It was my first day of college and I was standing in the corridor not knowing whether to enter the class or not! A senior came to me and showed me which was my class and asked me to feel free! I was happy that the seniors were so friendly! Friendly they were but little did I know what was in store for me; actually for us freshers. So I went in, totally innocent of their elaborate plan. I went in, and had my first shock. In the actual seat allotment for the college it was mentioned as 60 students per batch. But the class seemed a hundred strong; half an hour before the actual commencement of the class.
And from then on, it was just shock after shock. There weren’t many seats but luckily I found myself a seat. The funny part was, even after all the seats were filled, there were still about 20 more students who didn’t have a seat. Our seniors were sweet enough to lend us a few benches as a temporary arrangement. Finally somehow everyone had a seat. I was shy but my neighbour (my apparent classmate) started a conversation and broke the ice.
After the introduction, he sees my ID card and asks when I got it, later he mentioned that half of the class hadn’t got their ID cards. Then came our teacher for the very first class, a guy actually, apparently just looking a bit older than us but he called himself as Deepak, an ME student. Well, since it was our first class of the course, all of us were quite confident that it was going to be a nice curtain raiser. He wrote “Programming in C” in a sarcasm-intended font; three words covered a fourth of the board. Were we being made fun of? I didnt know, nonetheless, we were all ears with full concentration waiting for the first word of the topic he was going to utter. He asked a question ‘What is C language’? From the last bench came a sarcastic answer ‘C is a programming language’. The teacher was furious stare and asked the student to stand up and answer. He changed his answer to “C is a structured language” and the teacher let him go.
Just when he was about to start, a ringtone rang ‘Nonononono Shiela, Shiela ki jawani…’ and the class burst into laughter. The teacher lost his temper and asked him to get out of the class! He literally shouted at us to switch off our phones, not silent but switch off. Then the whole class switches off their phones, tap tap tap… The student who had previously answered starts talking and the teacher asked him to get out too. He was near the wall end and he arrogantly says ‘Sir I can’t’ and this was my next shock. When he asked to get up and come out of the bench, his friend who was sitting beside him covers his path by bending forward and says ‘sir, stomach ache i can’t bend backward and hence i can’t make way for the other guy’. My neighbour whispers to me, ‘Ee college alli ingeneno?’ (meaning is this how this college is?) The teacher started scolding everyone.
A parent who was there by some good luck went to complain to HOD about the behaviour of our teacher. Then came the surprise! A senior rushes in and says something, i guess she said “prank over”, i don’t know! And more than half the students rush toward the teacher, lift him and start giving him birthday bums. It was all a prank, supposedly the tradition of welcoming freshers to our wonderful college! And we did really enjoy the welcome. The teacher, the one who answered from the last bench, my neighbour, and about half the class were my immediate seniors. But now it was our seniors’ turn to worry! The HOD was coming.
One senior climbed the podium and addressed us. She explained that this was the tradition in UVCE and started convincing us that it wasn’t ragging, it was just a prank. And in came the HOD. Our seniors started pacifying him that it was tradition etc. He then asked us if they ragged us. Luckily everyone said no and the HOD let our seniors go. Our seniors explained that the classes don’t start until two weeks from the actual date of start. But the bright side, was our seniors. They were pretty helpful and told us how to go about with the routines of the college, how we had to spend more on xerox than on fees! But at the end of the day, I’m happy that i joined here!
– Abhiram M, 4th Sem ECE
