INITIATION RITUAL CULMINATES IN CATASTROPHE.

Ragging is a term used for the so-called "initiation ritual" practiced in higher education institutions in South Asian countries, including Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. In India, ragging is banned in all campuses. Such acts are punishable by a fine up to Rs. 50000/, jail terms ranging from six months to ten years.

There was a time when self-financing institutions were scarce in Kerala and students were rushing to Tamilnadu for professional education, paying huge capitation fees. There were many incidents of ragging in those institutions. One victim was my patient who committed an attempt to suicide by hanging. His father was a superintendent of police and with his subjugation, he could achieve a seat for his son in an Engineering college in Tamilnadu. As usual, this boy also was ragged by seniors but he resisted and retaliated successfully. He came home to Trivandrum on holiday. He came to understand that the injured seniors were conspiring to make a massive assault on him and he knew that it was not safe to return. His powerful father insisted him to go to college and asserted that he would take care of him. This boy was between the devil and the deep sea. He became obsessive being in between obstinate father on one side and the ferocious raggers on the other side. As he was feeling insecure and also feared for his disobedience to his father, he hanged in the house when all others have gone out. Fortunately, his elder sister who was serving in the university office nearby came to the house for refreshment found him hanging. She had a wonderful presence of mind and hence could cut the rope down. The boy was alive but was unconscious. He was taken to medical college for medico-legal formalities and then brought to our hospital, Sree Chitra medical center. He was diagnosed with Hypoxic Encephalopathy. This happened because the oxygen supply to the brain was cut off for some time while hanging. He remained unconscious for six months, till such time all emergency treatments were given. When he became conscious after six months he was Schizophrenic and was totally paralysed. ( quadriplegic). This is the context, as a physiotherapist, I came into the picture.

The ordeals in physiotherapy was for a year. Treating a lunatic paralysed patient was difficult. He started improving power through physiotherapy. The more he became powerful, the more he became aggressive. When his fingers attained strength he scratched me powerfully to bleed my hands. His unsound mind interpreted my service as an assault on him. My counseling bore no fruits. So it was an inevitable pressurised treatment. He was on treatment by a psychiatrist too. But the problem was that most of the psychiatric drugs were sedatives and that interfered with the tone of the muscles. Both the treatments were contrary to each other. So we had to compromise between each other. The drugs were suitably regularized for an effective physiotherapy. He became more and more aggressive when his power improved in hands and legs. My life was miserable in his proximity. Two police people were deployed by his father when the boy started walking and more and more his assault increased on me. When he was a student in high school, he was the captain of the Kerala state junior basketball team. So as a sportsman, he had extraordinary strength as the strength improved by physiotherapy. No compulsion was fruitful to make him do anything active. At one point of time, the only technique I discovered in his motivation was to play with him some sports or game.

I became his playmate at my fiftieth year of age. He made many falls in the beginning, but he was interested to take the pain. My playway therapy was approved by his psychiatrist also. He said that the task improved his state of mind in attention and interest which he lacked earlier. Anything, which he disliked made him quarrelsome and aggressive. My mission was successful when he became fully powerful. He had an unremovable scar around his neck caused by the noose of the rope from which he hanged. He is still on psychiatric treatment as he has some residual problems of loss of memory, quarrelsomeness, etc. He is much better in behavior but the long gap of studies forced him to discontinue the Engineering course. I can only be proud that I could only make him physically powerful, but he lost his career and future and is now surviving as a catastrophic monument to ragging.