Vidya had noticed I
was feeling nostalgic about my college days which led to my outburst of
emotions. But seeing Aditya in tears (enough to have led his nose to leak),
Veena came up to me and asked if Aditya belonged to a sissy girls’ group in
college. I told Veena clearly that I knew Aditya only from hell, and I didn’t
know anything of his engineering days.
“But I am sure that he
must have belonged to a girls’ group,” said Veena asserting her own conclusion.
“But Dipen, are there lots of groups in an engineering college? I am sure they
affect the person in more ways than one,” asked Veena.
“Hmm… that actually
suggests that we should brainstorm and come up with a better analysis of
various groups in college,” I suggested.
Just as we began
brainstorming about what kinds of groups one can find in an engineering
college, Chitragupta abruptly got up and did a search on his database to find
out some theory related to psychology of group formation in engineering
students.
I began thinking of
names of eminent scientists or scholars such as Sigmund Freud or Einstein who
would have apparently come up with some theory on how human beings figure out
which group to be a part of. All of a sudden, Chitragupta shrieked, “Eureka!
Gajanan Ashokchand Gaichand Allahabadwale!”
Vidya and Veena had
been reluctantly whispering about something and Chitragupta’s shriek freaked
them out. Aditya and I looked at each other as if we had just been hit with the
weirdest words in the world.
Chitragupta looked at
out thunderstruck faces and continued with an explanation, “GAGA, a.k.a.
Gajanan Ashokchand Gaichand Allahabadwale is a dairy farm owner from Uttar
Pradesh. This guy is credited to have found the theory on ‘Group Psychology in
Cows’. Maybe we can replace the ‘cows’ with ‘engineering students’ and submit
our thesis! What say?”
Chitragupta had learnt
the tactics of engineering students because he suggested changing a few words
in someone else’s report to submit as his own. Either he was desperate to get done with the thesis
quickly or get rid of us and get back to his work. The whole group went through
the report. It seemed like a thirty-minute long episode aired on one of the
famous Hindi news channels in India. The following is a reproduction of an
excerpt from that write-up and also our theory of group formation in
engineering colleges.
------------------------------------------
Paper: Group Formation in Cows.
Author: Gajanan Ashokchand Gaichand Allahabadwale.
Date of publication: 6 September 1983.
Place: Allahabad (Uttar Pradesh, India).
While growing up, I
was always fascinated by how my mother dealt with various aunties despite her dislike
for some of them. For instance, I remember how once my mother asked me, “Beta, please get some sugar from Shukla
aunty’s house, the same woman who feeds you ‘barfi’ every time you visit her house. But if that fat cow doesn’t
give you sugar or tells you she has run out of it, then simply tell her to go
to hell and then get the sugar from Sharma aunty’s house.” I was shocked to see
how my mother could be good and bad at the same time and wondered why my mother
ever chose to be friends with women she didn’t like! God bless my mother’s
soul, she was a good woman otherwise.
She brought me up
nicely and one of her recurring teachings to me was, “the cow is like our
mother, a God”. Thus, I love cows, I respect cows, cows are like mothers. So, I
decided to find the psychology of group formation in cows and thought of
mapping that with the psychology of group formation in women. I decided to
experiment with the cows in my backyard. We have twelve cows, known to us by
numbers between 1 and 12. To douse my curiosity, I conducted 2 experiments.
Experiment # 1: I untethered all the cows and kept them under one huge shed. Then I
called three musicians from my neighborhood to play some music: Kanhaiyaa Lal
played flute, Brijwasi Chacha played a dholak, and Mike Lutherson played guitar.
Mike had come to our village to do some research, but fell in love with
Brijwasi Chacha’s daughter Bhanumati and settled here after that.
Coming back to the
cows, after around fifteen minutes into this local music concert, I observed
that the cows could be categorized into four sub-groups.
1)
Cows 1, 4, 5 and 6 seemed to enjoy the flute. I could see them wagging
their tails and licking each other’s necks.
2)
Cows 2, 3, 7 and 10 seemed to enjoy the dholak. I could see them tapping
their rear feet to the beats of the percussion instrument.
3)
Cows 8, 9 and 12 seemed to enjoy the guitar. They kept staring at Mike
and closed their eyes once in a while as if the soothing music from guitar was
like a treat to their ears.
4)
Cow 11 didn’t give a rat’s ass to anything happening around her.
Experiment # 2: I met a friend who upon hearing of my experiment, lent me two handsome
and sturdy bulls, named Shera and Cheetah. Though these are befitting names for
tigers, I didn’t mind it too much. I brought the two bulls to the cow shed
where my cows were enjoying the music.
Just as those bulls
entered the cowshed, there was a sudden change in the energy levels of those
cows. Cows 2, 5 and 4 felt weak in their knees and literally sat down. Cows 1,
3, 6, and 8 went closer to Shera. And the remaining ones were attracted towards
Cheetah. Shera and Cheetah exchanged smiles which seemed to say, “We have still
got the charm, bro!”
The conclusion of the
above 2 experiments is that even the same set of cows behaved differently under
different circumstances. And since cows are like our mothers, the psychology of
their group formation is the same too!
---
Even though the
conclusion of the study sounded a little convoluted, we all were happy to have
found some report on which we could base our research! We planned to change
some names, figures, etc., and submit it as our own. But Chitragupta was
himself reminded of the “Big Boss’s” order to keep our thesis original. So we
had to curb our overpowering wish to do a “Ctrl+R” and replace “cows” with
“engineering students”. We had to twist a few names and species and garnish it
without imagination and experiences to reach the conclusion. I hope you too
would agree with the following grouping of engineering students:
1)
English speaking guys group: For this group to
come into existence, some guy fluent in English has to begin talking loudly on
his Iphone or Samsung Galaxy III in a noticeably American accent. Hearing this
accent, a fellow to-be-a-part-of-the-group batchmate would think of breaking
the ice in impeccable English. Now that you have two guys speaking only in
English, and that too accented, there would be a few more prudes in the class
who would try to talk to these guys on some pretext or the other. In no time,
you will notice the coming up of this English-speaking-guys group.
Hot topics of their
discussion include almost anything under the sun – right from girls in a
neighboring college to the US presidential elections, from the petrol in their
cars or bikes to the price of a barrel of crude oil in the international
market. This group normally has at least one ultra-rich guy who brings a Merc
or a BMW to college. This group usually does not hang out in the canteen or at
the tea-stall near the college. This group chooses to spend time at some posh
coffee shop and prefers Cafe Latte to Cutting Chai! Almost eighty per cent of
the members of such a group end up doing MS or MBA in the US of A; only the
less fortunate ones stay back in India. There would be at least two guys from
this group who play basket ball to impress the chics from other departments. At
least one guy from this group would be good at tennis. Although this group
seems very snobbish, they really don’t care too much about other groups to
judge them. They go out for movies like other groups, but never sit in the
first few rows and end up in the Gold Lounge. These guys discuss the works of
Martin Scorcese or Christopher Nolan while the rest of their classmates indulge
discussing the new Salman and old Mithun movies!
Even though this group
might seem like a highly-bonded group of sophisticated guys, there will be
inherent jealousy that can easily be felt by every member of this group.
Chances of members of this group being in touch with each other after about ten
years of passing out are minimal.
2)
The Khi khi khi khi group: As you must have
guessed from the name of this group, this group boasts of members who giggle on
almost every damn thing in the world. This group normally bonds over a period
of time. This group has equal number of boys and girls, half of which end up as
couples by the time they graduate as engineers. The primary requirement for you
to be a member of this group is that you need to be able to laugh at any joke
and be able to laugh at yourself too. No non-veg jokes allowed! You need to
stick to the “elephant-and-ant” kind of jokes. If you utter any joke involving
sisters, mothers, etc., you will slowly be shunned from the group. This group
is more like some close-knit family of a Bollywood movie where everyone cares
about everyone else in the group. It is such a nice feeling. But the one major
problem with this kind of group is that because of constant exposure to
vegetarian, lame and stupid jokes, and giggling girls more often than naturally
possible, at least one of the boys in the group starts showing feminine traits
by the end of those four years!
This group is found
hanging out in the canteen over samosa or cutting chai, discussing mundane
things like Katrina Kaif’s affairs, Kareena Kapoor’s size zero, or what will
they bring for lunch the next day. There will be at least one highly animated
guy in the group, and that would inspire the girls in the group to giggle a bit
more. Needless to say, this ‘sweet guy’ earns a good number of MCs and BCs from
the surrounding canteen tables.
A very unique
characteristic of this group is that the love and affection that one finds in
this group is a matter of envy for many other class mates. There will be at
least one girl in this group who would be very motherly and offer the
much-needed advice.
3)
The ‘ya’ group: This group of students is categorized by their unnecessary addition of
the phrase “ya” at the end of many
words in everyday use. For instance, Ch#$ya, L!@#ya, Jh$%ya, Yedj#$%ya, Sondya, etc. Most of this slang is very
popular in the engineering colleges in Maharashtra. A typical characteristic of
this group is that they tend to call their friends not by their first names,
but their surnames or their father’s names. They justify this by saying that
this habit strengthens the bond amongst them. This is how they “YA”ise the names of their friends.
|
Original names
|
After “ya”isation.
|
|
Mandar Gajanan
Kaavre
|
Kaavya
|
|
Ravi Ashok Mudaliar
|
Mudya
|
|
Vinay Sudhir
Deshmukh
|
Sudhrya
|
|
Vivek Sadanand
Deshpande
|
Deshpya
|
|
Sagar Rugved Kadam
|
Rugyaa Yed#$%ya!
(A combination of ya-ized father’s name and swearing in
local language)
|
This group also has a
very unique characteristic of labeling their classmates with funny ya-ending
names on the basis of pure imagination, whim or fancy. Notice the fact that if
they have a fat classmate, they will comfortably assume that he farts a lot
and, hence, will be labeled “Paadya”.
One good thing about
this group is that they don’t harm their classmates in any way, i.e they have
their small world of like-minded friends and they keep cracking jokes among
themselves. The other groups in the class might label them uncouth, but this
group doesn’t even give a tiny rat’s ass to what others feel about them. The
members of this group normally come from a vernacular medium. Getting two ATKTs
every year is a common thing in that group. This group hardly ever cribs about
life. The members of this group tend to be friends for life.
4)
The others are stupid, we are smart group: The members of this group are normally the ones who consider
themselves cut above the rest, even when they don’t have any special attributes
to boast of. This feeling comes more so because of some insecurity about self.
The members of this group are neither good at speaking in English nor are
excellent at studies. These engineering students are jealous of the “The
English speaking guys” group because of their classy attitude. This group looks
at the “Khi khi khi khi” group with contempt, labels the boys of that group “ladki log”, and marks the “ya” group to be totally uncouth.
The typical
characteristic about this group is that these guys are very judgmental. They
have opinion on anything and everything around them. They don’t care whether
they make any logical arguments or not. They spend most of their time at some
nearby tea-stall. They take up smoking or drinking just to prove themselves to
be as cool as, or cooler than, the other groups in the class. These guys
normally come from middle class families and are usually the most uninteresting
kinds to hang out with. Hence, this group doesn’t get much of acceptance from
their fellow batchmates and receive equally reciprocated contempt.
5)
The Miscellaneous group: Guys and girls who
are not a part of any of the above group automatically form a part of this
group. There are many sub-groups in this type of group, namely, the ugly
betties, the weirdo guys, the drop-outs, the hostelites who are rarely seen in
the class, the teacher’s pets, among others.
------------------------------------------
Veena was smart enough
to take the hints and giggled as she said, “So, Adu belongs to the Khi khi khi
khi group. Isn’t it?”
Aditya smiled seeing
Veena’s appropriate understanding of his category and was happy when she
smiled, because ladki hasi to fasi!
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