Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Coke Sluts

Coke’s the right choice if you wanna get a high in Delhi. But getting a high on the drug is not the only thing which our City’s snoterati yearns. What they crave is the company of the beauty in bed along with their booty. Sleeping for the cokeheads in Delhi is just a coke’s distance away in Delhi’s social circles. There are plenty of girls who’d do anything for snorting a line of cocaine and if you look deeper in the muck, their ways of taking cocaine are too kinky for a layman to imagine.

It was the arrest of Delhi’s well known peddler Naquibullah Ali, who was murdered in Tihar Jail, that the cops came to know how cocaine can get you girls. In his confession report Ali admitted of having sex with his high profile clients including a mother-daughter duo of South Delhi. His long list of women clientele included well-known fashion designer staying in south Delhi. And his different ways of administering cocaine into the body of his women left cops spellbound. Cocaine enters into the body through mucous and wherever mucous is found, cocaine can be taken from there, including the private parts of the women. So these high society women had found rather kinky ways of taking cocaine.

According to a senior Delhi Police cop, “Sometimes it really gets embarrassing if you listen to the telephonic conversation of the peddlers and their high profile clients and their many girl friends in front of subordinates. They either talk about cocaine or sex. Nothing more nothing less. For them value of money is nothing. It’s only Cocaine which can get you anything.”

Well, wherever there’s Cocaine, coke sluts follow you. They can be anybody – right from a daughter of a big Delhi businessman, whose pictures are regularly published by national dailies in page three to a nondescript college student who become a slave to her cocaine suppliers. Sex and even indulging in orgies is a common phenomenon for them.

In fact the Delhi Police cops once bumped into a group of filthy rich south campus college students last year. This group had more girls rather than boys. And the only motive of these guys was to bed these girls in lieu for a line of cocaine. A South Delhi resident who passed out from one of the top public school of the country was involved in this and it was he who introduced cocaine to these college students.

Craving for Coke for these girls was so much that sometimes, they used to venture alone to buy cocaine in the dirty bylanes of Karol Bagh. The same person is often seen in the company of a daughter of a high profile Delhi businessman. Once in a South Delhi nightclub, she was so high that she ended up in the men’s loo with her friend and it took half an hour for both of them to come out of the men’s loo. When both the girls came out, instead of feeling embarrassed, they started fighting with guys inside the loo. What they were doing is anybody’s guess. Toilets are the favourite joints for cokeheads to snort in the nightclubs.

There’s another girl from Greater Kailash, who is Delhi’s another prominent coke slut. Unable to afford cocaine on a daily basis, her craving for the white snow made her sleep with anybody who could give her a line of cocaine. She then also became involved in selling cocaine and whenever she used to meet clients she used to wear a red dress, resembling that of an airhostess of a private national airline. And it took her no time to change her ‘master’ when the previous one went to the jail.

The list of these coke sluts is long and you never know that the girl next door is a coke slut at night.

Cricket, Capital and Cocaine

TWO years back, Narcotics branch of the Delhi Police was hot on a chase of big time drug peddler. They were regularly tapping his cell-phone and during his conversation they learnt that one of his regular clients was an ex-cricketer staying in a posh South Delhi colony. He was regular in the South Delhi's cocktail circuit and had number of girl-friends with whom he had lurid conversations when high on drugs. Cops did not arrest him even though they knew he was a drug user as they were interested in netting the drug supplier. It was for the first time that narcotics sleuths found out cricketers’ love for white snow or cocaine.

In fact in the case of Maninder Singh, too, cops zeored on him while trailing information culled out from a drug supplier Mohammad Aslam arrested in March this year. During Aslam's interrogation the name of Saim Siddique figured. He also disclosed that one Mohamamd Naved, a Mumbai resident supplied drugs. Naved is said to be part of big inter-state drug network which is run by his brother Guddu, a known drug pedeller. Tapping of Siddique's cellphone provided further lead that he was procuring cocaine for his mentor Maninder who runs a cricket academy at Maninder Singh Cricket Academy at National Stadium. Sam is coach at his academy and is Maninder Singh’s Man Friday.

According to DCP (Narcotics) AS Cheema, “We were trailing Sayyam and his trail led to Maninder’s house. When we arrested them, they were on their way to airport as Maninder was going to Mumbai for five days. In Mumbai too, Sayyam had arranged for Maninder to procure cocaine from someone. We have got some leads on this matter and we are investigating on it.”

Talking about Maninder Singh’s marital problems, a close friend of the cricketer said, “It was his regular abuse of drugs that was the root cause of his troubled marriage. Maninder’s wife is a simple homely housewife and she opposed his excessive use of drugs. The problems started three years back when Maninder became a regular cokehead.”

Even though, Sam and Maninder are not part of the big drug network and kept a low profile, there are few flamboyant cricketers (both past and present) who are frequently spotted at hip discotheques. Flushed with money and high on fame quotient, these cricketers move around with rich kids who are capital’s known cokeheads. Nigerians are their favourite peddlers.

When asked about Maninder’s crony Sayyam, a regular who snorts cocaine and knows most of the suppliers in the circuit said, "I have never heard this name (Sayyam). I know of a Kashmiri guy working in a restaurant in a five-star hotel in New Delhi, who supplies to one of the biggest names of world cricket. There are other big names too. I think the cops need to net them as well. In a recent party, a couple of cricketers were seen snorting cocaine in a small room at a high-end bar of Delhi. At the party, a foreign high profile ex-cricketer snorted cocaine in front of me in room. When he came out he met an Indian cricketer too. They shook hands and the Indian cricketer walked into the same room where he had snorted cocaine.”

Although Maninder singh’s arrest has stunned the cocktail circuit “Never in our life had we imagined that Maninder Singh is a cokehead. He was one of the few decent cricketers and never seen in Delhi’s page three circuit. There are certain other cricketers, whom we have seen in the regular page three parties and roaming along with cokeheads. If Maninder, who used to keep such a low profile, is doing cocaine, then you can see how deep drug abuse has penetrated in Delhi,” says a party goer, who is omnipresent on most page three dos in Delhi. Also the alleged supplier to Maninder, Sayyam Siddiqui’s identity too is not familiar among cocaine users.

In fact according to page three grapevine, “Few English and ex-Pakistani cricketers last year were regular at the prominent nightclubs of Delhi, whenever they visited Delhi and their hosts were regular users of cocaine.”

Delhi loves to get high on cocaine and most of the rich brats and nightclub regulars swear by it. For some, cocaine is an easy means of sleeping with a girl as the Capital has its known high profile ‘coke sluts’, who would do anything for a free dose of cocaine. The Indian capital ignonimously sees heavy imports of cocaine and ecstasy pills whereas it is becoming a huge exporter of heroin and hash.

Cocaine comes to India from Africa. India is an important transit point for this white gold. The normal international trade route of cocaine is from Columbia to African countries from where it travels to either Delhi or Mumbai and from here it travels to European countries. A large part of the consignment is dropped in India for consumption. It costs Rs 3,500-8,000 per gram in the Indian market. Pure uncut Columbian cocaine is for Rs 8,000 and as the impurity goes higher, the cost comes down. This is a cause of concern for cokeheads as cocaine mixed with heroin can be deadly concoction where death is imminent.

The Rahul Mahajan cocaine case was a shocker to the snorting fraternity as they believed it was adulterated cocaine which took the life of Pramod Mahajan’s secretary Bibek Moitra and sent Rahul into hospital. The aftermath of this incident was bad news for the community as lots of big peddlers hid themselves and Delhi’s high profile New Year bashes went high and dry after the page three fraternity decided to celebrate out of Delhi.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Ragging, DU style

Ragging is a state of mind. Cheap thrills and a different kick altogether; ragging is a window to the future. A window, where one comes to know who is going to be your Man Friday for the entire year or who would be the college president after three years. You find your friends and foes while ragging a junior or in Delhi University’s jargon “fachcha”.

The college ragging during day time, when day scholars are there, is simple and done mostly to impress on girls. Yes, unwritten code in North Campus is that day scholars cannot rag a hostler. Only students from same department can do some “introductions” in a lighter vein. However, the hostels of the colleges in the North Campus at night are the hotspots for ragging.

Right from making a guy strip off and make them run to another college and pee on its boundary to making a junior stand on a platform while their hands raised is a normal routine every year for the fachchas who join the hostel. There’s another unwritten code in hostels that is religiously followed in DU is never rag hostlers from the north east and vice versa. Raggings in DU starts from day one and finishes on the day hostel seniors throw a fresher’s party generally happens in July end or in September. After that friendly fachchas are roped in for the DUSU election work. The Mass ragging is generally a fun thing and none of the juniors are assaulted physically barring few slaps, etc.

There are few smart blokes who try and enter the hostel after the fresher’s party. However for them ordeal is tough as their ego goes for a six as fachchas who have undergone ragging by seniors are invited to rag their smart brethren. It’s simply gross.

Now any hostel in North campus has two types of hostel residents. The first are the legal ones and the second types are the illegal residents. Generally the joke in Hindu College was that though hostel has 200-odd legal residents, food was cooked for 450 residents as illegal were more than the legal ones. Same was the case during our time in the hostels of KMC, Hansraj or Ramjas. There have been lores of these illegal residents in each of the colleges. Prominent among them was one Mr Bhakuni, who though was a student of KMC but was staying in the Hansraj hostel for more than a decade.

So the illegal residents are a real menace because they know for them sky is the limit in ragging. They cannot be punished by the college where they are staying or doing ragging. At times they can be ruthless. In Hindu hostel there was a student from a respected school in Nainital. The boy was a topper but he enrolled himself in Hindi Hons course although his best of four percentage in class XII was 96. Hostlers were stunned when they came to know about this and thus he was the prime target of serial raggers. In just couple of intense ragging sessions in a gap of three days was enough for him to decide that this college was not for him. He left the College. Whatever happened to him in this session just simply cannot be written. He was mentally interrogated and then stripped off and made to do different stuff which was just gross.

In another instance of Hansraj hostel, a guy from Siliguri and another one from Meerut were ragged for almost three hours. Their ordeal was so bad that when asked to do fellatio on each other, they went ahead for it only to be stopped at the last moment. This time the raggers were not seniors but the fachchas, who were ragged for three months, posing as seniors. Since the two joined after the fresher’s party, so it was customary that the fachchas ragged their peers.

There also have been instances when some juniors are given ‘training’ in ragging. A public school pass out from Shimla who joined St Stephen’s, was ragged in Hindu College hostel prior to his joining the Stephen’s hostel. His ragging was arranged by a senior from school who was staying in Hindu College. Although his ordeal lasted for three hours, but later he became friends for the rest of life with his tormentors from the other college. In fact he found a den in Hindu College hostel during the ragging season in St Stephen’s.

Of Bullying and Ragging

Coming from a public school background, I thought it was bullying that mattered more than ragging. Ragging is just transient than bullying which is an unending ordeal for a kid right from middle school to senior school. Well, those who have gone through the bullying ordeal find ragging as a cakewalk and sometimes enjoy it too. However, both have their own pros and cons. Sometimes, these stories can be so heart-rending that they would haunt you forever. Am no great storyteller, but here are some incidents that will quench your thirst for some gory tales.

There was a classmate of mine Gurjinder G studying with me at Bishop Cotton School, Shimla. His dad was a doctor in the army hospital. In normal circumstances Gurjinder would have been a normal student had he joined the school right from the beginning. However, he joined in seventh standard, thus missing out on the rigorous grooming process which a residential public school student undergoes during his grooming right from the stage of Kindergarten school.

Gurjinder grew in various schools throughout the country as his dad’s army job entailed traveling through his career. Under the patronage of his parents and frequently changing schools, Gurjinder became an anathema in the new school. In public school jargon he was a ‘sissy’ or ‘momma’s boy’, completely opposite from the ‘rough & tough’ persona of his batchmates who grew up on regular dose of caning and other corporal forms of punishments. In public schools, ‘titting’ or complaining about someone’s mischief is a crime and if you are in a senior school (above class VII) and if you cry then you are blot among your classmates. Gurjinder’s fault was that once a classmate beat him up and he started crying. That was it. His painful ordeal that lasted till he passed out from school in class X had just begun.

Bullying it was called and even his juniors used to bully him. Right from giving home-cooked food to running errands to the shops nearby, Gurjinder used to do it all only to be beaten later. Gurjinder became more of a human boxing bag to students and suffered blows everywhere.

He was so horrified by the entire experience that a close family friend told us that Gurjinder couldn’t sleep at night and he used to get nightmares every night. In fact, his torturous life during daytime in school used to haunt him even in his dreams and he used to shout while sleeping begging boys not to hit him. Although initial two years were hard for him but later the tortures toned down as became a fifth former (Class X). However, scars of his bullying in school remained with him painfully. Since he left school, I lost touch with him. Since then I haven’t seen his name among the list of students to have joined our illustrious alumni association later. Perhaps, he would have rued the fact that he was associated with that school.

A lesson for parents here that if they want to send their kids to a residential public school, then send them right from the beginning, I mean kindergarten or class I, otherwise it’s difficult for kids to adjust to the environment.