In most crappy movies (looking at you, Lagaan), there is an increasingly common and tremendously infuriating plot device called a Deus Ex Machina. To put it simply (that is, to plagiarise a definition), a Deus Ex Machina is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly resolved by an unexpected intervention of a new event. Its function can be to resolve an otherwise irresolvable plot situation, to surprise the audience, to bring the tale to a happy ending, or act as a comedic device. A very relatable example of this is Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, (because you shits don’t watch good cinema) where everyone’s backed into a corner and doesn’t know what to do, when the Sword of Godric Gryffindor appears out of a fucking hat and suddenly the climax is resolved in favour of the good guys. A Deus Ex Machina is infuriating, but it’s something you root for regardless.

We’re all sold a Deus Ex Machina moment when we enter law school. You’re given a license to mess around for three years, “explore yourself” and “do what you love”, because regardless of what happens, on the climactic day of Day Zero, the sorting hat of RCC will give you a Trilegal job to slay the basilisk of insecurity and emerge triumphant into the outside world with a good job, samaaj mein izzat, and a high-performing matrimonial/Tinder profile.

Except it’s not true.

Flashback to asking a senior for advice on attendance makeup in your first year. There were twenty precautionary directions given to you to ensure that Padma passed it – you had to figure out which hours you’d missed, whose signatures you needed, which proof you had to attach (e-tickets don’t work! You need a boarding pass!) and the last-last day after which your lost attendance would forever go down the drain. You were told that if you didn’t follow these strict guidelines, you’d be spending the next few weeks of your life at the mercy of The Manjappa. (The Manjappa is a recurring character through law school, and requires timely human sacrifices to keep at bay). You would experience purgatory if you didn’t follow these instructions. So you did, and your makeup (almost) always got passed.

Flash forward to what they tell you about Day Zero – they don’t. There is a world of precautionary advice about Day Zero that every junior should receive, but no one ever does. We’ve pedestalised Day Zero into this fuddu procedural happening that just works to everyone’s benefit and requires minimal, if any, effort. We have, in law school’s cultural consciousness, managed to make Day Zero literally sound like less work than a makeup form.

What they do tell you, is that everyone who wants a job, gets one. That’s the big lie. Sartre makes this point about the two modes of consciousness, which basically involves questioning everything you know. If you questioned this “big lie”, you’d understand that nothing the seniors tell you is true. The basis for our collective belief in the omnibenevolence of Day Zero is built solely on anecdotal evidence. Since Nayan got 4 jobs in spite of his CGPA, everyone will get 4 jobs in spite of their CGPA. It’s believable, too, because from your first year, you only hear about the people who got jobs. The narrative is one solely of success. It is entirely possible that the one job you saw that friendly senior get, happened only because the interviewing partner knew him from before and had a friendly rapport with him. But no one talks about this. The façade of success is used to mask the ugly bits of the process.

This façade of success becomes a part of your identity as well. Think about it – you nailed CLAT, you were probably on some hoardings in your town, uncles and aunties told their kids to be like you. You’re used to the world being your oyster. You’re told consistently, by drunk seniors, internship bosses and by India Today that everyone loves NLS. Somehow, by virtue of being in this college, you’re granted automatic entry into any firm you want. You’re literally sold the notion that Tier 1 firms are Khokhar and you’re Bhai (aka Sallu aka Salman Bhai aka the BLAcK BuCk KiLLeR ~). Ask a senior before Day Zero about it, and they’ll tell you, “you’re smart, don’t worry”, as if these firms just wanna chill out with a smart dude they like over a couple of beers and are not looking for an obedient employee they can safely invest a few lakhs in every year.

As a consequence of this hype machine, there are a few things you expect on Day Zero. First of all, you expect a job. And a job isn’t just a contract, it’s a safety net for the next few years. You expect a solution to life. Let’s be real, none of us know what we want to do. A job with a Tier 1 firm is just the perfect Deus Ex Machina for now, something to take back home from this place, something to rely on if all your other fanciful plans fail. If nothing else, it serves as validation – knowing that someone wants you so much that they’re willing to pay fifteen lakhs a year for your time.

With the security of a job, comes an expectation of celebration at the end of Day Zero. Even before the interviews were over, three different groups of people had asked me about leftover NLSD alcohol. By the end of the day, only one needed it. All of us woke up that morning expecting the day to end well, to finally be able to get a huge load off our shoulders, to relax after a few weeks (months? years?) of excruciating uncertainty. Day Zero was sold to us as a magic pill, which would serve as instant atonement to our law school sins. After all, all’s well that ends well, right?

Nope.

Let’s ditch the outcome aspect of Day Zero for now. Forget the job-at-the-end-of-the-day part of it. Let’s focus, for a little while, on the physical process that Day Zero puts you through. Here’s a short, nasty, brutish (sup Hobbes) walk through your Day Zero. If you’re a Mukta, you’ll be up at 6:30, worrying yourself silly. You’ll spend twenty minutes in the shower, struggle through half a bowl of cornflakes, and polish your shoes with makeup wipes. If you’re a Nigam, you’ll wake up at 8:45 to a fully dressed Aatreya, skip pooping (and breakfast), dress yourself with 2/3 borrowed items and polish your shoes with your sock.

Regardless of who you are, it’s never a good start to the day. But it gets worse – as you get to the RCC “control room” (bureaucrats…), you’ll find that you now have 4 consecutive hours of group discussions lined up. Look, everyone appreciates the effort RCC puts into scheduling such a hectic day. But all it takes for everyone’s world to turn upside down is one partner leaving his house a bit late because he wanted to watch the remaining segment of Arnab Goswami from last night, and suddenly, 4 of your group discussions are happening at the same time. Even if GD’s were peaceful, fun, discursive processes, it doesn’t take a Jessup finalist to know that maintaining any semblance of sanity during this time is close to impossible.

GD’s are bad. They’re a space where you are physically pitted against your peers – you either win or you go home. As if law school weren’t competitive enough already. The stakes are higher now than ever before, and your fellow Day Zero competitors would sooner drop dead than back down. The only thing you’re realistically being tested on is your ability to talk about redundant BS like “Corporate Governance: Too Much or Too Little?” as if the topic was chosen by the same person who chose topics for that 5^th grade elocution competition.

Only those who survive this round (based on the arbitrary discretion of an HR guy and a partner who clearly doesn’t care) will even be allowed to proceed to an interview. Did you know that? We didn’t.

Let’s suppose the Day Zero Gods look upon you favorably that day and bestow you with the ultimate gift of an interview. You’re not ready for this bro. We all learn to lie a bit here and there. But nobody prepares you for the intense exercise in fiction that’s about to ramrod you in the face. You are now sitting 2 feet away from a 40 year old businessman, and telling him that your greatest weakness is that you work too hard. Even the most gullible of 4 year olds would listen to you and say “kya faff kal laha hai”.

This pleasant experience ends at the RCC Podium of Jobs. Like the Goblet of Fire, each “firm head” on RCC will ceremoniously cut open a top-secret job envelope and excruciatingly write the names of the lucky ones, slowly, on a board, one at a time. With every firm, the room gets a bit underwhelmed. The dementor of Tier 1 firms is set to work. Of course, not to take away from the moments of genuine joy and celebration that exist for so many, but it’s constantly juxtaposed with heartbreak for your closest friends.

One thing is universal. There’s a certain feeling of dread that will hit you at some point during the day. If you’re a Mukta, it’ll be right after you bomb your first GD, only thirty minutes into Day Zero. If you’re a Nigam, it could be when you’re waiting for results and realise that maybe “being real” wasn’t the best interview strategy. Regardless of when it hits you, at some point, the rug will be pulled from under your feet. You’ll have to find the words for that phone call back home where you tell your parents it just didn’t work out. All the vulnerabilities and insecurities that only existed as distant concepts are going to crystallise in your self-perception, and it’s not going to be easy. It’s not a gunshot wound to the head (sup Cobain), it’s being thrown into an incinerator and watching yourself burn to ashes.

The reason you’re told to not care about the process is because you’re told the process cares about you. Maybe it used to – but it certainly doesn’t anymore. Nobody who got a job will deny that luck played a huge role in how things turned out. What we can tell you, as survivors of the process, but also as people who barely scraped through, is that it could be rewarding, it could be joyous and it could be heartbreaking. It’s important to be prepared for all of those things. But know that five years from now, Day Zero is something you’ll look back and laugh at. You may not get the abrupt solution this Deus Ex Machina promised, but maybe this one’s just a comedic device.

One of the side-effects of living away in a small, gated community isolated from urban civilization by dense patches of forest and bad roads is that it is easy to form toxic and often co-dependent attachments to others living within the same community. This is especially because a lot of us do not have access to home, hence we rely upon rank outsiders, about whose childhood and real background we have no information, to perform the functions expected of family members in situations of joy, grief, distress etc. This gets compounded by the fact that unlike the rest of the student community in the country, we have a degree course extending for five years. Hence while our school friends have already stepped over the precipice of adulthood and begun to form professional networks, we are forced to spend our entire late adolescence and early adulthood interacting with the same group of people prior to graduation. These relationships start out with bitching about History consults and Eco problems outside Chetta, graduate to the level of firming for Univs or drunkenly making out at a quad party, and finally concretize in the form of conspiring to indulge in committee politics and committing various disciplinary infractions together.

Now, since your insecure little first-year ass had zero discretion and sense of judgement in the matter of choosing people to hang out with, it is natural that you clung to the first person who showed interest in you and promised to fill the void that Mummy and Daddy had left behind. This could be the charming SBA office bearer who pointed out a talent you never knew existed, the charismatic senior who PI’d you mercilessly and then compensated you with a generous treat, the outgoing hostel-mate who was too cool and confident to take stress over pithy things like assignments on post-modernism, or the attractive batchmate/senior who was ready to hormonally disrupt all your PG-13 High School Musical notions of romance or some combination of all of the above. You were so in infatuation/adoration/worship with this person that you at multiple times sacrificed your academics/personal notions of comfort and discomfort/time and most importantly sleep, to fulfil their commands. You ran election campaigns, you cleaned up their vomit, you consoled them after their 999th breakup, you lost your virginity, you paraphrased their projects and cited their memos. You ignored allegations of manipulation, fraud, sexual harassment and other unchivalrous behaviour made against them-they were as spotless as Italian marble in your eyes.

However, all Gods must fall, and yours did too. It got harder and harder to ignore the whispers of wrongdoing made when people thought you were out of earshot, the accusations of being a ‘pet’ or a ‘plaything’, and the hours of emotional labour you invested in this person only to be rewarded with aloofness, sudden anger and/or unwarranted bouts of anger/loneliness. You were basically a Relationship Dishrag (‘RD’). You perform the same function that a broom and mop does in a house-you take all the dirt and grime, absorb all of the other person’s excesses and get nothing in return.

The RD’s greatest fear, and the reason they continue to subject themselves to hurtful treatment at the hands of somebody who has learnt very well how to exploit them is that ‘oh well, nobody else will love me the same.’ Everybody feels this in some deep corner of their heart, but the RD is particularly convinced that they are a flawed individual and if they have been mistreated it is on account of mistakes on their part and not due to any fault in their Lord and Master. (I can’t believe they picked out a Jhaadu like me! Oh my god! Such good fortune for a broom!) Every time the RD is hurt they tell themselves they must ‘Give another chance’ because after all, the said person was very helpful in getting them good grades/a coveted Convenorship/a speaker slot in a moot team or some random entry on their CV which they will never care about 10 years later, or simply because they feel the said person is the mythical Love of Their Life. This is compounded by the fact that lawyers rarely see the world in black-and-white terms; we are trained to give benefit of doubt to the accused. Besides, can a Pocha really complain?

The only advice I can give you is simply to leave. Yeah, of course, it’s not going to be easy. It is probable that each insecurity you have ever confided in the person will be weaponized and turned against you, your reputation may be maligned; your friends may say ‘I told you so’ and refuse to extend any sympathy and you may feel worse than you did while you were in the relationship. It’s okay. If you can’t handle detachment from somebody who is ultimately every bit as flawed and inconsequential as you are, possibly even more, then things are going to be very difficult when you leave law school if your Jhaadu Master allows you to graduate in one piece that is. You may experience regret over the fact that you wasted half a decade on this person, but your life has not ended, the same way the fact that you did not do anything particularly great in law school doesn’t mean you won’t achieve anything later. It’s okay if you leave this place without getting placed at a Tier-1 Law firm, or getting 20 gold medals, or becoming the SBA President, but if you leave with your personality and self-esteem reduced to that of a sodden piece of washing cloth, that will be your greatest loss.

Here’s a parable about inefficient government that I am sure all of you have heard – The government wants to employ three people to plant trees. One man to dig holes in the ground, the second to plant seeds in the holes, and the third to fill the hole up after the second is done. After a week of work, the second guy quits his job but the other two continue doing theirs – one man digs a hole and the other fills it up.

It’s easy to see how this plays out in college too. We see pathways being laid that go nowhere at all, buildings being built for god knows who, a lawn that was laid for people to drink on, security guards to stop people from drinking on the lawn, and a ‘book cafe’ (or whatever it is they’re calling it now) so that people study on the lawn instead of drinking on it. There is also fountain that was redone seven times in the five years that I have been in college, each time with new lights that get successively uglier, and fish that keep dying only to get replaced by ones that die faster. (Maybe we should just use the fountain to grow fish the way the gym grows rabbits and hand them over to the mess; we’ll have fresher fish that way.)  We have continued to adhere to hostel rules that prevent people from having sex but built a “learning centre” that is used for nothing but that. None of this is cheap – a mail from the erstwhile president of the Student Bar Association stated that the estimated cost of the cafe is thirteen lakh rupees. For everything else, we are left to estimate the costs ourselves.

For a while we were happy blaming the erstwhile estate officer for all the pointless construction; attributing it to an elaborate scheme to rob the college of its bank balance to line his own pockets. I do not believe any of that ever happened – he was one of the sweetest people that I have ever spoken to. However when I suggested this, I was told that I needed to have more proof if I wanted to disprove one of the most commonly accepted things in college. Thus, I added it to the list of things that I wanted to prove before I graduated – a list that includes proving that Rohini serves chicken and not crows, and proving that it’s ‘tort’ and not ‘torts’.

But today, I stand validated. Even after the estate officer has retired, the construction continues and we have got more funding than ever being pumped into redeveloping our campus. The sports committee is going to relay the basketball court (for the football league of course), the football ground is being modified to host parties, and the party lawn in front of the library is being turned into a study-space. All of this while we opened three new eateries because the mess wasn’t enough, bought two roti makers to cook more rotis, and then developed a disposal system because we were cooking too much food. We also made our campus completely disability-friendly by destroying two of the showers on the ground floor of Cauvery to build only one in their place – I do not understand how stench alleviates the plight of the handicapped. I have barely scratched the surface here – I haven’t even gotten to the online consumer mediation centre.

You will notice that several of the projects I mentioned here are student-driven and not a part of an elaborate money making scheme cooked up by the cunning college administration – the same cunning administration that hasn’t figured out how to use plagiarism software in five years (I wonder how much we’re paying for that). So, it is not the admin alone who is responsible for the cash that we’re blowing up; students are as culpable.

All of this may anger some of you. You may think that funds have simply been wasted away. You may wonder how many international trips we could have sponsored for our various “nego-champs” (*insert laugh emoji*) using this money. You may think that all of this has been pointless. But I beg to differ and I think there is a larger point to all of it.

Building things gives us something to do. We are driven to do all of this by the same instinct that makes us begin drinking in the evening, getting even more drunk at night, waking up in the morning with a hangover, spending the afternoon getting rid of the hangover, and begin drinking in the evening once again. Razing things down and building them up all over again gives purpose and meaning to our lives. It gives us something to talk about through the day and most importantly, it gives us the satisfaction that we have done something with our time on earth.  So the next time you think about mocking the MGNREGA for digging holes and filling them up, take a moment to wonder if it’s so preposterous after all.

“She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl”.

The words of Gillian Flynn often disturbed me. Maybe because it was the most blunt, honest characterization of millions of women, echoed by a psychotic yet genius woman (watch Gone Girl). Primarily because to my absolute horror, it was like a checklist I had ticked several points off for a couple of years after coming to NLS.

It’s difficult to clarify these things in your head. To my mind, I had always been a feminist. There was no question that I was not okay with sandwich jokes, but maybe I didn’t have to make a big deal out of it every time and give everyone “BT”. Maybe it was fine for me to simply give a small smile, but no encouragement. After all, these were my friends and I knew they weren’t sexist. What’s the harm?

The harm is what the Cool Girl does to you, internally and outwardly. Outwardly, you take convenient stances when it comes to your friends. You emphasize on context and shift focus from the issue to technicalities. Which is the problem in the way that so many of us reacted to the Vedica controversy last year – we caught up on the technicalities on how they had gone wrong, ignoring the subtle but important point that AoW tried to make. The Cool Girl unquestionably takes away from the fight that needs to be fought.

But the internal cost of being a Cool Girl at NLS is so much more. It is constantly second guessing yourself, and how interesting you are. It’s telling yourself that you must adopt the loud Delhi boy humour, as opposed to the quiet sardonic humour you possess right now. It is nudging yourself into situations and interests and activities that are not you, but they’re the understanding of cool.

It is circumventing your feelings and wishes in any relationship, tailoring your interests to the boy-man so that he likes you and enjoys spending time with you – after all, he has to if you’re one of the boys right? His friends MUST think you’re cool, never mind the personal discomfort you’re in by stifling your opinion and reactions. Creating a scene at Chetta, confronting your boyfriend and then becoming the talk of the entire college? Nah, the Cool Girl is a secure, hot woman, who quietly drinks her beer.

So should we stop drinking beer and devouring pizzas and wearing the clothes we think we like? I think it would be trivializing the issue to say that these traits should all be abandoned with immediate gusto. Mainly because they shouldn’t be allowed to be “masculine traits” to begin with. I, along with dozens of women I know, love beer and burping. That’s not something women should be apologizing for.

But then how does one even begin to break out of this trend?

I started by speaking. And speaking unashamedly. Phrases I often found myself adopting before were “I don’t entirely agree with you, but you are entitled to your opinion” or “I don’t think the way to change people’s minds is to shame them”. The latter I’ve found is the key to entrenching sexism in law school. And it’s a statement that every Cool Girl makes, because remember, you cannot be angry — you must smile in a chagrined manner. You will be congratulated for being rational and reasonable and calm. God forbid that you nag or boss or scold or do anything that isn’t chill.

Which brings me to “CHILL”. The eternal comeback given to every woman in law school who raises her voice, especially on matters of equality, but even on anything at all. If you are conscientious about your work, if you don’t want to spend your night lazing with contraband on the field, if you just don’t get Rick and Morty, if you don’t grin at pussy or sandwich jokes – congratulations, you’re no longer chill.  This isn’t to say that I have a problem with the women who choose to engage in these things (well, except the last) but the issue is that it has become a way to limit and classify people. And yes, this constrains guys too. But I’ve found it to be a massive driving force in the way that especially women behave on campus. We already function in a competitive environment where the community is so close knit that gossip travels faster than through the Internet. This exacerbates the issues that so many women on campus face in the way they see themselves. You’re a slut, or you’re boring. You’re an irrational Vedica, or you’re an apologist Cool Girl. We’ve devised our own set of stultifying labels and roles for women on campus, and if you leave law school with your self confidence intact after 5 years, it’s a genuine miracle.

The Cool Girl has internalized these labels, adopted them as a part of her personality, thereby creating a vogue of being chill, and ergo, being quiet. In many ways, the Cool Girl is a modern variant of the age-old gender role of requiring women to be meek-mannered and wordless. Today, her voice is constrained not by a requirement to be quiet, but to be chill.

From someone who’s recently started breaking away, to the dozens I know are unsure of themselves. I can give you a sermon like I’ve had an epiphany and could write a self-help book (typical law schoolite obviously). But I’d rather just end by saying that maybe you won’t overhaul the patriarchy in law school, but you’ll definitely end up happier once you dump the Cool Girl.

Love,

A Proud Non-Cool Girl

Over the last year and a half, NLS has experienced waves of feminist movements. While a large part of it can be attributed to the Alliance of Oversensitive Women (AoW) for concerted efforts towards ensuring that sexism on campus becomes a central issue, a big push has also come from other different corners, be it the 4th year RCC class amending its RCC rules to out sexual harassment convicts to potential employers or the 3rd year girls standing up against the internalized culture of silence amongst the boys of the batch. I personally believe that the time is ripe for another gender norm at NLS to break which is,  women not running for the office of the Student Bar Association.

In the last two decades, SBA has had only 3 women Presidents and two Vice-Presidents. While I do not have the data for all the candidates who contested in this period, in the span of 2013-17, there have only been 2 women candidates, and both of them assumed office. (Shrishti, 2014, President and Shraddha, 2016, Vice-President) It is not my claim that there  should always be a woman office bearer and definitely not that one gender in office is better than the other. Instead, this is an exhortation to those women on the edge or even those thousands of metres behind the ‘laxman rekha’ as to why they should take the plunge this election season. I’ll attempt to do that by reflecting on the decisions I made during my term to highlight how the functioning of the office can be impacted by gender.

Decision making is gendered

AoW, upon its formation called out sexist comments made on campus via posters on the 19 (1) (a) notice board. It sparked a heated conversation as those who the statements could be attributed to posed a spirited defense that the statements (not all of course) were in jest and calling out was devoid of context. Around the same time, many classmates on my Himalaya group, argued that all alumni on the SBA noticeboard online forum should be immediately removed. Even though I initially resisted and was not comfortable because I believed that the timing of such a request wasn’t appropriate given that the alumni had shown their support for the feminist movement, I ultimately gave in to the request.  I felt that it was a legitimate request as my batchmates were only asking me to fulfill my duty of ensuring that the SBA Notice board has no alumni to give the current students a safe space to discuss college issues. In fact that had been the purpose of having a separate group, much before any of this began. While the intervention in this particular case was termed welcome by a certain section of the student body, there was another section which believed and continues to believe that this intervention was uncalled for.

They felt that this intervention  points towards the rooted sub-conscious systemic bias that occurs in decision-making. This is especially because it was made after  a male-only discussion, asked for by males, in a conversation about male power at a very specific juncture. It also shows the issue with hearing some plaints over others. Even if the decision to remove Alumni would have been arrived at notwithstanding any bias,  the process followed to arrive at this decision unintentionally excluded major stakeholders, including my Vice-President Shraddha, from the decision making process. It certainly did influence my decision-making though I may agree (to this date) with the rationale behind it. Shraddha, to this date disagrees.  

Going a bit further, this decision was a product of my association with the guys of the batch as I share the hostel and a very active social media group with them. The level of familiarity and comfort is immense, so much so that I turned to them for counsel as well as help on most issues that crop up. This is natural and inevitable. For instance, in the last trimester, once the faculty recruitment notification got out in the last trimester, I needed a hefty assessment report of existing faculty to facilitate an informed decision-making. I do not trust “call for applications” since then the work only gets completed  by deadline + many more months. This, I felt, was extremely urgent and had to be finished in a month. I had to handpick the committee as a result. While they did submit the report bang on time, out of 9 of them, only 2 were girls. Thus this process restricted involvement of women in an important exercise.

Prioritisation of women’s issues

At any given point, SBA is liasoning with the administration for multiple issues. Some are huge and extend all year long while others keep coming up as and when. They are taken up depending upon the bargaining capital, urgency of the situation and relative importance as compared to other issues. What is to be prioritized and deemed for urgent action is indeed decided at the discretion of those in office. Ideally your leader should be empathetic, but there is a difference between empathizing and prioritizing. For instance, securing equal access to the football field for women was on my manifesto. However, in my head, electives and recruitment were the top priority. I was heavily invested in those two and despite timely reminders for the field, I genuinely believed that ‘it can wait’ as I did not want us to look unreasonable before the administration with so many demands at one go.

I finally drafted and sent the petition only in the vacation before the third trimester. It took only one meeting and one mail for things to change. In retrospect, it could have been done earlier at any point of time, along with the other issues and not necessarily after. But because it was pushed down the priority list, it meant that half the student body had to wait for 8 extra months for equal access of a common space. Moreover, it was never even taken up as an issue by the office bearers before me. They tell you to ask the woman question, sometimes you don’t know what that question itself is unless you experience it on your own.

Normalisation of the Idea

Hollywood had its moment recently with the release of Black Panther. It’s an Afro-futuristic movie and it portrays a black kingdom and a black superhero in an everyday setting. It creates a positive message that such characters can be easy to relate to. When I joined law school, I heard Rajat Gangwar giving his speech to us on the orientation day. He eased us into the university and was the go to person for any problems. I remember many boys were awestruck, harbored SBA ambitions and some were touted as the next president from our batch. None of the girls were ever mentioned. I believe that seeing a woman in office or at least running for it would lead to normalization of the idea amongst the girls that women can and should run for this post and also provide a role model for them to aspire towards.  

Fixing the scarcity problem

In a panel discussion held by AoW on the experiences of women in the workplace, Richa Naujoks (Partner at Nixon Peabody) said  “you make a female person a Partner [in a law firm] because of her performance, but a male person a Partner because of expectations.” In the last five years, 3 elections have been uncontested with both male candidates who stood getting a position each. While there was mostly someone in opposition, they ended up backing out before the election day. NLS is a small ecosystem with about 500 voters. Males from 4th and 5th year LLB batches usually contest the election. It deprives the student body of a wider option to choose from, and often, as pointed out, there isn’t a choice. The problem can partly be fixed if the other half participated in the democratic process by actively vying for the office, giving the guys a  run for their money.

The office of SBA in a university like NLS where most activities and initiatives are entirely student run is crucial. It would be wrong to say that any gender accounts for better leadership. At the end of the day, a candidate needs to be judged on his or her work ethic, track record, agendas, ideals, approachability and various other objective factors. However, at the same point, it is pertinent to recognize that there is indeed value to women running for political offices because of the advantages as pointed out as well as sub-conscious differences that may exist. In all the instances cited above, I would still have done what I did, there wasn’t anything wrong given my limitations and associations at the time. The point is that there is a possibility that it could have been done differently. With anyone yet to announce candidature, here’s hoping that the norm changes this year!

This article is written by an individual who submitted the same memo for both the sides and then shamelessly stared at an extremely attractive judge who happened to question her about the same. Hence, it can be concluded that the author comes from an absolute position of authority to speak on this very issue. Furthermore, it is also recognized that the author’s brain seems to have been hardwired to type out anything (even a shopping list) in a manner which makes it look like a fucking memorial. It is submitted that author must get some help and perhaps a vacation.

With that introduction (or whatever that was), I would like to list out the absolute, sure fire approach to cracking one of law school’s biggest krakens: Mooting University rounds.

Step 1: Eavesdrop on one of your batch mates and listen to them talk about firming whilst you happen to take a peaceful nap in a very productive morning class. Panic and wonder as to why the fuck are people deciding on this a month before the problem release.

Step 2: Search for a friend in class and then come to realization of the fact that you don’t have a lot of friends. Set this source of perpetual mild depression aside for a more immediate and caustic source of the same: FINDING A FIRM.

Step 3: You finally find a friend (Hallelujah!!!!). You try to make eye contact with her beautiful and trust filled eyes. Done. You make weird gestures with your mouth and eyes, trying to ask her about her “firm scene”. You end up looking like a spazzing owl undergoing an exorcism. Nevermind. You continue spazzing like a vibrator and your friend assumes that you want food. This is probably because you usually only ask her about food and not a firm.

Step 4: After class, you approach your usual food ( now hopefully firm) friend and ask her if she wants to firm. Now, your food friend wished that you had just asked her for food instead.

Step 5: You receive the shocking news of your best food friend being a part of another firm with all of your other friends. Sink into depression as you begin to question your self-worth in this place. Consider the net-worth of your Wattpad fan-fiction, given that you probably won’t amount to much in this place and will probably have to sell your B grade “Watlock” erotica to make a living. You come to the hopeful conclusion that the era of soft porn will never come to an end as long as there exist horny youngsters in barren and top notch colleges.

Step 6:  Sit and wonder as to if your batch-mates decided upon these firms back when they were embryos in their mom’s bellies. Like when the fuck did these arrangements happen?

Step 7:  Nevertheless, you realize that you are shameless (shame stripped bare due to those countless quad parties you don’t remember) and ask your food friend for a place in her firm. And just like that you are in!

Step 8: On the deadly and quiet night of the problem release, you make a sacred promise to your firm-mates about not sacrificing your friendship for the sake of “fucking Univs”.

Step 9: Throw this promise out of the window. If possible, throw a copy of the problem out of the window as well. Preferably set fire to it. Do carry out these activities with caution.

Step 10: Do extensive research on an issue that was randomly allotted to you. Swell with pride over the fact that you haven’t researched this hard for any project. Then come to realise that your idea of “project research” doesn’t amount to high standards.

Step 11: Type out your memo. Wonder as to what the fuck you did for 7 days in the name of research. Consider submitting a Crim project instead of a memo which might just be caught for plagiarism.

Step 12: Submit your memo a minute before the deadline for deductions. Feel proud of this achievement. The next day, come to terms with the fact that you submitted the same memo for both the sides.

Step 13: Bring this faux pas up in your oral rounds. Watch as the judges wonder as to how could a specimen come up with such an innovative variation of a fuck-up.

Step 14: Die in two 12 minute rounds of questions being thrown at your face like water balloons. Then tell yourself that you can get through this. You got through a History-I viva. Then remember that the one thing History one taught you was that “History repeats itself”. Fuck.

Step 15: Die once again as you check out your oral rounds rank. You knew you sucked, but saying that you “sucked” was apparently overestimating your capabilities.

Step 16:  Re-read that Quirk article that discouraged you from backing out in the first place and wonder as to what the fuck were you thinking back then.

Step 17: Stay hydrated, given that you will probably cry out all the water in your system. Keep the fluids going. Any form of fluid will be admirably apt for this situation. Alcohol is a special, personal recommendation of the author’s.

Step 18:  Channel your depression into a passive aggressive article about your experience. Use an accurate misnomer to name the article.

Hopefully this article equips you with the skills you definitely need for tackling Univs (whenever you plan on doing that). Until then, “get your moot on and don’t cry”.

Dedicated to my firm-mates and the most “dysfunctional firm ever”.

P.S: The author didn’t write this with the intention of discouraging the law school population from mooting. This article strictly presents a viewpoint with respect to what could happen (or in this case) go wrong in Univs.

Also, we weren’t that dysfunctional. Two of my firm-mates killed it. The rest of us tanked of course.

Introduction

A large part of what makes National Law School of India University a premiere university in the country is the opportunity it provides to students in terms of co-curricular and extra-curricular activities. We are privileged to learn, not only from our professors, but also through credit courses, talks, conferences discussions and debates. Access to these resource persons allows us to supplement our classroom learning with a wide range of diverse perspectives on various subjects and contributes to shaping our minds. However, very often, the people we invite to our campus as experts may often not be inclusive and representative of the diversity that exists.

We at AOW: The NLS Feminist Alliance undertook a “silent count” for the academic year of 2016-2017 We tracked the number of men and women who were invited to college as part of conferences, panel discussions, judges for competitions held across the year to measure whether there is a gender bias in who we invite as experts. The purpose of this study is not to allege deliberate bias or attack any committee, for we acknowledge there may be many genuine reasons for any disparity. Instead we want to bring this issue to the forefront, to ensure that committees are able to address this bias, if any, in the upcoming year.

Thus the question we asked was, do we, as the National Law School of India University, host ‘manels’?

What is a ‘Manel’?

This clever moniker refers to an all-male panel.[1] We’ve all seen them– in conferences, committees, panels and even Supreme Court benches. These include only men as representatives or members to debate, discuss and decide issues that affect all of us. Here are some famous examples of manels:

This list could go on. But the point is, a lack of representation of women exists in almost every sphere even today. A large part of the problem is manels, which by rendering women experts invisible contribute to the larger issue of recognition of women and their perspectives. Before we continue, we would like to address why ‘manels’ are an issue.

The Problem with Manels

Earlier this year, one of us attended a panel discussion on ‘Artificial Intelligence and the Law’ organized by the Law and Technology Society. To their credit, they had 2 extraordinary women from this field. During a presentation, a male member referred to leading opinions of four famous men in the field on the issue of AI. This was pointed out by one of the women speakers who then informed the room of the opinions of many women who had extensively written on the same issue.

Here, having a woman on that panel made sure that these women were given the representation they deserved and an entire room full of people learnt of the contribution of women in an industry which is often stereotyped as masculine.

Therein lies the first issue with manels. They hinder representation. Representation has both inherent and instrumental value.

Instrumentally, it promotes diversity of perspectives, which always makes for better discussion and debate. Very often these opinions may be identity specific where no panel on women rights or queer rights can or should be discussed without representing these identities. But this does not mean that the role of women should only be limited to discussions surrounding their identity as women. Even the fields of science, technology, economics that are usually understood to be blind to gender, have been proved to be geared towards the interest of men time and again. Be it the lack of knowledge of the female body, or the sexism in the Tech industry or the devaluation of women’s labour in society– it is only natural, since men have always dominated the field, which makes it all the more important to ensure that the voices and opinions of women in this field are heard across the world.

However there is also great inherent value to representation. Bringing visibility to women in the field helps reduce the barriers to entry and success for women in various professions. It was the lack of representation of women in history that made us all grow up thinking that all great inventions and art and music were by men. It was this lack of representation that denied recognition to Ada Lovelace while granting Charles Babbage a place in history, and what denied Rosalind Franklin a Nobel Prize despite her contribution to the discovery of the DNA, and what obscures the contribution of Savitri Bai Phule and the countless other phenomenal, talented women whose name have not even seen the light of the day.

Ignoring the contribution of women and denying them representation means that while their male counter parts are given increased recognition and the benefits that accompany it, women fall into the vicious cycle of no representation- no recognition- no representation, on repeat.

One of the biggest arguments often made against this is that of merit. “We don’t care about gender, we just want the best people. We don’t want to call women if it means reducing quality.” This argues against the tokenism that is often seen in industries, which include women for the sake of it. Very often these are women who have only been included to comply with reservations or fear of ridicule. But seeing this issue in these narrow terms ignores two very important issues. First, that merit does not exist in a vacuum. Who we consider the ‘best’ may very often be colored with the same biases that deny women representation in the first place. But second, women have to often prove themselves to be twice as better than their male counter parts to be given the same chance. As Richa Naujoks, partner at Richard Nixon and Peabody put it during AOW’s conference on sexism at the workplace last year, “Women are made partners at law firms because of their performance, and men because of expectations.” This holds true across fields. The problems of tokenism should, therefore, not be used and misused to deny representation to deserving women.

With that introduction, let’s focus our attention to Law School.

The Law School Scenario

In the year 2016-2017, various activity based (ABC’s) and Non activity-based committees (Non ABC’s) invited over 220 speakers to law school. This includes speakers for panel discussions, judges, professors for credit courses, etc. Of the total number of speakers, 63% were men.

To better understand the issue, we also looked at committee-wise breakup.

Committee Wise Break Up:

Committee Wise Break Up (Continued)

As you can see, while some committees have equal number of men and women, there are many which sorely lack representation. This is not to accuse any committee, for there are many reasons why this disparity exists. Given that men are still more in number in most fields, it is much easier to get men who are available compared to women. And there have been many incidents where despite wanting to include women, committees and organizers are unable to do so. But equally, committees often do not take into account this issue while deciding speakers and judges. We acknowledge that it may not be easy but we hope they will be willing to put the additional research and work that may come with contacting female speakers. There are quite a few faculty members on campus who would also be able to help out in this regard, given that NLSIU itself has produced a large pool of highly accomplished female alumni.

The same disparity is more starkly visible in the number of visitors that the college administration invites as distinguished guests:

Thus we can see, that a gender bias, whether subconscious or not exists in the kind of resource persons we as a college and as students part of committees contact. To clarify, the purpose of this exercise is simply to bring forth this issue into the minds of all Conveners, Joint Conveners, Committees and the student body in general to ensure that the next time they organize an event or a talk, they ensure that they make the effort to contact the many women who are contributing to their fields and acknowledge their efforts.

Before concluding, we would also like to acknowledge the limitations of this report. There are other issues of representation, which need to be addressed, before we can call ourselves a truly diverse place. However we believe this is a start to achieving the inclusive campus we all want to be a part of.

A detailed report of the data collected can be found below.[2] We’d like to thank everyone who provided us with the information used in this count.

[1] https://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2017/07/on-the-radar-manel/

[2]https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18nGXnkKH0pH1zgCc0rtvQUga6Dor8D3EfHXhTRGmbhs/edit?pli=1#gid=0

This article has been written by Sharan Bhavnani (Batch of 2019).

If you’re reading this, the thought of putting an end to your miseries has probably crossed your mind. The conflict of laws isn’t probably the biggest conflict in your thoughts. It’s probably the question – “should I drop out?” I completely understand it. Most of us do. But before you go ahead and slam your laptop screen in resignation, lend me an opportunity to change your mind.

The activity of ‘mooting’ in any law school enjoys a position so privileged that LawSoc plans on making the activity do its annual walk. When I joined law school in 2014, mooting was considered to be that one big activity in the first trimester (as it continues to be). I remember the anxiety that filled the classroom when people started constituting firms. “Wow. So many people doing this activity. It must be important” I thought. Like any first year, I wanted to check all the correct boxes before I graduated. Who amongst us hasn’t desired to participate in Jessup?

With my first year enthusiasm, I signed up. I felt a little out of my depth with issues concerning corporate governance and private international law. So, four days into the process, I dropped out. However, there were a few from my batch who made it on-to international moot teams. They were the few who survived the Univs in the first year and made it out alive from this process. I convinced myself that I was only a first year and it was okay to back out.

This is probably not very inspiring. So let me skip to the Univs in my second year.

This time, I was nervous but also excited. Most of my batch mates were participating – that too seriously. I desired to do well at the activity like everyone else. Groups were quickly formed and I found myself in a five member firm. Were we the most functional and efficient firm in college? Well, maybe not. But we tried. On the day of memo submission, we finished our individual issues and sent them across. Then, of course, the process of paraphrasing other arguments began. My enthusiasm had shot itself in the head a few days ago, and I found myself in a state of panic and fear.

“Can I finish this memo?” “I can still drop out” “But will people think I got scared and dropped out?” “How does it matter? I am scared. Let’s drop out.” Lost in making oral submissions to the judge in my mind, court was adjourned when I realised that it was 12 am. Giving up didn’t seem like an option after 12 days of some effort. So I carried on making frills and finishing arguments till 2:58 am (last last was at 3 am). In those last few seconds of frenzy, I attached “A12.docx” and “B12.docx” to the mail and sent it right away. Just in time. Phew.

The next day, I realised that those were only my research documents.

Given that our exemptions depended on it, I had to present my oral submissions. Armed with my three piece suit, cut-away collar shirt and cufflinks I waltzed into V. Niranjan’s room. It didn’t take the legend more than 40 seconds to see through the lack of depth in my research. I felt quite queasy when he was going through what was a sad excuse for a research doc, let alone a memo. But hey, at least I didn’t faint like a friend of mine during the round (you know who you are). The two excruciating days were finally over and I was relieved. Come the day of results, and what have you? The 2nd years had swept the international team slots. So, where was I on that list? At 86.

This is still not inspiring? Hm. How about I told you about my third year Univs?

Unwilling to do Univs ever again in my life, I decided that I hated myself enough to do it again. But I decided that I’d do something different this time. So I hung around the field for a couple of hours just thinking about what I’d done wrong till now with Univs. The answer was right there – I hated the process. Detested every second of it. But loved bonding with others over “I haven’t slept for years. Imma die. Thank God for Pol. Sci.” Despite my newfound enthusiasm, I found a way to just think about how I won’t be able to make it because the issues seemed tough or that I’d repeat last year’s debacle all over again. Insecurities crept in and naturally my class rounds were, as the person who timed my round put it, “like watching a cow get slaughtered.” Unsurprisingly, I was last on the list. Sekhri was so brutal, that my three piece suit and windsor knotted tie couldn’t save me this time.

This experience led me to more contemplation on the field. “I don’t even like commercial law” “what good is this all doing to me?” “Are moots all that important?” But you know what? I decided that I was going to view that as a means to an end. To do my absolute best without any regrets. To actually enjoy the process of reading, learning and drafting. The end was to enjoy the process. And that’s what I did.

Soon after, I was Rank 7 in the pool and the offerings were a few days away.

So, why did I take up a moot? I mean, wasn’t I done with the whole process and proving my point to myself? Not really. Once I started enjoying the process, I realised that I wanted more of it. So, I ended up taking a moot that took up a fifth of my law school life. There will literally be a new Man Lachs team, and our World Rounds wouldn’t have even started (btw, I’m not sharing my moot room). A year into this, not only has my reading speed increased, but so has the power of my lenses. From reading a few pages a day for class to reading 300 pages a day for the memo, this process has sharpened very important skills such as drafting, comprehending complex propositions with relative ease and has taught me how to push myself for several hours without end to meet deadlines. The best part of the process was that not only did I learn a lot about a new and vast area of law, but also about the benefits of perseverance. After all that failure, insecurity, and uncertainty, our team went on to win the ISRO Funding Rounds (and I picked up Best Speaker) and the Asia Pacific Rounds. We are heading to Australia towards the end of this September to go up against the three other winners of their respective regional rounds.

So don’t drop out just yet. You’re probably destined to be on the next Jessup, Vis or Man Lachs team (still not sharing my moot room) and maybe even win it.

Disclaimer: This is an article which deals with the people who spam the batch group chat. No spammers were harmed in the writing of this article, despite the writer’s best intentions.

We live in amazing times. U.S.A is being led by a sentient (or is he?) pumpkin and North Korea by a creature who behaves like the love child of King Joffrey and Patrick Bateman. There might be a third world war. The threat of nuclear attack is looming upon the world. Terrorism is spreading across Europe. Flat-earth believers and Holocaust-deniers still exist. Nazis are back. Daniel Day-Lewis has quit acting. Rohini has decided to compete with our college mess and has dropped its standards. Lassi shop is charging THREE extra bucks for take-away items. Sherlock in all probability won’t be renewed for a fifth season. Domicile reservation is being imposed upon us. Phew. It seems like God was getting bored so he decided to read a Stephen King novel but when his boredom didn’t end he thought, ‘Hey, it would be a great idea to make the plot of this novel come alive’. Dick move. But hey, Chetta is selling Doritos now. That soothes my soul a bit.

However, there are bigger problems that need to be dealt with. And they need to be dealt with NOW. The NLSIU Batch of 2021 has been suffering from the epidemic of ‘spam’. And I have a feeling that this epidemic is not limited to only my batch group chat. In every batch there are a few people who, for some reason, can’t breathe without spamming. The result is an overdose of texts which make no sense. I understand that you spammers like to make your existence felt, but sometimes it is a good idea to shut up for the sake of other people’s sanity.

Events like the declaration of domicile reservation have some great perks. They make the batch group chat ‘lit’. Every time you see north of 20 new messages on the chat, you know something interesting has happened. Something which is justified and reasonable. Like Crim class being cancelled and the ensuing ‘Thank you, CRs’ texts. Justified. But when you see north of 200 new messages on the chat, you know the world is about to end. All hell has broken lose. Apocalypse is upon us. The ‘studly’ people of your batch are at loggerheads and are trying to figure out how to save the world. The era of irrationality has begun. Your feeble attempts at providing some comic relief have been to no avail. The spammers have taken over the group. They have decided to organise a coup and dethrone those who vouch for reasonableness. Weird creatures, these spammers are.

(Kindly read the following text in Morgan Freeman’s voice for maximum impact: Spammers are a bigger threat than Artificial Intelligence. A spammer is a creature which lives in hibernation for most part of the year. But when this creature wakes up, it makes it a point to remind everyone of its existence. After waking up, it goes on a drug-induced frenzy and asks amazing questions like ‘IS EGYPT STILL A COUNTRY?’{Yes, that happened} The spammer doesn’t feel any remorse for its conduct. Driving you up the wall is the sole reason for which the spammer is born. These creatures need to be controlled. If they are not, they will lay waste to the beautiful world of instant messaging. They are the Trumps and Jong-uns of our cosy little world. Their texts are missiles. We are their targets. Survival is victory.)

So what does a guy like me do when the spammers are doing what they do best?

• Grab popcorn and see how the drama on the group chat unfolds.
• Suggest something stupid like going on a riot to stop the domicile reservation.
• Curse yourself for forgetting that non-U.P. people have not yet mastered the art of rioting.
• Eventually realise that setting buses on fire won’t help your cause.
• Try not to cry. Cry a lot.

But you’ve got to marvel at the genius of these spammers. Your know-it-all friends have spammed and sorted everything out and the world is a better place again. These people are the only ones who have their shit sorted. We must look up to these people. They take out time from their busy schedule for lowly people like us. Such benevolent creatures! *wipes a tear*. These people are the guiding lights for humankind. The selfless nature of spammers proves beyond doubt their commitment to solving the problems which we mere mortals can’t possibly tackle. I am confident one day they will solve the problem of climate change and the middle-east crisis by spamming. Old souls, these people are.

So how do you save yourself from the onslaught of spammers?

• Don’t say anything.
• Very politely ask them to stop spamming. (Sounds good, doesn’t work)
• Very rudely ask them to stop spamming. (Okay maybe avoid adopting this method. I have seen enough “Garvit that’s sooo uncalled for” messages for a lifetime)
• Leave the batch group. Sound too extreme? It’s worth it. (Family WhatsApp groups are enough BT already. I personally have a collection of 264 photos with ‘Good Morning’ superimposed on roses and lotuses and lilies. You name a flower, I have it)

Asking questions sometimes on the chat is obviously justified. The number of questions these spammers ask, however, is not. I’m sure all of us know that excess is wrong. I mean, it’s not like people in our college drink excessive alcohol or miss excessive classes or waste too much time on unimportant stuff, right? Spam messages are therefore just an aberration in a college where people generally exercise remarkable self-control.

I think that’s enough ranting for the next 12 months. But seriously spammers, you’ve got to stop. And for those of you who are sick of spam, hang in there. The night is darkest just before the dawn, right? Hope is a weapon. Survival is victory (cue epic instrumental music).

Ashi Mehta and Aman Vasavada (Batch of 2021) examine the rise of a recent social phenomenon which has gained momentum across the world and has found resounding popularity among the student population in law school.

When Rick and Morty[1] founded a Facebook meme group for their batch during one particularly nondescript Torts-II class, little did they know that they were on to something. Meme connoisseur DD explains, “The appeal of memes is that it makes you feel like you’re part of a huge inside joke without having to make the effort of being actual friends with anybody”. Internationally, 9gag – trying hard to stay relevant – has found tough competition from game-changing niche pages such as Garlic Bread Memes, Sassy Socialist Memes, r/dankmemes and r/bonehurtingjuice. Burgeoning into popularity across college circles across streams in India, with the rise of pages such as Dandy Memes for the Dank Darwinian for those stuck in science colleges, Trolley Problem Memes for students of the humanities, and Well Juxtaposed Artistic Memes for Kannada Gotthilla Teens for extremely select audiences, meme culture has found acceptance and seems like it is here to stay.

Law School has always had an underground meme economy. There was always that one kid scrolling through Reddit in the library basement. There was always that couple tagging each other in wholesome memes. Drunk photos of batchmates were instantly placed on the production line, with memelords revving up their magic machines the moment they themselves sobered. However, the culture did not become an overt and official phenomenon until 2017 Univ Week, when CulComm announced an inter-batch meme challenge. Rick and Morty simply dumped the stash from their Facebook group, which had been going strong for several months now, onto the CulComm page. Underground agents from the other batches did the same. The memelords had found their calling at last. They could finally crawl out of their cubes and walk with pride.

Law school, most notably, has seen a meteoric rise of memes as a novel mode of Press and Publicity for events and for Committees in general. The Law and Technology Society were the first ones to grace the noticeboards with meme PnP. When asked why memes, Convenor Dhruv Jadhav told us: “A lot of students are sceptical about finding out what a niche committee like L-Tech does. Memes were the perfect way for us to reach the average Law Schoolite, as they showed the importance of tech law in a manner which was familiar to and loved by everyone. We picked up the first mover advantage and it was a success. Now, all committees are using memes.”

EMC member Harsh explained that the rationale behind inserting memes during committee presentations was in order to hold the first years’ attention during “BT committee presentations” and give them a gist of SF, which he describes as “an experience which cannot be explained but only felt”. Smriti, from LnD, succinctly explained she knew that’s just how PnP was memed to be. When asked to comment on the phenomena that has gripped the noticeboards of NLS, Saarthak responded in MCS’ trademark no-nonsense manner: “Fuck off. MCS’ memes were the best.”

One of the most alarming repercussions of this spectre of meme culture is the emergence of a new, alien vocabulary into the everyday campus lives of its victims. Jyotsna Vilva, a regular consumer of memes with a penchant for Doggo lingo, was heard excitedly telling her friend about an interaction with the dog that lives outside the gym, “Fren! Gym pupper gave me permission to boop its snoot this morning! It’s doin’ me a heckin’ amaze!” In another development, batch groups have found a new way to ostracise people: by labelling them “normies” (read: people who have no idea what this article is harping about). In an attempt to explain these societal externalities, DD lauds the intelligent use of repetitive humour – a meme gets funnier the more times it’s used in innovative ways – and extols memes as the “puns of our generation”.

The future of memes (as a powerful tool of communication and self-expression) also seems to be in safe hands. On the very first day itself, when a few of us indulged in more meaningful Positive Interaction than asking the poor chaps to objectively rate their five favourite classmates of the opposite sex, we were shocked to learn that the fresh entrants had already developed a blossoming meme culture. As the days went by, their batch got even danker. A photo of the University’s cameraman was furtively snapped at a guest lecture and became an instant hit, making the unwitting photographer a mini-celebrity overnight.

The very first legal concept they learnt – IRAC – found itself on memes before on notebooks. When the creator of this meme was informed by our meme-tracking journalists that this iconic one had reached as far as the fifth years and was well appreciated everywhere, this was his response: “Making memes is necessary to get away from the constant pressure here”. With the legacy set to continue, the aging memelords of NLS can retire with peace.

[1] Names changed to protect their dank memelord identities.