beelzebubbles

The Great Unravelling Approacheth - Part II

2009-04-28T19:35:00.003+05:30

This comes in good time: just as I was running out of mud to sling at the manner in which legal education in this country is administered and managed, Sanjay B sends me this gem:

Yeah, Um, I Think We'll Pass on This One

And while you're at it, please don't forget to read the comments: the last one, from 'Goutam Prasad' is particularly informative about the attitude that a large segment of our legal community carry around, dramatic weight of chip-on-shoulder notwithstanding.

I'm not sure that this "cavalier attitude toward indefinite articles, nor ... charming omission of verbs connecting subjects and objects, nor ... Generation-Y approach to spelling and grammar generally" should come as a surprise to anyone. Nor should the immediate avoidance of any fault through the comment. I see this in my line of work all the time, and, god help me, have been guilty of it myself on more than an occasion.

That legal education in this country needs to specify minimum standards for communication, and, particularly, for proficiency in what is admitted by all and sundry with half a brain (that would automatically exclude one Mr. Raj T from my home state) as the global language of commerce, would be a trite point to make. Since I specialise in that particular garden variety of point, I've made it. What, however, gets my goat is this:

Don't lawyers across the board, even those with fantastic communication skills, realise that incidents like this tar all of us with the same, grammatically incorrect, brush?

There could be two answers to this:

1. Of course they do. Only, they couldn't care less. After all, it's happening to someone else, and as long as the poop doesn't plop on my doorstep, why would I care? Someone else's loss is my gain, isn't it?

2. Of course they do. Only, they feel that (a) they can't do anything about it themselves, or (b) someone else will take care of it.

To Contestant No. 1, I say: Wake up and smell them coffee beans, man! Stuff like this impacts the industry, and, consequently, you, very directly. Bad industry image = lack of confidence in Indian lawyers = lesser moolah lining your pocket.

To Contestant No. 2 (a), I say: Not true. You can do something about it. Spread the word every time you check a draft or guide a newbee. Let them know that language matters, and that formatting is critical. Those of you who can, please do - those of us who can't, will continue to teach.

To Contestant No. 2 (b), I say: pphhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhrrrrrrrrrrrpppppphhhhhhhtttt! You think you're the only selfish one out there? That glorious feeling of wind blowing through your hair as you freeride on other people's efforts isn't going to last too long. Enjoy it while it lasts, because no one else is doing this to help you have a good time - they're doing it because they realise it impacts them directly, and are working to help themselves.

Once again, thanks to Sanjay B for the entertaining read and kick up my posterior to start blogging in the midst of this brainstorming mayhem!

The Great Unravelling Approacheth?

2009-03-23T23:09:00.005+05:30

The past few days have been interesting, engaging, and, to some extent, reassuring for me.

When I first heard about the strike at H.N.L.U., I was just plain stunned. Not because of what's been happening at that college, or at what the students were doing. I was just shocked that something so big could have flown under the radar for so long. I find it incredible that nobody was talking about it. (Read my post here, but more critically, read the comments to that post - far more lucid and intelligent than any blather I may have typed out. For more perspectives, see here, here, and here.)

I raved, I ranted, and my gruntle was raucously dis-ed for the entire week that followed. Every friend I met for the next few days (and yes, I'll admit - most of my friends are lawyers) had one reaction or the other when I spoke with them about this. Shockingly, however, the most frequent reaction was a: "Yeah, fine, whatever."

It is this complete disconnect with legal education that I feel strongly about. The prevalent emotion seems to be that if it doesn't affect your paycheck in a very direct manner, it's not worth talking about. There have, of course, been exceptions, but the rule is fairly firmly established.

That's what really gets my goat, hooves and all. How can a lawyer not be concerned? As a graduate from one of the NLUs, I have benefitted from the reputation that my college carries. I have had doors opened, and opportunities unfolded because of my education. At a very materialistic level, I realise that this is a tag that will always be attached to my C.V., and that my reputation will always be linked to that of the institution I spent five years of my life at.

If members of the legal community do not come out of their comfortable coccoons, they will become Rip Van Winkles: confused, sleepy, and very, very out of sync with the world.

A lot of people were probably caught unawares in 1987, when the first NLU was established. A lot of people may well be caught unaware twenty-two years later. I think we may be on the verge of an unravelling of a lot of the rot that has flourished in the name of legal education in this country today. Agree, disagree, get angry, whatever - but come out and say something.

I feel it's important; I think that if I do not, I do a disservice to my education, and to the profession I chose. I'm probably painting a nice, big bulls-eye on my forehead for all the cynics out there right now, but that's the way I feel.

If lawyers, teachers, and students do not debate these issues openly and candidly now, then all of us are in for a whole bag of trouble - not just the students at H.N.L.U.

HNLU Shut Down Sine Die; Students on Strike

2009-03-18T20:37:00.002+05:30

I just heard about this an hour ago, through a chance chat on Facebook.

If you don't know already, HNLU, Raipur, the sixth National Law University in the country, has been shut down sine die by the administration. The students have been on strike since the 3rd of March. All in all, a pretty grim situation.

This is the students' blogsite, this is the 'official' site of the 'Revive HNLU' movement .

This is the University's official website. If you're looking for the official position on what's happening, don't bother. There's nothing on the website about this. It's as if it never happened.

I haven't the faintest clue about whether the students are justified in what they are doing, and if this is right or wrong - but I am shocked. I have never heard of something like this happening at an NLU.

Equally disconcerting is the silence on this issue on most fronts: I regularly speak with a diverse range of law students and lawyers, and I find it incredible that such a big issue has not hit the mainstream of lawspeak in this country for so long. Aside from this Indian Express story, no other national media seems interested.

Most upsetting, however, is the impact this will have on the students. Quite clearly, right or wrong, recruiters are going to think more than twice before approaching them with job offers. Whatever the reality (if such a thing can be supposed to exist in such situations), the students suffer. That's what I'm most upset about.

I'm looking for ideas. Opinions. Suggestions. Anything.

Say something.

Finally, a Friend does Something Outrageous!!!

2009-03-17T15:16:00.004+05:30

I have a fairly regular, ordinary life, and a fairly regular bunch of friends. I mean there's brains and talent and all that, of course, but nobody's really gone out there and done something crazy, you know?

Which makes this all the more interesting!

I have known the guy for over a decade, I meet him every day at work, and I still have no clue in the least what it's about!

As I said, I know the guy well - and if he's gone out there and put his neck on the line like this, it should be worth the effort of making it into town. I'm going to be there well before ten, and will make sure I have a ringside view. Hope to see you there too!

(In case you missed the link and have no idea what I'm babbling on and on about, here it is again!)

Loony Lawyers

2009-03-13T15:16:00.006+05:30

There are lawyers, and then there are people. And then, there are some really crazy lawyers, who look and feel almost like people (if the moon is in the correct phase.) This one goes out to three of the crazy ones.

When I graduated from Law School, I had a pretty reasonable idea that about 1.39 people from our batch would ever actually have the courage to throw up nice, cushy 'normal-lawyer-who-joined-the-profession' type of jobs, and go ahead and do what they actually wanted to do with part of the rest of their lives.

The usual disclaimers apply here: sure, there are some lawyers who really like the law (I'm one!), and there are some who enjoy what they do as aforesaid 'normal-lawyers-who-joined-the-profession.' Yay for you. But this one isn't about you. The next one will be, I promise. If you leave comments, click on all the Google Ads on my blog, and help me make pots and pots of money.

Surprisingly enough, there are now way more than 1.39 people from the NLS Batch of 2002 who have taken the plunge, and are chasing dreams full-time. Here are three - if you hear of more, let me know (I'll start a collection right here!):

Sameer Singh (also known as Sameer Singh) is co-founder of Mooli's. It's an insanely cool idea, which has warmed the cockles of my old pseudo-Bengali heart - rolls in the middle of Englishtaan! Yipeee! Or should I say: Katheeeee!

Gautam John (@gkjohn for the Twitter-friendly) runs loads of things at Pratham Books. This is a wonderful initiative - they say it a lot better on their site, but here's the part I like best - they make sure kids get a chance to read. And they don't let the fact that these kids can't afford books get in their way.

Sachin Malhan (also known in tweeting circles as @sachinmalhan, and in my office as 'my boss') - who still kicks my pockmarked posterior at every Friday review, has finally found something more worthwhile to do at Inclusive Planet. It's a service suite for the disabled, and is just about ready to take off - they've just finalised (well, almost) their logo, and it looks smart!

More power to you loons!

I Think Lawyers Should Get Organised

2009-03-06T19:51:00.003+05:30

I went to law school in 1997 because I honestly had no idea what the profession of law was all about. I knew that the images I grew up with on television and in cinema were as far removed from reality as were the antics of our heroes from the actual world. It just seemed like a great place to spend five years - reading, writing, debating, arguing, and meeting people.

Twelve years later, my idea of the profession of law has not changed much at all. I still think it's a great profession, and I still think the study of law - as it is meant to be - is a great option for young people. But there is a distinct feeling of unease that has grown since that first class on July 1, 1997 when three professors traipsed into our classroom and asked the question to end all questions: 'What is law?'

And that feeling is this: why in the name of heck are lawyers so ready to cut each others' heads off? Why are we the only profession I know of (aside from politicians) whose members measure their success in terms of the number of other practitioners that they have in some way defeated, disgraced, or made to look like complete, bungling idiots?

At this point, the disclaimers: I don't think every lawyer I've met is like this. There is a significant minority - but a minority - of lawyers I know who don't think like this. But there is an even smaller minority who actually do something about this situation. Also, there may well be a multitude of other professions where people behave like this. I've never been in any other profession, so I really can't say for sure. And finally - I am not an experienced preacher, connector, influencer, or expert on the legal profession. I just happen to be a part of it. I really, sincerely hope that I am completely off the mark, and am just spouting nonsense here, and I would really appreciate someone telling me how.

Now that that's out of the way:

One of the first times I got this feeling was when I used to work with a large company in Calcutta. Part of my job was to brief counsel on cases that the company was involved in, and to (apparently) give instructions.

Almost without exception, all the counsel I met regarded me, in varying degrees, as a file-carrier, fool, or flamboyant know-it-all.

All of which may very well be true - but these reactions stemmed more from the fact that I decided to join a company after law school, rather than to 'join the profession' and argue at the bar. Here's news, boss - I did join the profession. Only, the profession just got a lot bigger than you think it is. And if you continue to alienate such a large portion of the legal community, you stand the chance of being sidelined - there are enough and more 'practicing' lawyers out there who understand the fact that corporate counsel are clients, and, more importantly, equals. They will get this business, and you will not.

Then, I decided to work in a law firm. And that's when hell truly broke loose. Imagine a room full of boisterous football fanatics. Imagine the yelling and screaming and shouting of names at each others' clubs that would ensue. Now, replace the football fans with law firm associates. And substitute the shouting of names at other people's clubs with the abusing of one's own organisation.

That's how bad things often were.

And I used to think: if things really are this bad, why can't you just talk to other people in your office about it? Won't an honest, open, heart-to-heart help resolve things? Apparently not. Talking about such things in your office is a sign of naivete. If you don't already know the answers, you're a fool.

But how am I supposed to know the answers if I can't even ask the question?

I made a lot of great friends in those days - and I had a lot of great seniors I worked with, among whom some gave me advice I only now realise the value of. But by and large, I was surrounded by cranky, crabby, cynical, and cross people. Twenty-five-year-olds who behaved like they were eighty-year-olds, whom life had screwed over.

And then, I started working in an organisation that I still love and cherish. Our mission was simple: to let young people know that the law is a great profession to be a part of, and that studying law is one of the best things that you could possibly do with five years of your life.

But the rot had spread here too. Students were made to sit for eight or nine different entrance exams - one for each college. This has changed to some extent - and I am happy to see that - but there is still a long, long way to go. Law schools often behaved like fortresses, and there was hardly a notion of sharing resources - like good professors, who often did not, or could not, teach at other law schools. The notion of pooling together resources for research is pretty much unheard of - or if it isn't, I sure haven't heard of law schools coming together to work on projects with any degree of seriousness. The law schools themselves were constrained by grant providers and state-level administrative authorities. Or by the Bar Council's rules relating to legal education. The Bar Council, in its turn, had its own constraints.

After all, it's a Council made up of lawyers.

And now, where I work, one industry I regularly interact with is so fragmented, that it is often difficult to coalesce strength, or leverage collective expertise. I don't know that there are many people out there evangelising the cause of India as a legal services outsourcing destination - there are, of course, honourable exceptions, but I do know that there are tons of people out there who are connecting with clients, and talking about how good their own organisations are. As one result, this industry has opponents in the 'practicing' lawyers community, but no collective that speaks about how great a career option the industry is for young lawyers.

All of which is bad news. No matter how great you are as a lawyer, law firm, or other legal services organisation, you are painted with the same brush that people apply to lawyers as a whole. And the worst part? You are yourself, in large part, responsible for this perception amongst people.

I understand that there are some fundamentals attributes of the legal profession that seem like obstacles to the sharing of information and resources: confidentiality, privilege, and non-disclosure are hard-wired into us in our early days in the profession. But this does not mean that you can't meet often, talk more, and share insights that help the industry as a whole. There are a lot of great lawyers out there who know exactly what's right and wrong with the profession, and it's time for them to step up and speak.

We need you.

Rainmaker is on Facebook!

2009-02-27T20:25:00.002+05:30

I keep promising to make a comeback.

Continuing in that fine tradition, here's yet another comeback (at this rate, I'm going to shame Michael Jordan into submission - and how many people can say that, eh?)

So anyhow: Rainmaker is now on Facebook.

Drop in and say hi, folks!

Signs of Life

2008-07-07T14:50:00.002+05:30

Met a few of you over the past week who still remember this corner of the 'net...

Thank you for remembering... and for kicking me up the backside and telling me to jump-start this menagerie of alphabets again.

I will - if you promise to read this, comment, and never remind me of this travesty in public again!

Love and keyboard longing,
B

Pre-Flight Entertainment

2007-11-02T21:27:00.000+05:30

They say we Indians are a patient race, always willing to accommodate others, always willing to wait our turn.

Hogwash, horsefeathers, and bullshit. (Well, you can leave the water, feathers, and stinky poop out of this, but otherwise, it’s a perfect analogy. Read on.)

If you’ve suffered the misfortune of having to take a domestic flight in the last couple of years, you would know exactly what I’m talking about: airports more closely resemble farms nowadays, places where you see the most uncivil, rude, uncouth, and yes, animal-like behaviour from a supposedly civilized race.

Try the check-in queue at a Deccan or a SpiceJet counter (don’t ask me why I still fly those airlines. It isn’t nice to poke fun at other people’s poverty.) People around you will behave like pigs at a trough, pushing and poking and elbowing their way to get to the hapless attendant behind the flimsy counter. In their case, however, they don’t even have the excuse of wanting to access food. It’s as if a catastrophe will erupt unless they check-in before everyone else. More likely as not, someone or the other will:

(a) whack you in the back of the shin with their luggage trolley;

(b) slip ahead and thrust their crotch against the check-in counter while you’re putting your luggage on the weigh-in scales; or

(c) (and this is a morning flight special) just not bother to stand in line at all, jump to the head of the line, waggle their head from side to side and say in the world’s most innocent tone “But my flight takes off in fifteen minutes! The airline people asked me to move ahead!” (As if that’s my fault, you fat fart: why didn’t you wake up in time like the rest of us?)

Pigs. Hence the hogwash.

Next, the security check. A lot of flyers from Indian airports nowadays are middle-level managers from middle-level companies (no, I don’t fall under this category, if you were wondering. I don’t. Seriously. They told me that when I threatened to quit. They told me I was a ‘valuable resource,’ and all that.)

Now, these middle-level managers are only part of the assorted sundry of flyers from Indian airports, and we’re all happy and shiny about the fact that so many people such as them, who have never flown before are now taking to the skies with such gay abandon. Praful Patel liberalised the skies, and we instantly filled them with vast masses of people, much like office-goers stampeding into an 8:15 Virar local at Churchgate Station.

Which is all very well, but didn’t somebody teach these people to read first? If you are genuinely illiterate, you obviously aren’t reading this, and even if you have somehow managed the impossible and gotten this far, my apologies to you: you’re excluded from what’s about to come.

But even those about to fly, those who are supposedly literate, educated, mature folk, act like horses with chilli powder up their arses, rushing through the security check lines as if a cool pond of water to diffuse the flames in their posterior lay on the other side. There’s a line there, folks. It says: “Wait your turn”. In two languages. In big, black letters. On a nice, fat shiny yellow tape. Read it.

But no: these people will push you aside, and run up to the checking station. Then the guard will tell them to go back and wait their turn. Then they’ll ask the guard why. Then the guard will explain why. Then they will come back to the line and grin widely, showing off their teeth, releasing a wave of halitosis that would stun the most steadfast soul into oblivion. By this time, everyone has had to stand at least three minutes longer in line. (Some, of course, have fainted from the stench.)

Running ahead to fly first, like mad horses frothing at the mouth. Hence the horsefeathers.

(I know this wasn’t that good an analogy, but you’ve read this far, and there’s only one more to go, and you like me, so shut up and read on.)

(Thanks.)

Once you’re past the rugby scrum that is the security check, and the armpit-stench-Mardi gras that is the bus ride to the plane, and have finally sighed back into your cramped seat, hopeful of an hour or two’s flight, the real crap starts.

For some strange and unknown reason, people think that their suggestions on quality control and how to improve all-round airline services are of interest to the airhostesses. Which is all very well, but these same clowns also think that this claptrap is also of interest to everyone else on the flight. It’s a metal tube full of people, folks, and ninety-nine percent of those folks love holding forth at the top of their voices throughout the torrid trip. Suddenly, everyone’s an expert. Suddenly, everyone qualifies as a world-traveller (and yes, you even qualify even if you just live next door to an airhostesss (“My friend was telling me the other day that they do it this way on flights in Togo…”))

And what’s most irritating about all this nonsense is that these armchair aviation experts all expect to be treated like first-class passengers on a bleeding budget airline. You paid less, you cheapskate, don’t expect to get your ass wiped with a silk scarf when you only paid for last week’s newspapers!

Obviously, therefore, the bullshit.

Take my advice: take the train next time. That way, at least, you’ll get what you expected.

(Yes, my flight is late, and I’m writing this at a crowded departure lounge in an airport.)

(Good guess. Pat yourself on the back.)

Home for the Holidays

2007-10-30T00:48:00.000+05:30

Everything looked normal – or probably, as normal as a place like that could look.

As Rajeev stepped off the train and onto the dusty platform at Anand Junction, he looked around, and that sudden feeling of mild depression that always gripped him when he reached this place settled firmly in his heart and lower intestine, forcing an unsettling increase of pace in the one, and a nervous little release of digestive gases from the other.

Not a word was spoken on the fifteen-minute drive back home. Rajeev’s dad spent the time racing across the highway, a ribbon of almost-melting tarmac set amidst tobacco plant and banana fields, while Rajeev himself observed the passing landscape, studiously avoiding any conversation.

It hadn’t always been like this: Rajeev’s parents had moved to Gujarat while he was in his second year at college in Bangalore. He had no idea why they decided to leave Bombay for the godforsaken village of Shivri, twenty kilometres from Anand in Central Gujarat. His parents, on the other hand, had no idea why Rajeev didn’t like their decision.

Over many an anguished phone call, his parents had explained that they had had it with city life: with the pace and the bustle, and now that his father had retired, they would rather spend their time in peace and quiet, amongst whom Rajeev’s dad was fond of calling ‘their’ people. More than anything else, they said, it was important that the entire family (Rajeev included) get back in touch with their ‘roots’. Bombay had been a generational stopover in their family’s journey, they said, and it was time to go back home.

For Rajeev, however, a muddy little village that was more extensively populated by cows than people was not nearly home. It had no cell phone signal coverage, no cinema theatres, and aside from his parents, no people who spoke in English at all. As far as Rajeev was concerned, Shivri was the stopover, an unreal hell of boredom that regularly sucked his holidays away.

Moreover, it was full of Gujjus.

Rajeev had never really thought of himself as a Gujarati before he went to college. Once he started simmering in that little melting pot of an academic institution, however, he found himself answering questions about his ethnic identity far more often than he was used to.

Before college, the only major identity brackets that he was used to categorising people in were ‘townies’ and ‘burbies’. Aside from where a person lived, everyone was a Bombayite. At most, your school or college was the finest division of identity.

In college in Bangalore, however, you could be no more or less than a Bong, Chom, Mal, Gult, Tam, Digga, or Gujju. The more imaginative labels included Mal-Chom (a Keralite from Delhi), Bong-Tam (a Bengali from Madras), and the freakiest among them all, Ding-Dong (a Bengali Christian from Delhi.)

The Mals were always forming Mal mafias, the Choms acting aggressive and beating up juniors, and the Bongs furiously debating the relevance of Communism in today’s world. People who until then had not even known three words in their mother tongue were now strenuously asserting their identities as doyens of their inherited cultures. In all this, Rajeev felt more than a little isolated – there were hardly any other Gujjus in college, and those that were, were either freaks of nature or final-years that Rajeev could hardly even look straight in the eye, leave alone speak with. In any event, whenever conversation turned in such a direction and Rajeev’s Tam roommates started waxing eloquent on the supremacy of Tamil literature, music, dance, and culture, all that Rajeev could weakly come up with was the supremacy of Gujju Rummy games on local trains.

He hated having to carry that label.

He hated coming to his ancestral house in Shivri even more.

A trip such as this was a total waste of holidays in Rajeev’s opinion. Mind made up firmly to sulk the coming week away, Rajeev stomped up the steps to what was once his Grandfather’s room, and had now been converted for his use. Prospects for entertainment looked bleak: he had managed to carry back only three books from college (having spent the money budgeted to buy books for the holidays on a drunken binge with friends the night of the last exam), the computer at home was on the blink (again!) and his mother was visiting relatives in Rajasthan.

At least he would have the house to himself while his father was on the farm all day.

After enquiring solicitously into Rajeev’s comfort, his father left for the farm. Rajeev bathed, and went downstairs to the hall and the T.V., his only link with the real world. He flipped through the movie channels, each of which was showing films he had already seen. Rajeev knew that before the holidays were over, he would watch any old drivel, even films that he already seen thrice before, and hated the first time, but he wasn’t about to give in to that kind of desperation just yet.

He flipped to the news channels, and that earlier small feeling of depression now changed into a cold, hard fist that clenched his heart, and almost stopped his breathing.

Somebody had set fire to a train compartment full of Hindu karsevaks at Godhra station, no more than three hours ago. The first footage of charred bodies being dragged out of the train, some still fused with scraps of half-burnt saffron clothing, was now being splattered onto television screens across the world. As reporters went into adjectival hysterics, Rajeev slowly turned and looked out the large windows onto the dusty village lane.

Not a soul stirred there, but the sound from various television sets, all tuned into news channels covering the same story, seeped out from the neighbouring houses, thickening the air into a clogging poison of panic and fear.

Rajeev ran up four floors to the terrace of the old house, and looked out across the village. The house had been built off the main road of the village, and was the highest in Shivri, so Rajeev had a good view from here. The road itself began as a dusty turnoff from the highway, bloated into a bus stop and a small traffic circle around which people usually sat in the evenings, and then took a ninety-degree turn into Shivri proper. The back of Rajeev’s family house faced this part of the road, just after Ismail bhai’s tailor shop and the Cooperative Bank, and across the road from the tiny village mosque. A lane led off from the main road where it turned into the heart of the village, and the village Police Station stood ten metres from the mouth of this lane. Rajeev could see the entire T-shape of this tableau from his terrace, bereft of people, settling slowly into what could have been just another dusty March evening. The turn in the road and the Police Station were on Rajeev’s right when he faced the mosque, and houses cluttered the road towards his left.

Three hours. And already nobody on the streets. Three hours! Rajeev could very well still have been on the train from Bangalore! Small beads of sweat slowly caked the dust that rose from the road and was now settling upon Rajeev’s face.

Rajeev’s father came back home, and they talked more that evening than they had in the past two years. Rajeev was, not to put too fine a point upon it, shitting bricks. His father saw that, and tried to assure him that nothing would happen. These were ‘our’ people, after all. Shivri had had no communal riots, ever, and all this kind of thing only ever happened in other places. There was nothing to worry about.

His father’s friends came over after dinner, as they usually did, and to his own surprise, Rajeev found himself staying behind to hear them talk. They usually spent their time talking about people from the village who had emigrated to the U.S., and were now doing very well for themselves, thank you, or about such-and-such a person’s daughter running away with such-and-such another’s son. Today, however, the talk was grim, and the tone much heavier.

Riots had already broken out in villages not more than ten or twenty kilometres away. Fifteen Muslims killed in Vadodara. A mosque set ablaze in Ahmedabad. A madrasa sheltering women and children ravaged in Surat. There was talk of how people already had lists with the names and addresses of Muslims in Ahmedabad, and Ramesh uncle spoke about his cousin in Rajkot, who had told him about the little stockade of swords, knives and cutters they were piling up there.

To Rajeev’s surprise, not everyone sounded shocked. Suresh uncle almost smiled when he talked about houses being set afire in the next district.

The next morning, Rajeev’s father got ready to go to the farm, as he usually did. Despite Rajeev’s entreaties not to step out of the house, he left at nine, as he always did.

Rajeev spent the next two hours staring at the news. Things were rapidly worsening. The riots had spread across almost all of Gujarat now, and some of the worst-hit areas were in the same district as Shivri.

He pulled out a packet of cigarettes from his suitcase and went up to the terrace. After looking around at a street as deserted as it was the evening before, Rajeev sat down on the ground, keeping his head below the parapet so that no one would be able to see him from the other houses, and lit up. The nicotine sped into his bloodstream, calming his frayed nerves somewhat.

Halfway through the cigarette, he heard the first bloodcurdling yell. That “Jai Shree Ram!” was followed by a spate of other, enthusiastic bellows.

Rajeev froze; he stared bug-eyed at the sky, the cigarette forgotten halfway to his mouth. The noise slowly escalated, and now the cries came more regularly. Rajeev threw the cigarette away, and rose inch by inch, until his eyes were just above the parapet.

A ragged crowd of fifteen was marching slowly up the road from the left, yelling slogans all the way. They didn’t look like they were carrying any weapons, but they were shouting loud enough to raise the dead.

In the next two minutes, the stretch of road behind the house turned into a seething mass of shouting, yelling men, none of whom were older than thirty-five, and the youngest of whom was clearly still in high school. The mob yelled and yelled, and with every cry of “Jai Shree Ram!” or “Maaro haaramiyo ko!” Rajeev’s pulse quickened just that little bit more. They pelted stones at the mosque, then, and the sound of shattering glass added to the cacophony.

Ten minutes later, Rajeev saw a jeep leaving the Police Station, siren blaring, slowly trundling down the road towards the mob.

They ran. Nothing else happened that day.

The talk that night was even more morbid.

Rajeev’s father had told him not to worry too much earlier that day. The police would do their job, he said. That’s what they were for. All the Muslim families had already left the village, locking their houses behind. An unnecessary precaution, he said: nobody would be killed in Shivri.

That evening, however, Ramesh uncle told them what he had overheard at the hardware merchant’s shop earlier in the day. The Sarpanch and the merchant were conspiring furiously when he stepped into the shop. Not noticing him, they continued for a minute or so more, and Ramesh uncle had listened quietly.

The few Muslim houses in Shivri were in a tight little knot just behind the mosque. If these, and the mosque, were to be erased you would have a largish block of land, just off the main road. Prime property. You could build a market there, one said, and make loads of what people would pay you for shop permits. You could sell more cement and construction goods than you have in the last decade to people who want to build shops there, the other told the first. Fine, then, let’s talk to our people.

The next morning, two havaldars settled upon a pair of rickety chairs opposite the mosque, and yawned the day away. Rajeev spent the day between the news on television and sneaking smokes on the terrace, comparing the seeming calm in Shivri to the insanity on the news.

At exactly six in the evening, the two havaldars got up, kicked the chairs to the side of the road, and started waddling back to the Police Station in the slowly gathering dusk.

“Bloody hell…” Rajeev muttered. Why in the name of fuck were they leaving now? In five minutes, they were at the Police Station, where Rajeev saw them, two other havaldars, and a couple of more senior officers sitting at a bench drawn up at the mouth of the lane, facing the main road. They’re going to keep an eye on things from there, then, Rajeev reassured himself. No cause to panic, not just yet.

Rajeev had brought his father’s Handycam up to the terrace that evening, and he decided to shoot a little video of the deserted road and the mosque, and the entire spooky spread of the village so he could show it to friends when he got back to college. He brought the camera up to one eye, shut the other, and the world was now a black-framed image.

He panned the camera slowly across the main road, starting from the highway and the bus stop in the distance, with a little detour to the Police Station and then finally down the road to the mosque.

The shouting began again then. Forgetting to move the Handycam away from his eye, Rajeev turned towards the stretch of road on his left. A larger crowd than the day before was making its way down the road. Some of them held flaming torches, and their burning reds and oranges were scarier against the twilight than they might have been in the dark.

Forty men, vermilion smeared across their foreheads, reached the stretch of road behind Rajeev’s house. There were more shouts of “Maaro kutto ko!” and “Saale Pakistaaniyon baahar niklo!” today than the “Jai Shree Rams!” of yesterday.

Focusing on one particular face that seemed a little familiar, Rajeev realised that it was Manish, Suresh uncle’s son. He seemed one of the more enthusiastic stone-throwers, and joined the group of men who were now breaking down the wooden door of the mosque with iron rods. A small ball of disgust came into his mouth, and Rajeev spat the acid-tasting bile out. Manish! This was no uneducated hooligan – at least he hadn’t thought so, until now!

Moving the frame across the crowd, Rajeev realised that most of the rioters looked like they came from any ordinary, middle-class family in the village. They didn’t look like ruffians or petty criminals – these were everyday folk!

By this time, small knots of rioters had broken away from the main crowd, and were attacking the houses behind it. Rajeev watched, shocked, as a group of three smashed a door down and ran in. In another minute or so, furniture and small household goods came crashing out of the first floor window. Soon enough, he saw the three of them pushing an entire cupboard off the first floor balcony. The cupboard crashed down into the narrow lane and clothes came spilling out. That sight somehow frightened Rajeev more than anything he had seen so far: that cupboard spilling its contents out onto the dust of the lane was somehow like seeing a dying man, his stomach slashed open, spilling his intestines out into the world.

It wasn’t all about destroying things, however: Rajeev saw men running out of those houses with a pressure cooker here or a radio set there and putting them safely at the side of the road, to be taken away home later, and in one case, two men carefully cradling a television set away.

Rajeev panned to the right, where the policemen calmly watched this menagerie of madness from their spot outside the Police Station. They moved nary a muscle.

Sickened, Rajeev took his eye away from the viewfinder, and looked around. He realised that he wasn’t the only one looking at this carnage: there were watchers on every terrace. He saw that he was the only one crouching and hiding, and slowly stood up. He caught Ramesh uncle’s eye then. His house was next door, and he was standing on the terrace with his two young sons.

Ramesh uncle looked across to Rajeev, and shook his head furiously. Not understanding, Rajeev looked perplexed, then looked down in the direction that Ramesh uncle was now pointing at. The red power indicator light on the Handycam! Rajeev quickly switched it off.

He turned again to the horrible drama being played out on the street. Two men were rolling two LPG cylinders through the gaping hole where the door of the mosque had once been. They came running out in a few seconds, and then, a blast shook the walls of the mosque. The cylinders had burst, and the first cracks appeared in the wall of the mosque.

The riots continued, on and off, for a week and more. Despite his protestations, his father drove him to the station on the day Rajeev was supposed to head back to college. He didn’t want to leave his father there alone, and his father didn’t want him to spend a minute more than was necessary there.

Things had quietened down by then; trains were running smoothly once more, and no more riots had been reported in the past two days. In any event, the train would be outside Gujarat in six hours time. There were very few other vehicles on the highway, however, and in more than place, they passed the charred remains of cars, handcarts, and some things that Rajeev didn’t want to identify, or even look close enough at.

In college that semester, and in all the semesters after, Rajeev refused to answer to the name ‘Gujju’, something that he had grudgingly done before. He talked to his parents more often, and they studiously avoided any talk about returning to roots or mingling with ‘our’ people. As summer placements and trips with friends took over his holidays over the years, Rajeev visited less often.

In the short break he had taken between the end of term and beginning work with the Bombay branch of an MNC, Rajeev visited Shivri for the last time.

The village was a miniature of the State: polarized between the overwhelming majority of Hindus, and the few Muslims who had come back to Shivri after the riots, their houses, possessions, and dignity all snatched away from them.

He found the place even more stifling than he usually did. The bearded and bespectacled mass murderer won term after term in the elections; and you still couldn’t say the word ‘Muslim’ out aloud even at home: everyone just looked down and away, and called them ‘Ms’, some out of shame, and more out of disgust.

Rajeev piled his bags into the boot and climbed into the driver’s seat. His father sat shotgun, and his mom in the backseat. They were dropping him to the station, but unlike earlier, his father let him drive his car now. He turned out on to the main road, and as they passed the place where the mosque once stood, Rajeev stole a quick glance out of the corner of his eye.

The new vegetable market was bustling with activity.

In-Flight Entertainment

2007-10-25T23:57:00.002+05:30

Vivek was the last passenger to board the flight. When they announced the Security Check, he was checking out of his hotel. When they commenced boarding, he was still getting his luggage scanned, and when they made the ‘last and final’ boarding announcement, Vivek was talking to a client in Delhi while holding off the CRPF guard, who wanted him to put his cell phone in his bag before passing through the security check.

Finally, one cigarette in the smoking zone, three minutes in the washroom to make sure his hair was intact, and two paging announcements later, Vivek deigned to walk up to the boarding gate. They had had to drive him up to the flight in a separate car, just by himself.

Vivek was looking forward to the flight: he’d spent the last seven days on the road, covering eight cities. He had just about managed to run through his last set of meetings on nicotine and caffeine, and was really looking forward to two-and-a-half hours of solid sleep on the flight back home. In violation of all company policies, he’d wrangled a premium full-service airline ticket out of Mrs. Rao, the Admin Manager, who he fervently believed was actually a gargoyle.

Ignoring the glares from whom he considered petulant passengers, he found his emergency row window seat (Ah! The joys of tele-check-in!) and sank into the semi-soft seat. A middle-aged man dressed in a kurta, jeans, and mildly bemused expression sat in the aisle seat, and Vivek returned his smile with a polite grimace before pointedly clamping his eyelids shut.

And that’s when the first wail tore through the pressurised cabin air.

Irritated, Vivek opened his blood-shot eyes to see a pair of teary ones staring back at him from above the seat in front of him. The eyes belonged to a small child, around ten months of age, (Vivek could never really tell, preferring to watch kids from a distance. On T.V. In thirty-second advertisement spots, rather than spend any time within a twenty-kilometre radius of them) which in turn belonged to a marginally distraught young woman, trying her best to hush the child into silence.

Vivek grunted. And closed his eyes tighter than ever before, hoping that the baby either shut up or magically disappeared. He finally managed to fall asleep after the safety announcements (which he thought were a waste of time, since he heard mildly different versions three times a week, and who cared about first-time flyers anyway?) and was snoring softly when the airplane rumbled into the skies.

And that’s when the child really decided to let loose. Spanning all the higher frequencies of sound that the human ear can endure, and some that only dogs can, the child bellowed frantically, fearful of her first flight.

Vivek grew livid. He let out an exasperated “Goddamit”, leaned over and snarled viciously at the mother “Can’t you please shut up your child? Give her a toy or a feeding bottle or something, dammit!”

The poor lady shrivelled visibly out of a mixture of embarrassment, frustration, and helplessness. She mumbled a “Sorry!” and held the child closer, patting it periodically on the back. All that this achieved was a slight lull in the bellowing to let out a little baby burp and a small dribble of baby puke, a miniscule drop of which splattered down on Vivek’s best suit.

“Oh for Chrissakes!” Vivek pulled out his handkerchief and rubbed furiously at the spot, making it three times larger and ten times worse, stuffed his handkerchief away, and turned to look at the man in the aisle seat, shaking his head in exasperation, thinking that he would get an understanding nod from him.

Instead the old man only smiled gently at him, and said, “Be patient – she’s a small child.”

“Well, then, it shouldn’t be on the bleeding flight, should it? In my opinion, people below twenty-one should just be banned from flights. Or they should have special ear-shatter specials for them, just like they have those red-eyes!”

Vivek pitched this just loud enough for the now beetroot-complexioned lady to hear, and smugly smiled at the old man, expecting him to be floored with what he thought was perfectly reasonable and clear logic.

Instead, he said “Why? Were you born ready-made, all grown-up?”

As soon as Vivek picked his jaw up off the floor, he turned his head to look out of the window, putting an end to the conversation. He consoled himself into believing that he had a number of witty replies to offer, but since all of them involved words not usually used in polite company, and since he wanted to show respect for the old man’s age, he was being the bigger man by keeping quiet.

The baby bellowed on, occasionally softening to a simper.

Vivek gave up on the idea of sleep, and decided to try the in-flight entertainment system instead. They usually had some business interviews on one of the channels, and Vivek plugged in the plastic headphones, pulled the earpieces snugly close as a shield from the child’s cries, and flipped through the channels till he found the one he wanted.

He’d already seen this one. Just his luck. But he decided to watch it again, hoping that the sheer boredom would lull him into sleep.

In about ten minutes time, Vivek drifted into that steady state of semi-sleep that you can only ever achieve in an airplane – the kind where you think you’re really awake, but then again, maybe not, and it’s really too much of a bother stirring yourself to find out for sure.

As he drifted in this state, Vivek realised that he was no longer watching that business interview anymore. Perhaps his hand had slipped and switched the channel, or maybe this was some sort of ad break, but the screen now showed a petulant little child in the middle of a movie theatre, wailing away as loud as can be, while its parents tried desperately to quieten it down as the other patrons hissed curses at them. He sympathised with the crowd.

The scene changed, and now a slightly older child, or rather, a slightly older version of the same child screamed blue murder at its mother in front of a school gate, swearing for all the world that she was a witch for forcing him to go to school. Vivek smirked.

The next scene in what Vivek now thought must clearly be a condom ad showed the same child, now a ten-year-old, yelling at his dad, telling him to not embarrass him by speaking to his friends when they called for him and asking about their health and studies. Vivek would have nodded in heartfelt agreement at this stage, only the child looked disturbingly familiar. Vivek closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

The flight landed close enough to the scheduled time, and as Vivek stood by the conveyor belt to pick up his luggage, he noticed the lady from the seat in front struggling to hold her child and a bag full of child-management-supplies, while trying to drag a heavy suitcase off the belt. The old man from the aisle seat stepped up to help her, but the suitcase was obviously too heavy for him, and would have moved away on the clacking conveyor, but something prompted Vivek to walk up, and say very politely, “Can I help?”

The lady looked scared for a fleeting moment, surprised for a slightly longer one, and then nodded. Vivek lifted the suitcase up and put it down gently on her trolley.

His own bag drifted along soon, and as Vivek picked it up and started walking out of the terminal, he thought he heard the old man say “These in-flight videos are really marvellous, aren’t they?”

He stopped and turned to look, but the man was in the middle of a conversation with the lady, seemingly oblivious to Vivek’s stare. He only looked up briefly a second later, smiled innocently at Vivek, and went back to the conversation.

Vivek walked out and caught an auto home.

Bhool Bhulaiyaa - Flick Review

2007-10-21T01:50:00.000+05:30

Flick Review – Bhool Bhulaiyaa

Random, random, random.

Rating: -39 (yes, that's right, that's negative 39) stars on 5.

A few years ago, when my then roommate and I discovered the joys of a DVD player and cheap, pirated DVDs from Palika Bazaar in short succession, we spent many nights and weekends watching crazy, psycho Korean and Japanese movies together.

Part of the appeal of those mad Korean movies was the fact that they were so insanely random – you never knew what part of the story was connected to what other, or why a particular character was hanging around in the background, in a seemingly pointless waste of celluloid, until around three hours after you finished watching the movie, when it all finally started to make startling sense.

Well, I thought I would extend Priyadarshan the same courtesy, and I’ve waited three hours before writing this review, but I still can’t seem to make any sense whatsoever of his latest celluloid travesty, Bhool Bhulaiyaa.

Bhool Bhulaiyaa is easily the most random movie made in a long, long time. There is simply no other way to describe this waste of three hours of my life other than a ‘Visit India’ tourism documentary in a very shabby disguise. The only reason I didn’t walk up to the counter and ask for my money back was the fact that I did think I got value for my money – the lazyboy chairs at Cinemax are quite nice, the popcorn decent, and the company I was in, excellent, all of which combined for a very nice outing to the cinema – the only irritating thing in this entire evening at the movies, of course, was the movie.

Predictably, this latest Priyadarshan offering is based on a Malayalam movie, Manichitrathazhu, which, I am told by those who’ve seen it, is a really, really good movie. Shobhana, who played the female lead in the Mallu movie, even won the National Award for the film. Vidya Balan, who played the lead in the Hindi movie, would be lucky if she got an invite to even attend the National Awards for this performance.

If you’re among those poor sods who have read this far, and still intend to waste their money on the movie, stop reading right here, because here’s a big, fat

SPOILER WARNING

for you! For the rest of you, who have more sense, read on and weep!

The cinematography is excellent: Bhool Bhulaiyaa is visually appealing, as, indeed, all of Priyadarshan’s movies are, and his Thiruvananthapuram roots are more than evident in the costumes, which look like the silk- and jewellery-showroom-hoarding bedecked market roads of that beautiful city. Other than that, the only minor saving grace (read: non-yawn inducing characteristic) of the movie is the rediscovery of Akshay Kumar’s increasingly adept comic timing, under wraps since Hera Pheri.

Aside from that, this is a remake that would have been better never made.

The storyline not only demands a temporary suspension of disbelief from the viewer, it sits on your chest and throttles it out of you at a level only ever seen last when Anil Kapoor played a ‘college boy’ role.

The script compares to a good film script, but only in the sense that a mad child’s misadventure with Lego blocks compares to an architectural marvel like, say, the Sydney Opera House. If you can sit through three hours of mindless babble and one particular scene where Shiney Ahuja and Akshay Kumar giggle like the proverbial saas-bahu pair from an Ektaa Kapoor sud-show, this is definitely the movie for you.

Just when you think you could spend a few peaceful minutes in the theatre bitching about the movie with your friends, the songs leap up at you unexpectedly, like muggers in a dark alley, with about the same degree of subtlety. To make matters worse, the partially palatable title track doesn’t even make it to the main body of the movie, relegated instead to an absurdly irrelevant video starring Akshay Kumar as a wannabe gangsta rapper when the closing credits roll.

Shiney Ahuja spends the mercifully few scenes he’s been allotted looking like he’s been interrupted in the middle of a frantic search for the toilet – he looks uncomfortable, pained, and constipated in various degrees throughout the film. He lives in the same apartment complex as I do, and I saw him a few days ago in the parking lot, having a heated conversation with someone else, excitedly waving his arms around all over the place, probably trying to convince the other person that he had been forced to act in the movie at gunpoint – which would easily explain the quality of his acting in it.

Paresh Rawal has proved the time-old adage that too many movies playing the same hackneyed role over and over again is really, really bad for you. In this case, he didn’t have a good script and funny jokes supporting him. I strongly recommend that Paresh bhai leave for the Himalayas for a few years, say around three hundred and fifty, and act in a Hindi movie only after that.

Rajpal Yadav should do the same.

Amisha Patel pulled off quite a good job of being quite unnoticeable throughout the film, except for the few really painful moments when you have to endure her shrill shrieking.

Vidya Balan should be really, really thankful that I didn’t watch this movie in a theatre in Calcutta – else I would have had so much more fodder for the guns I want to aim at her for her mangling of the Bengali language. She plays a woman suffering from some strange disease called ‘Dissociative Identity Disorder’ known only to the makers of Bhool Bhulaiyaa, and for large parts of the three-hour epic tragedy that is this movie, pretends she’s actually the ghost of Manjulika, a Bengali courtesan who was killed by the Raja of some make-believe principality near Jaipur, who is, in turn the not-so-distant ancestor of Shiney Ahuja, who plays Vidya Balan’s husband in the movie. Now, this is a role that any actor would love – it gives you scope to go all out, to let yourself go, to go ballistic, but after seeing what Vidya Balan did to the role, all I can tell her is that she should just go. Far away. To the Kali temples in Calcutta, and see how Bengali women really kick it up with the spirit world. And then, quietly fade into oblivion, and stop acting forever.

Akshay Kumar displays superb comic timing and a new-found love for pink shirts in the movie, and will walk away from this film as the only actor in the cast with minor fig leaves from his dignity intact. He should, however, remember that he just cannot play the role of an intelligent doctor at all – the scenes where he talks seriously about theories of psychoanalysis look really, really bad – he is, after all, a Jat, and I would have been better inclined to believe his character if he were talking instead about diseases of cows. In Haryanvi. For thirty seconds at the most.

Not only is the acting bad, the script and plot are atrocious beyond belief.

Akshay Kumar twiddles his fingers in front of Vidya Balan’s face in what is supposed to be hypnosis, and convinces her that she is a happy person. She emerges from the session all smiley and shiny. Really? That’s all it takes? And here I was, poor fool, thinking that to be happy involved more, like money, and fame, and love, and all that.

In the middle of what is intended as one of the scariest scenes of the movie, with the proverbial damsel in distress huffing and puffing all around the equally proverbial haunted mansion, being chased by the more proverbial ghungroo-sporting ghost, you see an even more proverbial Indian home guard, with blue beret and lathi, calmly walking across the gardens in the background. Spending this much money on a movie and not noticing production bloopers like that is akin to buying a nice, shiny Rolls Royce, and then painting fluorescent pink polka dots all over it.

In one particular scene, Shiney Ahuja rants and raves at Akshay Kumar for not being able to cure his wife, Vidya Balan, of her Manjulika (the aforementioned Bengali courtesan) obsession, and stomps off shouting that he would take her to the best doctors in America and London instead. All Akshay Kumar does is tell Shiney Ahuja that he can do whatever the best doctors can do, and that’s all it takes. Shiney Ahuja scampers back to Akshay Kumar and consigns his wife to his care again, as teary-eyed and trustful as he was angry and upset three-and-a-half seconds ago.

Random, random, random. Priyan go home!

Take my advice: if you’re looking for a good, entertaining way to spend some time on the weekend, don’t watch this movie – stay at home and watch paint drying instead. Even that would make more sense than this movie can ever hope to.

Trimester 2, Day -1, Flashback

2007-10-19T23:52:00.000+05:30

For all you mad fans (yes, all two of you!) who made my life miserable with your letters written in blood and dharnas outside my house (ok fine, I know it was only three SMSes from one of you, and a bunch of emails from the other), begging me to kick this little story awake from its slumber: thank you!

Let me know what you think! Comment, comment, comment!

Trimester 2, Day -1, Flashback

“Hey whassup, man! Good to see you again!”

I’d come back to hostel a day before the second trimester began, hoping to find the place to myself. I guess I realised even then that what had happened those holidays, and the trimester to come, would both be albatrosses around my neck for many years to come, quibbling between themselves for pecks at my conscience.

Instead, I’d found Jack, my next-dorm neighbour, already in his room, doodling away in his notebooks, pretending to study for the first of his many second-attempt examinations. I hadn’t spoken much with Jack in the first trimester, and as things turned out, that day before the second trimester would be the only real time we would speak with each other until two years after college, when we both spent a very, very drunken day in Calcutta together, and I almost ended up missing Meatball’s wedding in Bombay. But that, as I have said so often before in these pages, is another story, for a later day.

Jack had already shown signs of how he intended to spend his years at Law School: if the rest of us were stars’ tennis balls, being bandied about hither, thither, and whither-have-thou, Jack was the streaker on the tennis court, running towards the Royal Box at Wimbledon with ‘Marry me, Queenie!!!’ emblazoned across his chest!

Not the sort of person I wanted to share my miseries with, I thought. But as we started talking, I realised I wasn’t the only one who’d had a wonderful holiday: he’d broken up with his first girlfriend, too.

A little pause here, for those of you who’ve bothered to keep a track of happenings on these pages. I’ve spoken about those six mad months chasing S, and hoping for something that I didn’t even understand. As things turned out, the lady decided to push me to the very edge, and then said ‘yes’ to going around with me the very night before I left Calcutta for Law School.

Three months of letters everyday (yes, every single day!) back and forth, skipping meals to pay for long-distance phone calls, and longing to meet again resulted in awkward meetings and tight hugs in the holidays. You see, when you’ve known a person only through letters and phone calls for so long, someone you’re supposed to be in love with, then when you actually meet that person, you have no idea what to do with yourself.

You stutter. Stammer. Shuffle your feet awkwardly, and then, just to make up for all of that nonsense, hold that person in a hug tighter than is known to have been used by many a grizzly to crush many a lumberjack’s back.

I did that, all that stuttering and stammering, shuffling and holding, and by about the ten millionth repetition, had finally managed to mumble a ‘I missed you’ into the whole shebang of an affair as well. Things were looking good, and in my mind, I was almost already a smooth-talking love machine.

And then, a week into the holidays, I realised that two things seemed really strange: first, S and I had already started speaking of spending our lives together, but I was just a crazy kid in a place I didn’t understand, with no idea what the rest of my life meant, and second, the three other people I had wanted meet most in the holidays after Mom, Dad, and S, just didn’t seem to want to talk to me anymore.

The first resulted in a teary break-up that I still regret, and the second, in shattering my confidence in my ability to make good friends for a long, long time.

I’ll skip the first set of happenings, since you and I didn’t really come here to talk about teenage romances and possible loves.

The second incident is more bizarre, and therefore, more fun to write about in any case.

Imagine waking up one morning, only to find you are invisible.

Not in the ‘You can’t see me, ha, ha! I’m going to spend all my time looking at naked ladies in girls’ washrooms!’ kind of sense, but a stranger to everyone you meet, and who should have known you. Everyone sees you well enough, but they’re strangers on the bus, hoping you’ll get off at the next stop so they can stop having to smell your armpit.

That’s how I felt when seventeen phone calls to V, Dumass, and Perks resulted in seventeen different excuses not to meet. These phone calls also resulted in another set of seventeen excuses for having to put the phone down quickly, and seventeen broken promises of calling me back sometime soon.

By about the fifteen time this sequence occurred, I’d begun to get a little suspicious – yes, I know I sound as credulous as a Bengali mother who believes her son is a virgin even after she has herself has become a granny thrice over, but that’s just the way I was. One evening, however, as I was walking down Park Street, avoiding the pimps and their promises of ‘kollej guls’, I bumped into Perks walking with another classmate from school.

I jumped up and down, and grinned from ear to ear, and stepped forward to hug the man, but he stepped an equal distance back, thrust his hand out, mumbled something about having to reach somewhere soon, and walked away.

And this was one of those guys I’d spent some of my most embarrassing teenage years with. You remember – the car, the beer, the place near the airport, watching planes take off; the chits passed in school, the raids on juniors’ tiffin-boxes at break time, the shared preps for exams; the racing around deserted roads on bikes, the discovering small momo joints that fit both, a hole in the wall, and our frugal budgets equally well; the elaborate plans to get a girl’s phone number, saving money to buy her flowers, not having the courage to give them to her in person, and so leaving them at her doorstep, only to have her father find them there when he came home from work, prompting the world’s most quizzical look to slither around all over his face…

All of that. Gone.

When I reached home that night, I cried louder and longer than an eighteen-year-old boy ever should for anything, other than being told that his carefully collected porn collection was now a baby turd in his pet dog’s lower intestine.

Mom and Dad were at a friend’s place for dinner. I called, and told them to just get home as soon as they could. And they did something for which I thank them until this very day: they didn’t ask me a single question all through that manic, muddled mumbling on the phone, telling them to get home NOW, and the soaking of shoulders with briny sorrow when they finally did. I guess they realised how much it took from a boy to weep on his parents’ shoulders, and, more importantly, that this was a maze I would just have to blunder out of on my own.

All of which melodramatic bullcrappy resulted in my returning to hostel a day early, and yapping with Jack about how our lives had really ended for all intents and purposes the day we broke up with our respective girlfriends, and possibly the stupidest trimester I have ever spent in law school.

More on that soon!

2007-06-06T11:28:00.000+05:30

A lot of my students tend to sleep right through what I think is easily the most important class in my course they will ever attend: the Introduction class!

And if you though that was bad, getting my trainers interested in the Introduction class is even more of a challenge!

The Introduction class typically serves two functions: it walks the students through the course, and posts the course learning objectives. Why this is important, and not just another excuse to spout general gyaan, will be the subject of another post, but for now, to all the trainers:

Walkthroughs and Learning Objectives can be fun! (Seriously!) And if you don't believe me, here's a little kick up your collective tush to let you know how empowering they can be for you as a trainer:

Let me know what you think: I'm keen to hear!

Week 12, 13: We should've Considered Adoption

2007-05-09T19:38:00.000+05:30

Mayhem on the Return Home...

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.

The first trimester is probably the quickest time of your life. Before you know it, the whole damn thing is just past you, and it’s time to move on to the second. There’s no more shiny plastic wrapping, and no one handles you with kid gloves any more. You’re old now, before you knew it, and all the kids in the eleventh when you left school are suddenly the seniors in school, and sporting their prefects ties around to get out of school at lunch time, doing all the things you used to do, usurping the throne you recently vacated as kings of school.

Before you get there, however, there is still all the ‘positive interaction’ to get through, all the ‘smiles to cut’ (if you don’t know what that means, don’t look to me for answers – there are STILL some law school shenanigans I won’t talk about!), still some sweaty evenings to try ‘climbing’ a two-foot tall bush outside the boy’s hostel, and too many, oh, far too many nights after dinner at the mess to spend playing ‘Bumcharades’ for the benefit of the seniors outside the mess.

There was one particular incident, though, that stuck with me for a long time. Bada was the neighbourhood alcoholic, and the terror of the first-year batch. The resident anarchist of the third-year batch, he made two of us stand in the three-foot wide corridor one day with a flimsy piece of willow in hand, to fend off the wet-tennis-ball bouncers that people hurled our way. All the bowlers on the university team were promised a ten-rupee reward if they got our faces. For some reason, I refused to hook and pull like all the other first years. I decided instead to stand stock still, and wait until the first ball came slamming into my face, to leave the corridor with the seniors jeering at me. I would walk through that valley of silliness with my dignity intact, I thought. When I woke up the next morning, though, I just felt like the world’s biggest idiot.

A second set of project submission followed the first, and this time I decided to quote Murphy’s laws in my History project. I thought I was making path-breaking insights into the links between ol’ Murphy and the theories of Historical study; my History professor thought otherwise, and I ended up just barely passing the course.

At my first set of law school exams, I had the honour of sitting next to the (in)famous Kong, a fifth year who was reputed far and wide as much for his intellect as for his dumbcharade skills. Aside from the fact that he laughed long and hard at the fact that I still carried a pencil-box into the exam hall, and had an eraser with a picture of a fruit on in (upon which he wrote, arousing for a brief moment, suspicion in the Economics professor’s mind that I was cheating) ‘This is my cutey-fruit eraser’, the only effect of the exam was to convince me that all notions I had of serious exams and ethical exam practices were best hurled out of the nearest window.

You see, it was the Fifth-year’s Ethics exam. And I spent most of the two-and-a-half hours that I was stuck in the exam hall admiring the dexterity with which the Fifth years, led by Kong, dumbcharaded the answers to each other.

Right.

Two days on the train, two filthy days, filled with longing to meet S again, and to meet V, Dumbass, and Perks. What would they be like, I wondered? Would life still be the same? Would we still sneak out in V’s dad’s car to watch the planes take off, and splurge on sinful beer cans?

When the train finally pulled into Howrah station, I peered anxiously out of the windows – part of me wanted Dad to be there, and the other, hormonally-driven part, said that wouldn’t be the best idea, what with all these seniors around. You see, Dad is a little given to the hugging habit, and I didn’t really think my seniors would appreciate the fact that an eighteen year-old boy still got hugged when he came home after a break.

The train pulled into the station, and over the next few days, my worst, unstated, fears came true – apart from the fact that Dad insisted on hugging me at the station in front of all my seniors, it turned out that V, Dumbass and Perks weren’t really all that interested in meeting me anymore, for reasons that I am yet to fathom.

Aside from that, I also broke up with S. But all that’s for another week!

Week 5, Part I: What a Hideous Face!

2007-05-09T19:37:00.002+05:30

A leap and jump a month away, but read on...
John Lennon once said that life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.

If you’re in law school, the first project submissions are what happen to you while you’re busy trying to settle in and make friends. You’ve barely had two friends put in place with whom you can talk unabashedly, a couple of sneaked crys on the terrace in the middle of the night because you’re homesick, and just about gotten around to finding your feet, when WHAM! It’s hits you when you weren’t even thinking about looking!

This heavy-handed hammerhead crashes down upon you in the fifth week or so of college. I’d spent most of this time trying to understand Brahma and Varun, my two roommates, and failed miserably. The one decided to bring pink curtains to the room, for some unfathomably fetid reason, and quick sneaks at the other’s diary revealed that the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him was the two-dosa date with a girl called Binsy that he had had in Tiruvananthapuram, in the eleventh class.

What, you’re shocked I read his diary?

Don’t be – that first month of college was spent roving in packs, picking out diaries, letters to girlfriends back home and other such personal sundries, and reading them aloud to crowds of roaring dorm-mates. It was fun, really. And we’re all still friends. Well, most of us, anyway.

So, right, yes, then – the project submissions. Swept away by the wave of academic accountability I had myself nurtured, I’d decided to make a first draft to submit to my teacher, in each of the two projects I had to submit. I made one for my first ever project in law school, and that was the last draft I ever made – the Torts teacher gave it back to me in pristine mint condition, with nary a mark, nor a sign of having read it, remarking only in passing as he returned it: “Yes, gentleman, please make sure your footnoting is all right.”

I would never forget the futility of a first draft again. Additionally, for some strange and unknown reason, the facts of Rylands v. Fletcher were forever carved upon my memory. That first project was, of course, a case review. Trust me, that’s the only law project I ever wasted my time working upon.

The other project was a different ball game altogether. Legal Methods. We were all supposed to do this in groups, and groups there were made, of ten each. Somehow, I ended up with, among others, a skinhead who looked like he wanted to assault anything that moved, and a second person who would later turn out to be the first dropout from our batch.

I was made leader of this oddly little group by default, since no one turned up on the day topics were being assigned. For three weeks, I begged and cajoled my teammates to started working, and subtly insinuated a mention of the impending project submissions into the general dinnertime conversation, to no avail.

On the night before project submissions, I was sitting at my desk, scribbling away furiously on sheets of newly-purchased bond paper (ah, yes! Those glory days when we had hand-written projects!) All other teammates had been suitably warned – submit what you will, but submit something, or else we shall all perish together! I had to get everyone’s modules in, since I had drawn the short straw (read: been the only one who seemed remotely interested in passing my first year) and would have to write the group Introduction, Research Methodology (as if there was one!) and Conclusion. Furtive checks after dinner had shown that the others had finally gone to work.

Alright, then, things seemed under control. It looked like it could happen, theoretically.

And that’s when we heard the first yell.

Our room was in what was then called the ‘M.B.L.’ block, a little set of cement cells that now hosts the godowns of the distance education programme. The driveway was a spit-and-a-half away, and the locked gate of law school at night, only twenty metres and a lifetime away. As a consequence, we heard the story unfold in yells and screams. You see, we first years weren’t allowed out of the hostel to see what one of our own had gotten into.

Word trickled in at last. One of the first years had pushed himself over the edge. A cache of exotic apparatus and even more exotic substances was found in his room later, and the spillage all around indicated that he had decided to try himself a Molotov cocktail equivalent of the substance-abuse world. He then proceeded to try and run out of the gates, got into a scuffle with guards, slapped the main guard, tried to climb over the iron gate, got hit with a lathi, as a result of which he injured his leg, tried to bum a cigarette off the warden who had come running there in his night clothes, climbed up on top of the college bus, and fallen off the top of it.

All of which brought home two lessons to me, fast and ferocious: one, Toto and I weren’t in Kansas anymore, and that such things did happen, and I would now know the people who were involved, and second, that there was no thing in heaven, Earth, or Nagarbhavi that could ensure our project would go in on time the next morning: the boy who’d done this to himself was one of the group that was supposed to submit our project together. And you see, there isn’t much of a group project unless everyone in the group submits on time.

It’d be interesting to see how we’d explain to the Spectacle-chewer the next day that we needed a deadline extension on the project.

Week 1, Part 4: "We Should've Used Protection..."

2007-05-09T19:37:00.001+05:30

Yes, it's back!

Note: Yes, I know it’s been a bloody long time, now shut up, do, and read! Also, I’ve inserted a new word here, which I may use from time to time, since it best describes the way we all used to speak, and since this is my blog, and you have no choice in the matter: you’d’ve, which is basically a portmanteau of – oh, there you go, you can guess it now, come on… that’s right – you, would, and have. Enjoy!

And please don’t ever tell anyone I said this, or they’ll think I’ve gone soft in my old age, but to everyone who’s written in, asking for the revival of this series – thank you! It feels good to know that there are still people out there who like reading trash!

Right. Now, LET THE GAMES BEGIN!!!

After a night battling the first mosquito net I had ever been forced to own, and ten minutes on a filthy throne in the morning, trying hard not to stare back at the frog that sat ten centimetres away from my foot, you’d’ve thought the first day of class would be a breeze, right?

Turns out, you’d’ve been wrong.

(That mosquito net was a different story, though. Since I’d never known how to put one up, I thought it was reasonable instead to just wrap oneself up in it and go to sleep. I looked like a product from the ‘Cut-Rate Mummy Wrappers Company’.)

So then, to class, to class… Eager and young, wide-eyed and curious, one walked in, ready to absorb learning and wisdom, to accept the little pearls that professors would throw before us poor swine from day unto day, and then to emerge wise and learned, ready to change the world of law and all that live in it.

And then, they start you off with this masterpiece:

“Friends… Erm… Ah… Okay, friends... Welcome to Law School. Now, we must start learning law… So.”

And at this moment, Professor Spectacle Chewer stopped, and chewed his spectacles in a manner we would all learn to love and ridicule in the trimesters to come, and stared intently into an indefinable spot somewhere in the middle of the class, as if expecting us all to keel slowly over with awe.

At which time the first head hit the classroom desk in blissful unawareness, and my illusions of the sanctity of ‘lectures’ shattered forever.

“Friends… What is law?”

Right. So I bust my ass over three thousand nine hundred and twenty other idiots over a ridiculous entrance exam to get in here, make my father pay out of his nose for you to teach me, and YOU get to ask all the stupid questions?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this supposed to be the other way around? Aren’t you the people who’re supposed to tell me about this ‘law’ brand monkey wrench and how the damn thing works?

But I decided to take the question in the spirit of things. After all, this was my first day in law school, and a chance to hop over to the academically sound side of town, with shiny, happy, high grades, and all. That, and the fact that this was the first time I was ever in a ‘co-ed’ class, and the sight of so many young women my age in the same room was making my hormones rage around faster and thicker than three whirling dervishes in a Siberian blizzard. Let’s impress them, shall we?!!

I raised a tentative hand skywards, volunteering an answer.

After the first few answers, I told that tentative hand to shut the *bleep* up and come back to ground level.

“Law is a system of rules and procedures formulated to regulate the governance and functioning of society”, said one. What? I don’t think I’d ever thought a sentence that long with such long words ever in my life!

“It is a reflection of the polity, their hopes, aspirations and desires, and a outcry of the common man’s need for justice”, said another. Oh please! You’re eighteen, and you know words like polity? And oh, here’s a handkerchief – go bandage that bleeding heart of yours!

“When my twelfth board results came out and we all went to the school to see the marks, there was a huge crowd and nobody could get there to read the marks properly, and my grandmother was with me, and she shouted at everyone and made them get in line, and then they got in line, and then we could all see the marks. That is law.”

I swear to you, this one actually happened. And would you think it ironical if I were to tell you that this particularly adroit response was from a person who not only left the law school with some of the highest grades in our class, but also distinguished herself at one of those English Universities on the banks of a river, and is now herself an inflictor of the ‘What is law?’ and other such sundry questions herself?

I’d had enough. I’d run the five hundred metres to the nearest phone booth, call my dad, who was still in town, and beg to be taken back home with him. That, or I could just make friends with that fellow in the last bench who was fast asleep, and take my chances with the mosquito nets and the frogs.

I settled for the latter.

Week 1, Part 2: By GOD, it's ugly!

2007-05-09T19:36:00.000+05:30

Day one in the hostel.

Ever since I started this series, throngs of eager readers have been lining up outside my door, grappling for space with the hordes of publishers who want to be the first print a book with these words in it.

Sigh… There’s no harm in dreaming, is there? Anyhowdyho, for those of you who are too ignorant to understand the classification of posts in this blog, and have been asking me why ‘3.some1’ is mixed up with other posts, here’s a helpful hint: look at the category marker in each post – if it’s marked ‘3.some1’, it’s a continuation of this story – if ‘General’, it’s exactly that.

Onwards and upwards, then:

Having left the debacle of the interview behind us, we proceeded to the hostel the next day, and I met my new roommates.

Often, on lonely evenings spent beside fireplaces (I know, I know that’s impossible in the balmy environs of Calcutta and Bombay, but it makes for a nice picture!) I’ve rued that very day, and wished I never had met those two fine specimens of despicable depravity, but alas…what is done, they say, is done… And I will always be the greater person for it, for having lived through the trials and tribulations that these two gentlemen thrust upon me daily for the next five years.

Mr. Brahma K. Jerome. A Bangalore boy, born and bred, but you wouldn’t know it to look at him. Thin, spindly, and with all the steadfastness that you would associate with a house of cards in a strong wind – he looked like the kind of person that hospital matrons would put warning signs around, asking people not to sneeze within a ten-foot radius, for fear of having him blown away in the four cardinal directions. And the long-lost scion of the British Raj, filled with the belief that it was completely acceptable to use phrases such as ‘chipper’ and ‘mate’ in normal, everyday conversation.

Mr. Varun Roy V. From the heartland of God’s own country, a creature with a visage that would shake any mortal courage to its very roots, striking fear into the hearts of any mere man. And a smile that would suddenly burst upon his face, dazzling you for minute or two – so that when you finally regained your eyesight, he would have finished whatever treacherous act he was planning to accomplish.

Nice guys, nonetheless – Brahma helped me put up my mosquito net, a contraption that befuddled my meagre mental resources, and Varun helped finish all the goodies that Dad had bought for me when I was shifting in – two one-and-a-half litre bottles of ThumsUp, three bags of chips, and two chocolate bars. He explained that I probably wouldn’t have room enough to keep all these things in the half-cupboard space that we’d each been allotted, and that it didn’t make sense to let all that good food go to waste. Very well, then.

Somehow, I managed to put everything away in the place I’d been allotted – half a steel cupboard, and a cabinet in the steel desk. My trunk sat locked and tucked away beneath my bed, and my table lamp stood bright and ready on my desk, waiting in eager anticipation of the brilliant legal hypotheses I would no doubt come up with over the next few weeks. Keep waiting.

As the three of us sauntered around campus over the next couple of hours, trying to get to know the place, and each other, I rapidly realised that I was trying the impossible. Nay, not the impossible, for it was possible to know these two creatures, but they were as the phantasmagoria of Greek Mythology, who, once you looked upon them long enough, would turn you to stone and steal your very soul. I decided to leave well enough alone and concentrate on avoiding the few straggling seniors that haunted campus the day before class began, no doubt there early to give ‘repeats’ and ‘improvements’. I assured myself mentally that I would never let myself fall in such a position. I look back on that resolution fondly now, and shake my head at my youthful folly of taking on such mammoth resolutions, which I failed miserably at keeping – but that’s another story, for another day.

Dad landed up at six, as he said he would, and asked whether I’d like to go to town for a last dinner before he left. I wanted to jump up and down and scream “Yes, yes, yes!”, but Brahma and Varun were with me, and I couldn’t let them know on the first day I met them that I was just a fear-struck kid out of home for the first time, could I? So I mumbled a reply, looked around for a bit, and then said in a slightly irritated tone “Yeah, sure, whatever.”

Over dinner, Dad tried to put on a grandfatherly air (having recently ascended to this qualification courtesy of my elder sister, I found him revelling in this new role quite often.)

“Stay away from drugs,” he said, “and cigarettes and booze, and most of all, women of loose character. Use these five years to build your future and your career. You’re on your own now, and I trust that you will use this time to become an example to everyone else of what hard work and dedication can achieve.”

I put down the tandoori roti that I was mangling, and let the butter chicken be for a bit. I looked up at Dad, gearing myself to put on my best ‘yeah, whatever’ expression, when I noticed the ends of his mouth twitching in a most un-grandfatherly manner. A twinkle of the eyes, then a hearty laugh, and he burst out:

“Or, you can use these five years to have a blast, and make some of the best friends you will ever have! I hope no son of mine ever chooses the first option of hard work!”

For the second time in as many days, I found myself restraining myself from jumping across and hugging him. He made things easier for me, though, leaned across the table, and slapped me heartily on the back.

As I spluttered food all over the table, he asked for the bill.

We said our uncomfortable male-ego-hampered goodbyes, he headed to the hotel, and I headed back to campus.

First day of class tomorrow. Better get some sleep.

Week 1, Part 1: ‘I can see the head!’

2007-05-09T19:34:00.000+05:30

One foot in the grave...

It didn’t really make a difference. It was going to be a fresh start for everyone, right? I mean, who cared about what somebody had or had not done in school? As far as college was concerned, we were all going to start off on a fresh note. I’d show them what I was made of! After all, I had come tenth in the entrance exams, which meant that I was probably the tenth smartest person in the class, right? Ha! Academic fame and excellence would finally replace the infamy and mediocrity that had marked my mark sheet for fourteen years of schooling!

HA!

Bangalore. Green all around, cool breezes, and a sky that never seemed able to make up its mind – it rained and stopped, and just as I thought it wouldn’t happen again, would start up all over again. I loved it already! And the sights and sounds of MG and Brigade were, to a country bumpkin such as I, astounding! My Dad and I scouted around for the famed pubs, and spent a nice, drunken afternoon together. He decided to start regaling me with stories of his college days. I decided to switch off and order another beer.

After scouting around the previous day, we managed to reach Law School in time for the interview – the cab we’d hired from the hotel broke down halfway through. My first encounter with the drunken auto drivers of Bangalore resulted. Fine. We’d live, we thought. We’d pay through our noses to have him wait outside Law School while I interviewed for my future, but we’d live. No issues.

The waiting room next to the interview hall was filled with prospective law schoolites, and their adoring parents. Every direction I looked in was filled with these smart-type looking people, but I just kept telling myself I needn’t worry – I would take them on easily. I had what it took. All I had to do was keep my head down now, and mumble the occasional ‘Hello… My name is Bhavin… I’m from Calcutta… Where are you from?’ and I’d be fine, just fine. And then, disaster struck.

My Dad decided to be gregarious and meet the parents that filled the room. Conversations resulted. He found a fellow smoker, and with broad grins, both fine gentlemen stepped out of campus to light their respective cancer sticks. Leaving me alone to fend against the pairs and pairs of eyes that suddenly turned towards me.

I ran to the canteen for a coffee.

Our turn to face the firing squad (or that’s what I thought it would be) finally came up, and we walked into a room with two chairs sat at a discreet distance from three tables set up in a crude semi-circle, surrounded on the outside by chairs filled with college-professor-type people. The Director introduced himself. The warden did, too. The Political Science professor, then. The History professor took one look at me, sniffed haughtily and turned towards her papers.

‘Why,’ the Director then asked me, ‘do you want to be a lawyer?’

Umm… Err… Because I have no idea what else to do with my life?

Because I hate both engineering and medicine, and there really aren’t that many other options for a science student without good grades?

Because I don’t want to do commerce, and money and I never really understood each other?

Because I know these really cool seniors from school who’re at Law School and I want to grow up and be like them?

Because I can go to Law School, pretend to be smart, and not worry about a future for the next five years?

I munched over these options in my mind, and discarded them all. I came up with this gem, then:

‘Because so many of our greatest freedom fighters have been lawyers, and I want to join a profession that has produced so many leaders. In fact,’ I said, as I was warming up to my first act of freewheeling-bullshitting in Law School, ‘even Sardar Patel, who is from my village in Gujarat,’ (my father raised a discreet eyebrow at this) ‘ was a lawyer, and I intend to carry on that tradition for my country and my village.’

Ah. The History professor looked up from her papers for a brief instant, snarled at me and went back to her papers. The Political Science professor started sniggering. The Warden just looked bored and started staring out of the window. The Director then said:

‘Really? Very interesting. Very large feet you must have. To fill the large shoes of your predecessors.’ (I wanted to tell him he sounded like a complete idiot, but decided against it.) ‘But tell me, Sardar Patel was not a lawyer, then why you are saying all this?’

I was stunned for a moment. Would my first act of bravado fall flat? Wasn’t he a lawyer? I turned to my Dad, but my Dad just continued beaming his fake smile at the Warden. Small beads of sweat broke out on my forehead. I had just opened my mouth to beg forgiveness, when the History professor looked up from her papers again. This was it, I thought. I’m done for. Gone. A budding legal career nipped in the bud.

She turned to look at the Director, and said ‘Actually, Professor, he was.’

‘Oh, okay,’ said the Director and looked away.

The History professor looked back and… was that my imagination, or was that a smile playing on her face? I liked her, I decided.

‘Right, then’ said the Warden, who finally had something to do, ‘we have full hostel facilities and are very strict about discipline. I hope you don’t intend to give your son a two-wheeler or something in the first year itself, Mr. Patel!’

‘He’s had a motorcycle for two years already, and if he asks me to send it to him in Bangalore, then I definitely will. I trust his judgement completely, and am sure he won’t misuse it. You can rest assured on that.’

Stunned silence, yet again. What had just happened? Could this be true? Dad? He said this? Seriously?!! No shit! Bloody hell! It was my turn to beam from ear to ear now, and I could hardly sit still in the chair! For the first time since I hit puberty, I wanted to jump up and hug him! Bloody-blinking-hell!

‘Hrrumph. Fine, then. Do you have questions from us, now, Mr. Patel?’ said the Warden, whose gruntle had obviously been quite comprehensively dis-ed!

I looked up proudly at my father. What would he ask? What wonder would he come up with next? What brilliant insight into hostel life had he carried from his own experiences at an engineering college in the 60’s that would come romping to my rescue now?

‘Do you have dhobi facility in the hostel?’

Right…

Thanks, Dad. But it’s alright – those fifty seconds of fame were enough. My father and the warden then indulged in a heated two-minute debate on whether washing your own clothes built character or not, while the rest of waited for this farce to finish.

‘Okay, okay, thank you Mr. Patel. You can go now. Bhavin, tomorrow you will be assigned your hostel room, and you will have your Orientation.’

I ran out of the interview room, my Dad sauntered out, and throughout the long journey back to the hotel, and all through the evening, my Dad couldn’t, for the life of him, figure out why exactly I didn’t want to talk to him about the whole interview.

3.some1: Who cares what you do at Law School?!!

2007-05-09T19:32:00.000+05:30

Who cares what you do at Law School?!!

If Chetan Bhagat can do it, so can we. Starting today, a series of posts on Portmanteau, on life at law school, as I knew it. The writing may or not be autobiographical – it’s difficult not to get personal about some of the best years of your life, but this could probably be anyone, at any law school in the country. I’ll try and make it contemporary, but the idea is not a guide for everyday living – it’s a look back, a small nostalgic trip. Memories fade with time, so those of you who are patient enough to follow this little series – I’d love it if you comment whenever you can, letting me know of incidents, what’s happening in law schools, and where I may or may not be going wrong – let’s write this together!

Week 0, Part I: Pre-Labour Pangs

The real shit started hitting the emotional fan even before I left for Bangalore.

How in the bloody hell was I supposed to pack up my whole life into one black trunk and a suitcase? I’d lived in the same house, in the same city, for all my eighteen years of existence. And now suddenly, I was supposed to take everything I needed to live in an absolutely unknown, unfathomably different place for the next five years! I did what every good Indian boy does in a situation such as this: I called in the professional – mom!

Lists were made, items scratched out, and re-inserted. Everything I thought I would possibly need was bought, and in overabundance – mom wasn’t going to take any chances! Clothes, (God! I was glad to get rid of the school uniform, but there was no way in hell I had enough clothes to wear to class everyday!) notebooks, stationery… There just was no easy way to do this! And every time I put something into the list, a voice told me I was being an idiot, and would be laughed out of the building by all the hostel-living stalwarts who would no doubt be in the same dorm as I – and every time I scratched something out, another, equally irritating voice told me I was going to rue not having carried that coffee mug I’d grown so fond of during my one-month preps for law school! Fuggetaboutit. I’d rather spend my time meeting all my friends for one last time before I went off to the wars, and leave all these important things to mom!

Vivek (‘V’), Rahul (‘Dumbass’), Prakash (‘Perks’) and I. Quite the riot act around school, especially in the last year, when all of us flashed our ‘senior’ tags around with reckless disregard for the junior bachchus, and some of us flashed our prefects’ ties around at all the guards, just to get out of school at lunch-time. A bike and a scooter between the four of us, and there were incidents and accidents enough to spend many evenings before the fireplace with all our grandchildren, regaling them with tales of horror and idiocy! But when you’re eighteen, and male, how can you say goodbye properly without thinking to yourself that you’re being a poofy jerk? So, late-night movies and cans of beer in V’s dad’s car, pulled over by the side of the road to the airport, watching the planes take off. One can, of course, was more than enough to get me high, a novice to the world of alcohol as I was, and the words came pouring out. Soon enough, these sessions would end in mildly-depressed, quite chats, where we’d solemnly swear to be bikers forever, to come back to Calcutta after we finished ‘educating’ ourselves, and to live here forever, to be beer drinkers forever, to remain friends forever.

The next morning, none of us would acknowledge the fact that any of those words had ever been spoken.

And then, there was S. Six months of chatting on the phone, furtive meetings over cups of coffee that neither of us could afford, and stolen bike rides over the new Hooghly Bridge. And nothing to show for it – not in male terms, at least! She hadn’t said yes, I hadn’t asked the question, and neither of us had the guts to admit that there may have been something more than ‘friendship’ in this, after all. And three days left before I left for Bangalore. Uncertainty was the order of the day.

And what about the next five years? Living in a hostel? Having to study hard? Having to face the prospect of four batches of seniors, waiting with fangs bared and dripping blood, claws out and beady little lawyerly eyes furtively seeking the nearest fresher, to rag the living daylights out of the unsuspecting new victims? How in the hell was I supposed to be able to handle any of that?

If something hadn’t start making sense right around then, I would have completely and comprehensively lost it.

And that’s when the penny dropped.

2007-05-04T19:58:00.000+05:30

Right. So. Here we go.

Statistics show that most bloggers fall along the wayside by their third post, or second week, whichever comes first. Averse as I am to becoming yet another statistic, I decided that my fate would be dissimilar. I would not let my blog suffer a similar fate – it would not be discontinued!

Instead, the blogging platform was.

For those who saw me (under the rather unseemly title of 'portmanteau' at Blogfather, hello again.

For those who just stumbled across this for the first time, and told themselves:

“My, what an interesting name! Let’s see what the fellow write about!”

Hail, fellow! Well met!

Stay buckled in for more such inanities!