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Joining St. Stephens College in July 1974, I was a member of the last all male batch and also (possibly a more notable distinction) of the last batch to be seriously ragged. For, the next year Indira Gandhis Emergency was declared, and ragging was banned. In July of 1975, and again the next year, police were stationed on campus to make sure that freshers were unmolested. Although democracy returned to Delhi and India in 1977, the break in continuity, coupled with the entry into college of the gentler sex, proved fatal to the proper practice of ragging. At least in St. Stephen's, ragging was an activity that was intellectual rather than physical. In other places one might be asked to do a hundred push ups or run around the grounds, but here one was more likely to be asked to declare an interest - say chess or bridge - and then ruthlessly quizzed. Or one might be told to deliver a five-minute speech on the topic, Where there is a Wills, there is a Way. One circulated amongst ones interrogators, such that in the six-week legal period of ragging, one got to know almost all of ones seniors, especially those in Residence. Ragging, at its best, was a way of being allowed to choose ones friends and discard the rest. Among my early encounters was a two-hour discussion in front of the water- cooler with Dinesh Singh and his third-year Maths gang. There was Hussaini, a charming Mauritian, as short and squat as Dinesh was lean and tall, and Badri, a shy and bespectacled Delhi Tamil from the Lodi Colony area. I went from the Mathematicians to a crowd of Bengalis, who took me for the weekend to Dhaula Kuan. These were Chandan Mitra, more familiarly known as Five, Swapan Dasgupta (Six) and Paranjay Guha Thakurta (Seven). 1 The conversation swung between cricket, which I played and they only watched, and politics, in which they were hugely well informed and I a novice. In those days Chandan was with the CPM and Swapan with the Trotskyists. Although they loved Thak dearly, they spoke of his politics with contempt - for he was, alas, a bourgeois liberal. Five, Six and Seven are now columns of the Indian media. One edits The Pioneer, another is Deputy Editor of India Today, and the third is anchor of the India Talks programme on CNBC. Chandan and Swapan have, in these twenty-five years, moved steadily to the right. Now flaming saffron rather than dull red, they say of Thak that he is a loony leftist. In truth, he has, politically speaking, stayed exactly where he was in July 1974. My Bengali friends formed part of what must have been the most talented of all Stephanian batches. Consider thus the current professions of some others who were in third year when I joined. There is Rukun Advani, the Salim Durrani among academic editors; Shashi Tharoor, novelist and Special Assistant to Kofi Annan; Ramu Damodaran, broadcaster and diplomat; Arun Kumar Singh, economist and diplomat; Rajeev Bhargav, a ranking political theorist; Ajeet Narain Mathur, an expert on labour relations. All these brilliant chaps, however, treated with elaborate deference a classmate whose talents lay outside the classroom. This was Arun Piggy Lal, the most accomplished cricketer ever to play for St. Stephens College. I had myself joined St. Stephens only to play cricket, and was to bowl non- turning off-breaks in the last College team to win back-to-back Inter-College Championships (1975-6 and 1976-7). Since Delhi University, in turn, regularly won the Inter-University Championships, I can legitimately claim that I was part of the finest college team in India. A part, but a somewhat insignificant part, batting at number eleven and playing as the fifth bowler. (I was also, and this by some distance, the worst fielder to play for College in my time.) The leading Stephanian cricketers of the mid-seventies were Praveen Oberoi, who bowled left-arm spin with a high but occasionally dubious action; Rajinder Amarnath, a talented all-rounder like his brother Mohinder; and Rajeshwar Vats, a six-hitting fast-bowler and earthy character with a repertoire of abuse almost as wide as Amin Saabs. All played long years in the Ranji Trophy. Piggy went furthest, being capped sixteen times for India. Although he was to open for his country, Piggy batted one-down for the college. He was a wristy player, particularly good square of the wicket, and with a superb big match temperament. Piggy was also an outstanding close-in fielder, at first slip for St. Stephens and at silly point for Bengal and India. In those days College Cricket was serious business indeed. Practice started in the second week of first term, on a concrete pitch in Mori Gate, switching to turf after the monsoon. We were often joined by members of the Delhi Ranji Trophy team, by Surinder and Mohinder Amarnath, Ashok Gandotra, Chetan Chauhan, and others. From August we began playing three matches a week, such that by the time Inter-College began in November or December, we were fit and ready. (During the October recess, the cricketers stayed on in College.) St. Stephens was seeded straight into the quarterfinals, then a three-day affair. A four-day semi-final followed. The last match of the season was the five-day final, always against Hindu College, and always watched by a crowd of twenty thousand. In the twenty years since I left College I have continued to benefit from it. Through the eighties, visiting Delhi often on research, I stayed generally with Subhas Bhargava, a physicist of quality and integrity, a model of what a teacher should be. In Bhargav Saabs room in Allnut North, I talked long into the night with Basudev Robi Chaterjee (then teaching History in College), about the limits of Marxism and the possibilities of environmental history. Another College History teacher, Sumit Guha, taught me how to use the National Archives. The philosphers, Tankha, Nanda, Shankar and Dr Gupta, have allowed me into their stimulating discussions. I have learnt much from numerous conversations with my old teacher, fellow off-spinner and fellow lapsed- Tamil Brahmin, Nadathur Raghunathan. Such is the benediction of the teachers, but I have been helped enormously by my contemporaries too. It was Rukun Advani, at the Oxford University Press, who first told me I could become an author. It was my old Bengali friends, Five, Six and Seven, who encouraged me to stray from academics into journalism. When I began to write on cricket, some years ago, it was the confidence that was playing with Arun Lal, Kirti Azad and the like must give one a more-than-ordinary insight into the game. College for me is an idea, a memory, and a cast of mind that encourages conversation and experimentation. As defined by tradition and convention, I am not a loyal Stephanian. While I come frequently to Delhi I do not time my visits with Founders Day, and although I live in Bangalore I am not a member of the Southern Stephanian Society. My debts to College, however, are incalculable. (Ramachandra Guhas most recent book is Saving the Civilized: Verrier Elwin, His Tribals, and India. He has taught at Yale University, the Indian Institute of Science, and the University of California at Berkeley, where he was Indo-American Community Chair Professor in 1997 and 1998. He also writes the Cricket Lore column in The Hindu.)
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