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This year, the day college reopened, I walked through hallowed portals into my temple of learning, only to find an eighteen year old young man giving birth to a motorbike helmet in the driveway hampering my progress.

No, I did not call 101 (the Indian 911) and no, I also did not run to the nearest biotechnology center to report my findings. You see, the man in labor was not any very strange phenomenon, he was merely being ragged.

Ragging is a ubiquitous Indian thing. I cannot say whether it is prevalent in other countries in South Asia, or even in any other part of the world, but it is an essential part of college life in India. It is an experience every college student in this country will have gone through, and as experiences go, you would be hard put to find something as vivid as this in foreign universities.

Ragging is not necessarily all about birthing helmets, or even about labor per se. Some people would call it hazing, or to use an Eton word, "fagging" (don't ask me what the British do in school, I'm equally confused!) Ragging is a method of initiating the new entrants to college to the great world they are now a part of. It is a means of breaking the ice, and if done in the right spirit, it can be great fun too.

When the first year students (for you American born confused desis, the word is "freshmen") or "fuchchas" (word root: "first year" + "bachcha") enter college, they are pounced upon by their seniors. These evil seniors have complete social and moral authority to ask the fuchchas to run sideways, dance, hop around backwards singing the latest Hrithik Roshan number, or make speeches from a canteen table about the benefits of prescribing Viagra to your teachers. (I had to do the last one when a senior found out I was an avid debater.)

As horrifying as this may sound to the sanitized Western mind, it is really quite fun. Most people generally prove to be very sporting, and in these cases, it is one of those unique moments in your life to have an enthusiastic fresher hopping around in front of you. If your victim ends up being a shy, super sensitive person scared of his/her own shadow, then you send him/her off with a pat on the back, and some solid advice to stay away from the college canteen.

Most fuchchas, as soon as they enter college, are pretty scared. I cannot blame them, because there have been instances where ragging can get out of hand. In professional courses, and in hostels, ragging has been known to be bad enough to warrant suicides and deaths. However, in most day colleges, ragging is very mild, very laid back and generally pretty innocuous. (Ask me, I went through it!) It just gets pretty bad publicity.

And the really weird thing is that even though you might expect such practices to breed ill will, I have found that most people, including me, have become best friends with the seniors who ragged me last year. You have to take it in the right spirit, and if you feel that things are getting out of hand, you can walk away. (I did this once, and the irate senior was left looking like a fool after some other seniors took my side.)

Authorities have officially banned ragging in almost all universities, but the effectiveness of the ban could be seen when the day after colleges opened, newspapers carried photographs of first day ragging in many colleges around the country. This year, some friends of mine were unofficially patrolling the campus and keeping an eye out for any untoward incidents. It didn't help that the principal of my college is also the head of the University Anti Ragging Committee and so there was enough police presence around to make you think Chelsea Clinton was a new admission. As for me, I nearly got arrested was standing and talking to a friend while a group next to us made some girls sing "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai"!! And the irony of it was that those freshers didn't mind singing. They were all self-confessed Shah Rukh Khan fans.

The most memorable moments of ragging this year are so vivid, they will stay with me for many years to come. I will never forget tying newspaper strips to a fresher's belt and making him dance a Shilpa Shetty number at the University Special bus stop. How can I forget the "nikah" of two giggling fuchchas that we had a poker faced Buddhist monk from Sri Lanka solemnize? And I will definitely never forget the young man who climbed a tree in campus, thumped his chest and screamed out, "Me Tarzan, Who Jane?".

Now, three weeks after college has opened, things have become quite staid. Classes are on in full swing, and ragging has virtually ended. I have gone back to my regular schedule, and sometimes it would seem that the past few weeks were a figment of my imagination, were it not for the fact that I am now the proud god father of a beautiful, black Yamaha helmet

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