Next !!!

We walked down, slowly and steadily towards the tea-shop where the seniors were smoking away to glory. 'Chimneys', I heard myself say in my mind.
We were scared but we tried to stay calm. Showing-off would be the greatest mistake in this situation, unless and until you have a big influence with some local guys or you are the son of some big guy. The objective was to stay calm, not look scared and not to show-off as well.

Anyways, we reached the spot. All the preparations of staying calm and not to show-off went down the drain as we just looked at the seniors straight in the eyes giving them a 'whats up guys' look. One of the guys retorted, 'Do not look into the eyes of your seniors. Look down towards your shoes.' We did as requested.
The next moment another guy asked,'Do you smoke?' We replied in unison,'No.'
Another senior said,'So you think we are fools to smoke?'
We replied in unison again,'No.'
The same guy asked,'So why dont you all smoke?'
I said, 'Because its injurious to health.' Damm I thought.. that was the most stupidest answer.
The senior growled back,'So you think we dont care about our health.'
I planned to stay quite. Silence is sometimes the best defence and it worked.
We were then asked a series of questions like where we stay and where do we actually hail from. What languages we speak. What is the name of our girlfriend and so on. We were allowed to go after about 25 mins. My neck had started paining looking at my shoes. I hated the feeling to look down like this. My friends cajoled me,'Dont worry buddy.. Next year we will be doing the same thing.'

Next Day in college:
We told about our ragging incident to some of our friends. I was flabbergasted on what I heard. One of my friends tried to resist the ragging and the seniors then asked him to strip and stand like a dog. The guy actually stripped to his undergarments and stood like a dog. When he tried resisting, he was slapped. He couldn't do much as the group of seniors was big.

Hearing this horrible incident, I went into a tristate for a minute. I was wondering what if I had been in that guys place !!!