oh boy.. what have I got myself into.. the thought hardly escaped my brain and he was already glaring at me.. My freshie instincts jumped into action… my head fell, my hands moved and crossed themselves behind me.. I stood there like everybody else…

What’s your name.. He thundered on… I could literally feel his glare now.. Balanarayan I replied

Give me your intro - he continued
It looked like he didn’t want to let go of me so easily…
So I got into the act rolling out my ‘intro’ which I had mugged up (in three different languages as per the standard) .. thanks to our immediate seniors who had prepared us for these worst case scenarios…

My name is N T Balanarayan. I am 17 years old and hail from Kerala. and blah blah blah for a minute (standard intro time)

He was impressed with my intro I guess, he moved on to the next person quite fast… In between I managed to sneak into my room (don’t ask how)… But what I didn’t know was that I would dash out of my room exactly five minutes later .. that too on hearing a scream from the corridor…..

So what happened?.. did ragging get out of control.. the answer sadly was YES… Roger one of my friends who stayed in the opposite room had fainted.. shocked and not knowing what to do, we started screaming at the guy who was ragging us.. He was smart enough to leave the place before the warden stepped in.. The ambulance was called and he was taken to KMC hospital…

There I came to know that ragging session got so intense that he could no longer take the heat and he fainted… All of us were outraged and decided to complain.. now comes the interesting part… out of the blue steps in Veerappan to our basement (thats what we used to call our hostel warden.. during the day, he used to drive MIT busses from hostels to college and at night he was ’supposed’ to protect us from being ragged … but he used to be drunk most nights and slept at 11 much much before he peak ragging time of 12-3!)

So what happened that night- he asks and all 18 of us replied to him in one breath making it a point to fill in each and every detail.. he listened with rapt attention like Merlin Brando in godfather…And when we finished, he sighed and then silence prevailed.. He got up from his seat and left the room saying he will back in a min.

And come he did.. this time with the same dude who ragged us. They had their arms on each others shoulders and all the excitement in the room was now turning into tension.. tension that flooded everyone’s mind and started flowing on into the room…

The person who ragged us decided to break the silence.. Hi I am Sameer Kanth I am from second year, ICAS.. my father’s a lawyer based in Mangalore. So that means I am localite.. I have solid contacts here and if you guys take it to MAHE I am ready to fight you in court but remember one thing there is nothing you can do to me..

He finished these words and glanced around the room.. the silence that prevailed in the room then, was enough to creep out even the bravest of souls. There was something about him that made us believe that he spoke the truth, was it the sheer conviction or his dialogue delivery I don’t know. But I know one thing…. WE WERE SCARED… He was smiling now (or was a smirk) and he left the room…

Now the warden got up, it looked like he was going to speak (assure us of some action)…

So you heard the man.. I guess the matter ends there….. he said

For a second I thought this was a nightmare
Because he was was supposed to ’save’ us, instead he has sold us off… On later enquiry we got information that matter was settled over a bottle of rum or a few pack of cigarettes…

So lesson number 1 from Manipal
You can’t win a battle just by speaking the truth… All you need to do is - have he right influence …..