Grewal’s room—packed to capacity with seniors and freshers—resembled a strip bar. It was noisy and smoky. Juniors squatted on beer bottles in their birthday suits. Seeing so many people I said to Chandy, ‘Let’s go back, man. No one’s gonna miss us.’ But Chandy was adamant. He wanted to be grilled in the nude. He should have been in the army.

Ragging season was in full swing. In the past few days, I had been made to do strange things. It didn’t help that I was perceived as a cocky fresher. I gave clever answers while maintaining an indifferent and dull visage. This mixture of cockiness and indifference riled the seniors no end. Word was out that Jha had to be broken.

I think I also got it bad because I had a big dick. Men with small cocks do not take nicely to those with big ones. Stripping neutralized the power equations: senior makes junior strip in order to humiliate him; junior’s big cock makes senior feel pathetic about his dinky manhood.

Personally, I didn’t mind stripping because I came from a boys’ school where we jerked off in full view of each other. I didn’t mind being made to run around the field at two in the morning, butt-naked in the pouring rain. Afterwards, one’s dick hurt a little from being slapped around the thighs but it was okay.

It was the other, more tedious stuff that I hated. Like measuring the distance from the hostel to the main gate with a 12-inch scale. Or sitting on one’s haunches and barking like a dog. Or humping a tree or pole dancing or washing underwear or crawling on all fours down a hostel corridor.

After half an hour, the room started emptying out. In the meanwhile, three more seniors had invited us to their rooms. I made a quick mental calculation: a minimum of fifty minutes in each room took us to four in the morning. This meant one more night without sleep.

Grewal was on the college soccer team. He always wore the same outfit: red baseball cap, tight black jeans, tight white T-shirt and dark brown Woodlands boots with extra-long laces. He never smiled and had the reputation of being a vicious ragger. We spent many hours strategizing: ‘Thing with Grewal is—don’t ever let on that he’s got you bugged, else he’s gonna fuck your happiness, man.’ He also had the reputation of being a ladies’ man. He was seen with a different girl at different times of the day. No wonder the juniors regarded him with a mixture of awe and fear and pointed him out to each other.