Jai Jharkhand - Part III

As I mentioned, I was always included in all the group orientation activities. But when it came to one to one ragging, no one wanted to rag me!

I realised that there were several kinds of classifications that were done before the seniors ragged the freshies. There was the scholar group and the non-scholar group. There was the tamil group and the non-tamil group. There were the Delhi girls and the Bombay girls. And there was me.

Every time I'd blurt out the words "I'm from Chaibasa" I'd get blank looks from the seniors. So I tried "I'm from Bihar". The blank looks changed to "Ab iska kya karein?" ("What do we do with her?") looks.

Frankly speaking, initially I felt really bad, as if I had let them down by coming from a small 'uncool' town. And at that age and position, I did not know much about being assertive, and individualistic and all that. So it was kinda depressing.

Most of the times, my intro would go something like...

"Hi, I'm Sayesha. I'm from DAV Public School, Chaibasa, Bihar. My hobbies are..."

"Uhhh... okay... NEXT!"

"What??? That's it?? Just because I am not from Delhi or Bombay or Bangalore or Madras... RAG ME DAMMIT! " I'd say in my head.

But to no avail. A few seniors probably took pity on me and ragged me for a while, but soon they got bored when they realised I did not even get any of the innuendos in their instructions! (I still don't get many!)

One instructed me to greet him with a ‘Jai Jharkhand!’ every time I saw him. I was very excited! But I never saw him again. Or perhaps neither of us recognised the other. I still don't know who it was!

Sometimes, I felt rather insulted at how duh they expected me to be.

Remember the senior A who made me play antakshari against myself? Now he was a fantastic singer. And I have an inclination for guys who have an inclination for hindi music. The other seniors knew that I was a big fan of him. So they decided to get together and play a prank on this 'village belle'.

They hacked into A's email account and sent me an email supposedly from him.

Here it is, copy-pasted from the email (yes, I still have it! In my hotmail account, which I don't use anymore, since gmail zindabaad!)

Dearest Sayesha,
I have been wanting to talk to you all alone for a long time but have not been able to do so. I don't know if this really is the appropriate time to tell you all this. This semester has been very frustrating as many a times when I tried to talk to you something has been coming in between.. I think I am too tensed to say what I wanted to say...
cya..
lots of love,
A....

Of course I saw through their act. In fact, I wanted to knock some sense into their heads by giving them some advice on intelligent execution of pranks. I wanted to scream, "You morons! When you write a love letter over email, you don't put the words 'love letter' as the subject line!" Sheesh.

I particularly remember another insulting incident, where I was introduced to this 'super senior'.

"Where are you from?" he asked.

"Chaibasa."

"And where the heck is that?"

"In Bihar."

"Uhhh... listen up now. I have no time for girls from Bihar. Can you do something for me? Make a list of girls in your batch who are from Delhi. Write down their names, hostel addresses and contact numbers, and pass it to me the next time you see me, okay? Only Delhi girls, understand. No Bombay, no Calcutta, no Madras, no Bangalore! Only Delhi. Understand?"

And he walked off, leaving me quite bewildered.

I did not identify with the Delhi group, or the Bombay group, or the Bangalore group, or the Madras group. I tried to hang out with them, but realised I had nothing in common with them really. I was totally on my own. I became a loner.

Even when I went out with them, I was not at ease. We were once taken by the seniors for an English movie. I think it was some Austin Powers movie. And upto the age of 18, I had seen like 6 English movies at most. So to me, they spoke really fast! And I wasn't even used to watching any American sitcoms! So I did not get the typical American jokes. And not to mention, that accent. I sat there in the theatre wondering what was so funny, and how people could make out what the actors were saying! And I also failed to understand why the name Ivana Humpalot was so funny. There were so many words that I was not familiar with! I did not know what the f word meant. I did not know that words like bang, screw, gay had other meanings than the basic ones I was familiar with.

Take gay, for example. In my head, gay = happy. That's all I knew. And here's how I encountered the other kind of gay (copy-pasted from an older post).

I was greeted by this rather scary-looking guy sporting a ponytail. "Oye, freshie hai!" He yelled to his friend, and then strode towards me. Quite intimidated, I took a step back, and almost stumbled and fell.

"Hi, I'm XYZ. Don't be scared of me. 'Cos I'm gay." He grinned.

"Errr.... hi..." I stammered, rather taken aback.

The only "gay" I knew back then, was the "happy and gay" kind, and so I was extremely puzzled as to why this strange guy was making it a point to express to the hapless freshie that he was a happy person.

"I'm a happy person too!" I thought to myself, "But you don't see me walking up to complete strangers and going, 'Hi, I'm Sayesha. Don't be scared of me. I'm happy.'"

So I gave him a rather peculiar look before walking away.

And that was my first encounter with the other kind of gay.

In the beginning, yes, I was scared that I'd disappear into oblivion, and no one would even notice I'm gone. I was scared that my batchmates and my juniors will not even know of my existence. I was scared of a lot of things.

But it's been years now. I have picked up many many things since then. No one except me has seen the process I went through, to re-create myself. I may not have picked up enough skills (or more importantly, interest) in the engineering department, but my experiences in Singapore, in NTU, and my experiments with my life have given me enough wisdom to know that even small-town girls can make it big. It's what you define 'big' as, that matters. To me, making it 'big' means appreciating life, and figuring out the 'formula' to live it to the fullest. And eventually, big town, small town, no one gives a hoot anyway, so it's best to be yourself.

It's what you make yourself out of who you are, that really matters.

Town small hai toh kya hua, dil big hona chahiye.