Those enchanted four and half years

Chapter 4

       We were all very excited on the day of 'Fresher's party', especially Sufee. "It's gonna be cross ragging," she said excitedly.

"What's that?" I asked. "Well, senior girls rag junior boys and senior boys rag junior girls," she exclaimed. "Have you seen Amey Shrivastava?"

"Who's that?" I asked.

"Arey he's the most handsome, most eligible bachelor of our college. Oh, I just wish he rags me today!"

Morning session passed away in a blur as we all looked forward to the evening. I, Sufee, Savita, Arun, Yash and Vivek were going to arrange a cold-drink stall. Throughout the morning lectures we kept on passing chits, discussing the preparations and arrangement. At 3'O clock we rushed to the auditorium to set up our stalls. The Indira Gandhi memorial hall was a big hall situated behind the pharmacology department. On the wall opposite the door, a huge stage was constructed. Along both the parallel walls, spaces were allotted to us for our stalls. We were also provided with a long table and few stools per stall.

"Look at Miss Beautiful," Sufee exclaimed. I looked in the direction of Sasha. Her whole face was looking cherry red and she was animatedly discussing something with her friends and repeatedly looking into the mirror. It was obvious that she had done something to her face to look more beautiful, may be some chemical treatment, as a result of which she had developed severe adverse reaction. The guys in our group arranged the cartons containing cold-drinks in the space given to us. I, Sufee and Savita decorated the table with a floral print table cloth and flower vase, and kept one bottle of each variety of cold-drink in a row on the table. "Let's prepare a name plate with some caption for our stall," Vivek said.

"No Vivek, this is not some real fun-fare, nobody's going to take our stalls seriously. We have been called here for ragging. Don't provide seniors with fodder," I warned Vivek. But he was in no mood to listen. He borrowed a big white sheet and blue marker from a neighbouring stall. In bold letters, he wrote :

"THE ULTIMATE COLD-DRINK STALL

COOLEST DRINKS FOR THE COOLEST PEOPLE ON EARTH"

and attached it above our stall.

As we waited for the seniors to arrive, I and Sufee took a look at other stalls. Most of the stalls were game stalls, while some sold snacks. I saw Avinash helping decorate Shabana's stall, while his stall-mates kept shouting at him to lend a helping hand for his own stall.

At around 5:00 pm, seniors started gathering outside the hall, but everyone was waiting for our dean. Dr.Tilak, accompanied by Dr.Charan and Dr.Mishra came at 5:30 pm. Everyone applauded as they walked in and took their front seats next to the stage. All seniors followed and sat on chairs behind. We stood at the extreme back of the hall.

Rishi Tripathi went onto the stage, welcomed our Dean and gave a small welcome speech. "And now is the time for our much awaited 'Mr & Miss Freshers' competition. The participants selected by us are Sasha Gupta, Anusha Parekh, Swara Apte, Radha Swami, Pavan Sharma, Rocky J, Jay Bhatnagar and James Golmes. I invite all of them to the stage," he announced. Amidst loud applauds and chorused 'Ooo's', all participants went on stage. Miss Beautiful was still looking red like a tomato. Just as Arun had told us, the most beautiful girls and the most handsome guys from our batch had been picked up. "The competition consists of three rounds. In the first round, each participant should introduce himself/herself and state their reason of joining MBBS. In the second round, each participant will perform something to show his or her skill. And finally, in the third round, participants will answer one question posed by our judges, Dr.Tilak, Dr.Charan and Dr.Mishra. Decision of the judges will be final," Rishi concluded.