Indicators of Your Becoming a 'Pucca' Law School-ite

This is just a very cynical and in some parts imaginary take on law school-ites. It is not meant to dissuade anyone from taking up law as a career neither does it reflect on the culture of any particular law school or Indian NLUs in general.

This is just a post to take a dig at ourselves and remind ourselves that we have not lost our sense of humour still.

 “Wit is a sword; it is meant to make people feel the point as well as see it.”

Some indicators of your becoming a ‘pucca’ law school-ite:

1. You are a grammar Nazi and stickler for correct use of the language which is the only one the Bard of Avon knew, who sadly knew none of Latin and little of Greek. (And you know what this means).

2. You use per se, res ipsa loquitor and ipso facto as if they are regular usage in anyone’s vocabulary.

3. You refer to judges and legal luminaries as if they own the cigarette shop outside your law school.

4. You have very high ideals and are seriously interested in international law but still swear by two words: Amarchand Mangaldas.

5. You have perfected the art of jugaad and have all the gyan that a junior needs on internships.

6. You have some 1286 ideas of how to reform your law school but desperately need that nap after classes and thus could never bring in those changes.

7. Mooting sounds as sexy as an orgasm.

8. You start a website or a blawg every other month and these ‘start ups’ fizzle away into oblivion when your end semesters approach.

9. You have a model CV and cover letter for internship application from a senior saved in your hard disk.

10. Each time you memorise a weird sounding case name you wonder why only people with weird names had to file cases.

11. Your idea of the world is wide, very wide. It includes: CGPA Internship CGPA Internship CGPA Internship CGPA Internship CGPA Internship CGPA Internship CGPA Internship.

12. You frequently curse the idea of law school and think the Indian NLU model is as far removed from a law school as it can be.

13. You have an idea about every law firm and their work environments and shall choose accordingly. Exceptions being: Amarchand, Luthra, Trilegal, AZB, Khaitan, JSA, etc. (the whole list actually).

14. You write original research papers for every semester by changing the title of the project you got from your friend from XNLU.

15. You love your parents. They spent so much for you to be in “X (put in the name of any foreign university) of the East”. You will make them proud. One day…..Some day.

S.D.

Panopticonism in Indian Law Schools

Panopticonism in Indian Law Schools

Every law school is a penitentiary of sorts. Freedom guaranteed by a ‘curfew time’ is no freedom. It is a safety valve. The sorry state of affairs with regard to student involvement, though much touted Student Bar Bodies are constituted, is an open secret.

Foucalt might like to liken the castigating of non performers in law schools to the ‘jailing’ of intellectually differently-abled people to mad houses. If there is a tower in every jail to oversee the inmates and conformity is effectuated through strict measures of retribution then the cut throat competition for an extra line on that document screaming aloud of one’s achievements is nothing but the same.

The free mind is a closeted commodity that more often than not is disparaged such that the organised mind resorts to playing truant in certain situations culminating into a rebellion of sorts. It is very much a non sequitur that an adult of reasonable mind needs to be subjected to constant supervision by a system and a model that necessarily is built to stifle dissent or resentment of sorts.

‘And thus I clothe myself in naked villainy

With old odd ends, stol’n forth of holy writ:

And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.’

What then is the stairway to heaven? Indulgence in a little establishment-bashing maybe?

Do not forget that in this setup, designed to be nothing more than an exercise in Panopticonism, forced conformity is designed to be portrayed as ‘free will’.

Bentham convinced himself before indulging in a slumber that ghosts were a figment of imagination and not the reality. However, in the world of Indian law schools the system is the ghost. We need to convince ourselves. The race is to basically see who can convince oneself better of its non-existence. This convincing is necessary. Otherwise, how does an analytical mind with a ‘clear stream of reason’ submit to the ‘dead habit’ of conformity with a system flawed at the very core?

‘How use doth breed a habit in man.’

The CGPA is the watchman. The system is the penitentiary. We are all mad men.

Time is the essence of this contract through which we have sold our souls to the system.

‘In time we hate that which we often fear.’

I Think Therefore I Desist

Characters and impressions are such shadows that have a ring of truth around them. The sublime alter ego of an individual can be of such consequence at times that people tend to develop an enigmatic image about their peers. From being classified as ‘out of the ordinary’ to sometimes more distasteful things it is but natural that a mind shall take to musings on black and white.

A couple of days back an erudite Professor addressed at law school about transferring mens rea from an individual or agent to the corporation as a whole. A deviant idea it is but to similarly try to judge an entire group by a character in the same. How about forming an idea about a person from a few actions, actions blood boiling enough to make you feel you could literally tear that person apart or wondering if the pernicious vermin could be the worst thing ever to walk this earth?

Yet again there comes in the sober gentlemanly sombre self of yours and you become the logical ‘reasonable man’ that you are expected to be and try to rationalise and not judge. Why can’t man be all impulsive and not have to atone for actions and their consequences? Utopian? Yes.

In this disgustingly hypocritical character again maybe you would find glimpses of good and then one would self reprimand and the inner voice would indulge in a pedantic lecture to harangue you.

Being judgemental is so much easy had we not been bound by pusillanimity or notions of reasonability.  But then again we pride ourselves as men:

Cogito Ergo Sum (I think therefore I am).

Wodehouse: Weaving Wit’s Worth

"I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don't know what I did before that. Just loafed, I suppose",
says P.G. Wodehouse about himself. Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE (15 October 1881 – 14 February 1975) was a British writer whose mastery over the art of sarcasm and humour is unparalleled. He is referred to by others as a writer of humour but he himself, the humble man that he was, begs to differ and says all he did was ‘light writing’.

‘Light’ it could not be for its exceedingly heavy dose of humour which had fans enthralled. Wodehouse penned a number of characters but Jeeves and Bertram Wooster shall remain immortal forever. Wooster is the personification of the British upper class, consisting mainly of the nobility and the other ‘idle rich’ who were well provided for and did not have to earn a living, in pre-war society. Their mansions and titles intact, they strut about in pride but their grey cells have all but rusted due to prolonged unuse and their finances in dire straits as they can no longer live off their lands and the feudal spirit is all but dead. Feudalism had indeed been all but consigned to the dungeons of perpetual oblivion both in law and in the public spirit. The British Empire’s sun which earlier never set was now staring at a bleak future and perpetual eclipse given that the onslaught on colonialism had taken its toll on Britain and the severe political and economic crises proved to be the last nail. “The sun never sets on the British Empire” was a feeble voice of denial and every ‘son’ of the Empire knew it at the bottom if his heart as much as he might hate the idea.

Wodehouse portrays the upper class as a creature that always mires itself in complications that are usually the complexity of the plot itself and their striving towards an amicable solution more often than not leads to a colossal disaster of sorts and it is solved in the nick of the time due to the timely intervention of Jeeves, Wooster’s butler, a servant who is an Epicurean in taste and language and attributes his shrewd intelligence to regular consumption of fish. While Wooster is the blundering fool, albeit he has a good heart, ends up causing a faux pas and it is always, without an exception, ‘Jeeves to the rescue’. Aunts and uncles are portrayed as lively creatures who while away their time in ‘constructive pastimes’ like collecting silver items, running a village weekly or Wooster-baiting. While one uncle busies himself in ravishing the delights of a French chef’s mastery, Wooster is ‘blessed’ with an aunt who was a hunter in her younger days and while indulging in that sport did a great disservice to her fellow sportsmen who till today suffer of hearing impairment and shiver at the thought of her hunting cries.

Wooster’s friends are characters unto themselves who indulge in puerile and juvenile antics. It seems that their favourite sport is an attempt at trying to nick the helmet of a policeman or trying to derive ways to win a wager at the races through underhand means. Their exploits might even include wooing a dozen of charming ladies, in whose love they keep on helplessly falling forgetting the pangs of their last separation which are not that ancient. They are usually attached to odd creatures like newts or pigs and take fancy to ladies whose fathers are dictators and precursors to Hitler. These fathers are always on the prowl for kidnapping a prospective son-in-law who is a member of the nobility. However, they are not totally hospitable to Wooster’s presence on their home turfs due to the fact that Bertram, in his magnanimity, takes up cudgels on behalf of his beleaguered friends which ends in a frantic call to Jeeves, the omniscient and the omnipresent who lends his wit to prompt action. Wooster’s bosom pal’s appearance is described “As for Gussie Finknottle, many an experienced undertaker would have been deceived by his appearance and started embalming on sight.” His friends are dedicated members of the Anti-Sausage League or the Revolution for Suppression of Eggs. Their idle pastimes which involve evanescent reveries of their school boy days where they saved many a butterfly and dying insects, proof of their heroic antics and noble spirits. They especially critique the magistracy who do not espouse their cause of high ‘spirited’ revelry and have often fined them and sent them to the clinker for a night as amercement for ducking a policeman’s hat or clubbing a constable as part of a wager.

Indeed I am reminded of the so called ‘babu’ class of Bengal that was created by the first British colonizers. These ‘Rai Bahadoors’ and ‘Rai Sahibs’ too indulged in such pastimes as they lived in the lap of luxury while the vox populi cried of deprivation and oppression. The Bengali aristocracy—western educated, western in thought and manners were bound to their Indian roots through only the colour of their skin. Their tales are akin to that of Wooster and his pals in a lot of ways.

One of the greatest Indian admirers of this brilliant author is Mr. Shashi Tharoor, the distinguished Indian diplomat. Tharoor, another great wit himself, was the President of the ‘Wodehousean Society’ during his days in St. Stephen’s. In his writings he always defers to Wodehouse as ‘The Great Master’.

The British upper class sticks to its code of honour, skewed as it has become due to the Woosters of that age. The principles of the ‘gentleman’, ‘tail-first’ as they are, provide The Great Master with perfect plots and settings that shall tickle one’s funny bone to the extent that your sides ache with laughing. Wodehouse redefined wit, sarcasm, humour and high-spiritedness. Wodehouse is a must read for all who desire to intellectually stimulate themselves and experience his authorship, who through his own works has reached the acme of glory. He has successfully carved out a niche place for himself in the mind of every connoisseur of witty literature. After all as Wodehouse says “the fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun”.

Wodehouse had very little connection with the law except maybe a case, Commissioner v. Wodehouse, 337 U.S. 369 (1949), in which he was charged by the IRS for not paying tax on sales of some books and representing the income as sale of property. This went upto the U.S. Supreme Court where The Great Master lost his case. However, his wit and command over Shakespeare’s language are surely two great attributes that would indeed make a very fine lawyer. Brevity and succinctly put humour often finds place in court chronicles where famous lawyers have indulged in such and favourably impressed the judges. Law students will indeed find The Great Master to be a very interesting read and with their acumen to accurately assimilate things, ravish the wit, humour and sarcasm that he has crafted. Though Wodehousean characters have a penchant for breaking the law and are often most critical of the way magistrates function yet he too shows how Nemesis does catch up with the corrupt and Wooster too has to finally stay on the right side of the law. One shall be forced to agree with what has been remarked about Wodehouse: ‘‘his critics have exhausted superlatives.’’