In Continuum.

Ragging isn't something that is new, and it is in fact deeply rooted in many societies around the world. Most of the time, you are probably going to hear about ragging in schools, and seniors tend to think about practical jokes for the juniors to perform in order for them to be a part of a group, a clique, something like that. It isn't an issue that has been formally addressed in the Singapore context, simply because there hasn't been any serious cases around. Or rather, I don't suppose those serious cases are known at all, because the victims are usually threatened to keep a shut mouth, or they could be too traumatized to talk about it to anybody else. So they swallow everything up, pretend that nothing has happened, and then try to fit into the group seamlessly and then be a part of the next ragging with the coming of the new bird. This vicious cycle goes on and on, and most people are probably in it because they've been treated that way before, one way or another. They just want to see others suffer like they did, and that is just how humans work in our ugliest forms. We are ugly creatures, we really are. I mean, aren't we supposed to be a part of this "intelligent design"? Whatever happened to the "intelligent" part? 

I remember watching the movie Jack with my mother in the theaters when I was much younger. By the way, can you believe that that movie was directed by the same guy behind the cameras for The Godfather? Anyway, Jack is this kid who grows up a lot faster than normal kids out there (four times faster, if I am not wrong), and he finds it really hard to fit into a normal social circle. I mean, just imagine yourself as a ten year old, trying to make friends with a guy that is forty years old - it's just weird. But one boy took liking to Jack, and brought him to a treehouse that he and his friends have built out in the woods. The other boys in the group were rather apprehensive of his presence initially, but Jack was eager to be a part of everybody. So the boys thought that Jack should go through a certain ritual before becoming one of them, and that was my first experience with ragging, though not directly. He had to eat a bowl of strange food, blended in with worms and all kinds of bugs, and then smell a can of collective farts from the boys. Yeah, it was a strange movie, but that is what they did in the treehouse. I never understood the reason why, until I got to high school where it really became a dog eat dog world. 

I am not sure who came up with the idea that friendship needs to be earned. Somehow, you just have to do something in order for us to be friends, what's up with that? High school was a ruthless place, and even more so when you are in a single-sex school. All the boys in class were organized into groups, and everybody else who are not a part of a group automatically becomes ostracized from everything that we did. This isn't a classic model of ragging, of course, but the way the boys treated the ones that were left out resembled it, I suppose. Back then, you were either the hunter or the hunted, and nobody wanted to be in the latter category of things. I was once there, though, hunted because I acted or talked funny. I was the target of many jests and pranks that I cried in class before, truth to be told. Then I learned the ways things worked, I knew how to work my way around things. I joined the hunters, but I was never the one to pull the trigger while I was in the pack. While everybody else in class made fun of this one guy in the corner of the classroom, I laughed and smiled at the act, pretending to be a part of the pack of wolves. That's what I did, and that was all I did. I never participated, never got my hands dirty. Because I knew, I just knew, how horrible it is to do such things to another human being. 

There were a couple of guys in class that were frequent targets of these random acts of atrocity, and they were never spared. One of them, I remember, was stripped and then thrown into the metal cupboard at the back of the class, then locked inside until he stopped pounding on the walls inside. The boys outside freaked out and pulled him out from the cupboard, but it's not like the pranks eased up in the coming days. It'd get worse, and then it'd get better, and then sometimes it'd be so unbearable to watch that I'd turn my eyes away altogether. It was horrible, some of the things that they did, and I can't imagine anybody actually growing up and not being emotionally wounded by the events. I sometimes wonder how those guys are doing right now, really. I wonder if they are doing OK, if the events of the past has affected their lives in any way. Even if I was just laughing in the background of things, I suppose I cannot possibly put away the sense of guilt and carry on my life as per normal. I know of people who have been deeply scarred by other children in school, because the rest of the class just wanted to "have some fun". Seriously, I came out of that dump, and I know how it is like down there. It is never good, knowing that you are going to be punched and kicked when you go to school everyday. It's frightening, even when I think back on it. 

Of course, the above doesn't actually qualify as ragging, but they are all forms of bullying anyway. Ragging isn't a ritual that is restricted to a school compound on birthday, however. Many tribes in third world countries have similar rituals that youngsters have to go through before they move on to a different stage in their lives. We have the ritual in one of the tribes I saw on Discovery Channel once, where boys would have to stay in a hut for three months and survive on milk and minimal amount of food. Then they'd have to endure razor sharp blades tearing into their skins all over their bodies just so that they'd become closer to a crocodile, which they worship. Then there is the tribe that binds baskets full of fire ants around the hands of young boys, while the girls have to have their hair torn out in order for them to reach adulthood. Of course, practice some cultural relativism here, and realize that what may seem as being extreme and inhumane may be seen as normal from another perspective. Another tribe requires the women to be whipped until they bleed profusely, but most of them wear the scars proudly because they feel that it is all necessary. 

Of course, that is on a cultural level, and I am by no means an expert in ragging. I probably have a few definitions wrong, but it really doesn't matter at this point. What moved me to write this entry was a recent video I saw online, of a couple of local Junior College students performing a ragging ritual on a classmate, a girl at that. It was her birthday, and her classmates thought that it'd be cool to play a prank on her, of sorts. They dragged her from the canteen and all the way to the chin-up bars, took off her shorts and tied her hands to the poles on either side. Then the classmates proceeded to humiliate her in front of everybody by taking her shoes off, pouring milk and putting cake in her face and stuff like that. The girl begged for them to stop, and was at one point crying her eyes out. But the classmates taped her mouth and had her suffer silently, while the others merely stood by and watched in glee. Their faces were all censored in the video, but you could clearly tell that they were enjoying it. The video ended with the girl tied to the poles and the classmates leaving her there with food thrown all over her. Keep in mind that her shorts were taken off, and she was wearing a skirt at that point in time. 

Now, I have seen ragging myself, and that wasn't nearly the worst that I have seen. With that said, I saw the worst ragging in my army camp, or "blanket party" as we'd like to call it. It usually happened on someone's birthday, and nudity was often involved. The victims would be smeared in camo-cream, powder, grease, eggs, toothpaste, you name it. It usually lasted for an hour or two, just constant and endless humiliation until they grew too tired to do anything else. The lot of us would stand by and watch, while the rest would get down and dirty and then film the whole process on their cellphones. It was vicious, to say the least, and the rest of us never wanted a hand in it. I mean, to be involved this time would surely guarantee yourself to be a victim when it is your birthday. Still, we are talking about boys being stripped in a place that is full of boys here. Besides, the victims do usually play along, though they do resist and struggle most of the time. At the end of the day, it is all in the spirit of good fun in camp, and they knew it. Even the victim knew that it was for the fun of it all, and everybody goes back to being friends right afterwards. That is how things went in camp, everybody had a silent truce, everybody knew that it was only for fun, we all knew the rules. 

But this is a school, it's wrong - it just is. You don't take the shorts of a girl off, tie her up in front of everybody else in school, humiliate her, then have her go back to her normal life. You don't do that to another human being, what in the hell is wrong with you people? It made me feel rather disconcerted, in a way, to know the kind of things humans are capable of doing to another human. I mean, there they were, surrounding her and then shaming her like that. I must admit, it was really hard to watch. It was like a really horrific porn video without the actual nudity or sex. Still, it was bad enough, and it was disturbing just how easy it was for a bunch of humans to gang up on one who is helpless. It has been programmed into humans, I suppose, regardless of your gender or your race, your sexual orientation or your nationality. Humans just love to see someone else being humiliated, being shamed, and we just love to be the hunter. We love to be in the winning team, and all those smiling faces proved it all. The way that no one did anything to help that poor girl disgusted me to no end, and I'd have expelled every single student in that video who had a hand in the incident. 

I know, I really do. Bullying goes so deep into a person's heart and soul that the wounds can never heal. Children are evil, I tell you, they are capable of doing the most nasty things to others. It isn't because they don't know that it is wrong, but because it is the only way for them to survive, most of the time. The victims fight back sometimes, they stand up to these classmates and they pick themselves up. I fought back, I stood up to them, and even became friends with a handful. But there are so many of them who'd keep silent, remain quiet, and allow the others to shame them some more. Then these videos get leaked onto the Internet, you are being humiliated on a national scale, and the wound in your heart only digs in deeper. It is cruel, it really is. This sort of thing should never be allowed to happen in a civilized country, especially not schools that promote a "higher learning". It disgusts me, really, but what can you do about it, really? Humans are just programmed to be cruel, when working in packs. Like wolves, we love to rip our victims apart and have blood drip from our lips. We just love the sight and smell of it all, we love to conquer and overcome - because we can. We are a horrible, horrible species. Sometimes, I just want to be an otter and disappear into murky waters.