Smile Wash!
At 3 AM in the morning, in my dusty hostel room, I and
Wonder were standing like an unfed beaten dog, in agony and hope that our day
will also come. In front of us were our dreadful seniors Joda, Buddhi, and
Koocha, all enjoying our suffering as if sitting in a Mehfil and enjoying Indian
Mujra.
(Loud) Stare at the tube light and abuse the fan! And don’t
stop till the tube light fuses and fan discharges in anger of listening to so
much abuse. – said Joda
(Loud authority and naughty) And do remember to remove one
piece of your clothing at every instance when you fall short of an abusive word
or take pause – said Buddhi
(Order) Be creative! Said Koocha
We were trembling in fear and stared at each other. We were
asked to do the impossible to save ourselves from the inevitable embarrassment.
We tried…………. ….a….B……………………………………………………………………………………………………… and could not utter
a single word after the few basic ones – thanks to our mother’s strict rules on
language conduct at home.
We stared at each other and busted into cachinnation (hahah
laugh loudly in this line).
How dare you! Get your pants off and wash your smiles!
Narrator: For many who stayed in hostels during their
engineering schools in India, smile wash might be a part of ragging alias PDP (personality
development program), as called by the seniors. There are different versions of
secret smile wash anthems which can not be sung in this forum due to
parliamentary reasons. Though all have same objective to teach the fucchas or
the sophomores that seniors are their fathers and one must not smile in front
of them. And
if one cannot control but smile, then you better wash your smile!
Ki ki ki maine smile wash ki – done done done my smile wash
is done.
We were even more amused and laughed again!
Hey get your shirts of and wash your Smile!!!!
And we laughed again………..and we laughed again…
And a slap, and a shoe, and a slap and a shoe , shoe slap ,
slap shoe…to wonder, who already had a bad record with seniors and a slap to me
(Pain). After
this assault we were left crying and the seniors left my room in
disgust. We had a similar routine everyday with different Jodas, Buddhis and
Koochas till a
day came when shockingly one of our fellow journey mate in this
suffering, Gagan, fainted due to the trauma of washing his smile. A few weeks
later all the seniors came to our rooms to apologize and induct us in their
community following the fresher party. Our personality was officially developed
and smiles totally washed!
It has been more than four years that I graduated. Buddhi
has just completed his PhD from an Ivy league univ, Joda was a senior in my
first job. He also became a full time devotee at a temple and now runs his
business and preaches Vedic systems to students during evening – we call him
Himanshu Prabhu now. Koocha is a successful manager in an MNC. And so are other
seniors, I, and my journey mates pursuing our varied dreams leading to
different directions in life and career. In future everyone would be even more busy and
entangled in the web of life. However there will remain a beautiful exit path
from this web. A path in the shape of a smile, formed during the days of smile wash
that connects us all, wherever we go, whatever we do, and whoever we become!
Friends,
the smile and innocence on my face are definitely much less than what it was
before my college and ragging is much to be blamed for this. But now I cannot
imagine my days of college without those first six months of being smile
washed!
It
made us stronger, taught us to be tactful, and developed our people skills. And
much more than that, it helped in forming a warm family with so many unrelated
people who left their homes to live together for four years with meager
facilities in a place which ceases to be a second home now.
Though
I insist that ragging must not be so severe but to be very honest I have also
not been able to find something so deep and powerful to be capable of causing a
positive metamorphosis in one’s life in just few months.
