With the last of the Univs behind us, it is important for us to reassess what we’ve taken these Univs to symbolise.

As an institution that has, over the years, churned out a plethora of people whom one would term “studly”, the bar was set pretty high. At some level, their achievements became more of a metric for self-evaluation. Being in the top 10 of your batch didn’t feel  like so much of an objectively great achievement (something worth praising and working towards), as it did a necessary prerequisite for your academic record to be of any value. Winning a moot became the only culmination of a 5 month long process to have any value. It is important to stress here, that the idea isn’t that winning an international moot or being in the top 10 of your batch isn’t great and the result of a lot of hard work. The idea is that we as a community attach an inordinate amount of value to these achievements. More importantly, when we start projecting these achievements onto others, we’re playing a dangerous game.

The necessary consequence of continuously highlighting and showcasing these achievements is self deprecation. Because it doesn’t matter that you loved the 5 month mooting experience, learnt a lot and got genuinely hooked onto the area of law. In the eyes of most people, these are mere by-products, things you tell yourself to feel good. For you, none of it makes sense unless you win. How we treat people who win tournaments or the like, is a quintessential case of “sar par chadhana“. As I said, the achievements of our peers and alumni, have become a metric of self evaluation. Getting a top 20 rank in Univs has been given such a stature, that anything below that is perceived as a necessary indicator of your ineptitude and incompetence.

People shouldn’t have to cry in self loathing and devastation because they won’t be stamping their passports on college money. Juniors shouldn’t have to come up to seniors saying that they feel like they aren’t doing well enough in law school because they aren’t acing moots or debates like their batchmate X.  The burden of winning that we have created is immense. It makes people think lesser of themselves if they don’t. Seniors need to start being more responsible in terms of  setting the right tone. We need to stop, in jest or otherwise, calling first years lame for not doing moot univs. We need to stop sending in teams with the burden of winning. It is nerve racking to go into competitions with the burden of performing as well as the teams before you. We need to break this fetish for excellence. We need to start telling juniors that putting their best possible foot forward  has inherent value.

To assuage any triggered mooters or debaters, the point here isn’t that there isn’t skill involved in what you do and that it’s merely a matter of you getting lucky. There is value to the skills you possess and effort required in what you have achieved. The point is, those skills aren’t the only thing that have value, nor are they necessarily more important than others. This isn’t a personal call-out of you for having personally contributed to this fetishism (at least not for the vast majority of you :P). This is a call-out of a culture that makes students feel that there are only a fixed number of avenues to make their law school life be of value. It is a call-out of a culture which, to some extent, might even make people participate in activities simply so that other people think that they’re worth something. Our obsession with having our names plastered on a board (*cough* *cough* SDGM), makes having your name on the board the pinnacle of any achievement.

Finally, we need to stop selling ourselves as “studs”. The moment we do that, we will remove the perverse incentive that pushes juniors into doing “studly” things. Let us create an environment where people wouldn’t want to hide in their rooms because it took other people three whole scrolls on their phones to get to their rank. Be appreciative and proud of all the mooters, debaters and ADRers (?) who’ve done brilliantly, but also have some appreciation for the people who gave it the best they could. Their best is of value too. It is about time we recognised it.

Q : How did you get into the feminist movement, especially in college?

KK : I was in St. Xavier’s College, Bombay for my B.A. and I wasn’t really part of any organized movement at that point, but that was 1990-93, the time when the right wing Hindutva groups were ascendant in Bombay. You had the Bombay riots and all of that. At that time, I remember feeling very agitated about the violence against minorities and also against the increasingly shrill and aggressive messages being given out by those groups to women, especially Hindu women about how a ‘good bharatiya naari’ should behave. So that was something that was on my mind.

After that, when I came to JNU for my M.A., there was a sharp contention on campus between the Hindu right wing groups and Leftist organizations and I was attracted to the All India Students Association that had a lot of women leaders in it. It also was, at that time, one of the Leftist organizations that was quite openly feminist in its articulation. At that time, other Leftist groups didn’t define themselves in those terms. That was my entry point.

Q : In our college, women are sometimes criticized for calling out sexist comments publicly. What are your views on calling out sexist comments and jokes made in private? (One defence that people usually use is that you cannot call out their sexist comment because they made it in the course of a private conversation)

KK : It’s such a strange thing, isn’t it. The whole issue about things you can do in private that shouldn’t be  brought into scrutiny, is something that’s not just said about sexist comments. It’s said about every single thing that the women’s movement has ever raised. Everything from cruelty as defined under dowry law, or domestic violence law, it was said that, ‘Well, it’s in the private domain, it’s between us, it’s in the family and you’re not supposed to call it out.’ ‘Who the hell are you to call it out?’ ‘Parivaar todte ho’, you’re breaking the family.

I think this is an extension of that, but it’s happening by people who wouldn’t like to think of themselves as conservative people. Right now, I would say very gently to anyone who does that: Look, it always hurts to be called out and nobody wants to be shown that mirror and say “I’m that sexist guy.” No one wants to do that. It happens to women also. You have women shaming other women using stuff about their character or their sexual conduct or behaviour. I’ve seen it happen even in women’s groups. When that is called out, or pointed out, people don’t like it. They say ‘lightly bola’ or something like that.

I think it is high time we do gently say that, look people aren’t going to shut up and suck it up. And they are going to call it out because we know by now what the content of jokes are. Sure, jokes are light hearted things. Nobody is trying to ban anything but the point is that jokes are political and what we laugh at, and why, tells a lot about who we are and what we believe in. So if we are laughing at people for the way their bodies are, or if we are laughing at people based on their community’s characteristics, or we are laughing at women, or making stereotypes about gender and so on, that is saying something about our real beliefs. Which is why we are laughing. So the real and the joke are related. They are joined at the hip! Nobody’s asking anybody to be solemn, the point is that there can be feminist jokes, surely. Why is it that you might not find a feminist joke that funny, right? Somebody who finds a sexist joke funny might not find a feminist joke particularly funny, which is at their expense.

The idea is that we’re calling you out, not to say you can’t say that or we won’t let you say it but to say that it says something about what you are. And we have the right to do that. It’s then up to you to think, well, if I don’t want to be that person, then I should stop making that kind of a comment.

Q : What do you think about other communities, like men, trans people etc. within feminism?

KK : I think this shouldn’t be a matter of debate at all. Absolutely, they are part of the feminist movement and the movement should have them. It’s not like we are the owners of the feminist movement and we can decide who we let in the door or don’t. Basically anyone who is oppressed by patriarchy, fighting it and critiquing it, should be part of the feminist movement. In fact, even where straight, heterosexual men are concerned, even they can feel the burden of patriarchy. Even though they enjoy certain privileges, they can also be critics of patriarchy. They can also realize that with the privilege also comes things that demean them in a way because they are asked to be custodians of an extremely repressive regime of patriarchy. Therefore, they can be part of the feminist movement.

Having said that, the need for specific women’s groups, for specific trans groups, groups where people with specific identities can talk to each other is there. But I don’t think there’s a problem with saying that the feminist movement is not only comprised of women’s groups.

Q : Feminist movements are often accused of causing polarization between men and women. What do you think about that?

KK : I find that an amusing accusation because it’s exactly like those who say that caste based reservation is causing casteism. You have to say that that stuff has happened before we were born! The fact that women are treated like women, you know most women would love to be not reminded of their gender at every turn.  You can barely take a breath free from the gender identity that is shoved in your face and forced on you in a dozen ways every day. The point is that it is in those circumstances that women speak up and fight against discrimination. I don’t see how that speaking up and demanding equality is being called a pull for polarization. Asking for equality and parity is the opposite of polarization. The whole point is that polarization exists because all the entitlement and privilege lies on one pole and all the ‘remember your place’ happens at the other pole. So I think that to fight that is to do the very opposite of polarizing. Why should anybody feel that it is polarizing, unless they also feel invested in patriarchy? Because one is fighting patriarchy, one is not fighting men! Feminist historians like Gerda Lerner have actually mapped this out: that patriarchy has survived not only because men have imposed it on women, but also because patriarchy has managed to make women bear some of the burdens of keeping the patriarchy going by handing out partial rewards. There’s a scheme of rewards and punishments that is happening. We all know that and we’re fighting against that all the time. We fight against that in ourselves as women all the time. Therefore, it’s a fight against patriarchy, we can all do it together and nobody needs to be polarized against anybody except against the patriarchy.

Q : What do you think of sexism amongst leftists, and men who identify as feminists but behave like misogynists?

KK : (laughs) The bro-cialists! They require to be called out really ruthlessly because your progressive position of politics means that you have to be vocal and articulate about feminist issues. But if you think that means explaining to everyone else what feminism is supposed to be and not really respecting the fact that those who don’t bear the privileges that you do might actually have a better sense of what it means to be a feminist. That kind of patronizing or mansplaining needs to be called out. That doesn’t mean that men have to shut up around women, that’s not the point anyone of us is making. The point is that the double standards that you hold if you’re unable to be democratic in your functioning, and unable to critique your own privilege then all that feminism and leftism is only  window-dressing; it’s not going deep enough if you’re not able to recognize your own privilege and recognize that you shouldn’t be speaking for others and imposing your ideas on others or, and much worse than all this, actually doing in your life what you critique publicly.

Q : How do you deal with online trolls?

KK : All of us have our own separate methods. One inevitably ignores a lot of them but, on the other hand, I don’t really believe in always being silent about it, so I look for the ones I think of as the ‘useful’ ones, the ones who are really quite brilliantly exposing what they stand for – their ‘mann ki baat’ is right up there. So when they are obviously defending the Prime Minister or the BJP or RSS or men’s rights their words on social media are so revealing of what their real thoughts are. For instance, I’ll tell you, I can’t resist sharing this with the wide world, when somebody used some kind of 1950s-60s kind of vocabulary and says ‘kaali kaluti’ to me, and I’m like : Do people really think that? That it’s acceptable to tell the world that you think it’s bad to be black or dark. Okay, let’s have a good laugh at your expense. Or even that you think, continuously harping on about people’s bodies…  it seems a little, you know, Freudian revelations of frustrations. So, some of those you should share, have a good laugh over, and also expose what the person is doing.

I don’t generally go to the police and all except in very rare circumstances and my experience with that has not been good. One has only so much energy in life.  There’s a common question I’m asked every time I out a troll publicly, asking me why I haven’t gone to the police – it’s almost aggressive. That’s even from friends. Then you have to say that if I were to go to the police for every troll I would be doing nothing else. It’s those many, in thousands. So not all women are going to go to the police, let them choose what they would like to do. I’m not saying everybody’s response would be like mine; there will be others who strictly won’t engage, won’t feed the troll and I respect that. 

Q : Any advice or tips for feminist movements on campus?

KK: I shouldn’t presume to advise like that, but I would just say that if you all meet regularly and think about what are the things you could take up beyond what is just happening at the campus, other stuff like talks and stuff that is going on or small campaigns that people undertake. Otherwise, frankly the smartest and best ideas are coming from young people on campuses that I would never have dreamt of. There are really, really interesting movements that people have waged, so I don’t feel like I’m in a position to advise you because you are likely to come up with better and smarter stuff. I would just say that sometimes what happens when you are in a campus situation (where you remain in a bubble, it happens to all of us when we’re in a campus because the arguments on campus tend to bound our vision a little bit) we don’t have to win all those arguments only.  You don’t have to organize to try and win that one argument whatever it is, like sexist jokes. Rather one can be a little broader, wider, talk about other things as well. Which is always good, because then other people for whom, that particular one issue may not have resonated with  then there may be lots of other stuff on which they’re willing to think over and come around.

Law School, like much else, is a place of endless loops and cyclic events. Or, to put it more simply, it is another place where the same shit keeps happening over and over again for most parts. One of these cycles is the thought that we get either in Fifth year, if our grades are respectable enough, or later, if too many of our friends have done, is to go abroad and get a second degree. This most often is the LLM (Or the BCL if you prefer). I fall in the latter category of persons who went after too many friends had done it. As I write this, I am sitting in my slightly-bigger-than-Cauvery 207-left cube-single room at the NLS of the West, wondering what to do with my life next. For the time being, I thought the best thing would be to write an article for Quirk that fits not one, but two whole categories in that mandate (to make sure that I get my piece in, obviously). So here, in this slightly long-winded piece, I thought I’ll give some food for thought on the idea and allure of doing an LLM from abroad.

Calling out the BullS**T

The LLM, as one of my seniors told me at the time, gave her more in a year’s education than what she got in five at NLS. After having spent that year studying myself, and having spoken to a decently large group of others who have done so as well, I am confident that she was making a fool of me. I know I’m not saying this for everyone, but in my case, the five years at NLS were frankly not atrociously bad. In fact, some of it was surprisingly good even *shudders*. Given that this sales-pitch often comes at the start and is very effective to someone at the end of five years at NLS, I thought it best to start with debunking this particular myth about doing an LLM. In fact, “you will find” (brownie points for getting the reference) that all educational institutions share some similarities. One of these is that everywhere, there is good faculty, there is not-so-good faculty, and there is the kinds that we do not speak of. The same goes for your peers. Avoiding the last category in both is down to a mixture of smart choices and dumb luck. Much like at NLS, you will find that your returns from doing the LLM will be closely linked to the amount of time and effort you invest in doing your bit studying etc. Again, this is one of those fundamental laws (like the faculty / student rule) that stays the same everywhere. It was funny to see how many people here “bragged about” barely studying and then “complained” about not really learning much through the program. I remember the same sentiment prevailing at NLS, when there used to be that one person bragging about how much s/he has left the night before the exam, expecting a mixture of adulation and reverence at her ability to not be freaking out. If you ask, s/he often didn’t give the exam #NotReallyFirstAttempts.

Which brings me to the parts that are true. First, you might hear that the LLM is necessary for career advancement. This is true if you are thinking of pursuing a career in law outside of India either as a practicing advocate or as an academic (although the UK Bar would not need you to have a foreign LLM degree). But if you plan on sticking around in the motherland, the LLM in all likelihood will make you overqualified: like the proverbial plumber with a Ph.D. You’d rather save that money and time to get better at your job. The other thing you might hear is that the LLM offers an upgrade in the content of what you learn. Here I don’t claim to speak about the BCL experience, but in most of the U.S. based universities, the focus on context while teaching the law is amazing to help place things in perspective. The idea of law and society being intertwined was at the heart of the idea of NLS. But in my five years at least, I can hardly recall professors contextualising the law to help make students better understand what might have led to certain legal rules coming in. For instance, we spent all of constitutional law without touching either of Granville Austin’s two books. Today, I’d go so far as to call that a crime. Learning about the law in this manner for the past year was great. But honestly, it convinced me that the gap in what we study at NLS and what we can learn in the LLM is far from insurmountable.

The “Experience”

Together with the academics, a lot of the allure about studying abroad comes from what I’ll call the argument about “experience”. I know people who did an LLM only because of the “experience” of studying at one of the elite universities. Undoubtedly, being in Oxford or Cambridge (either the real or fake one) is fantastic. These are University towns brimming with ideas and amazing people. In one way, this was a massive upgrade from NLS. I remember the first weeks at Nagarbhavi went in me just appreciating the national diversity of my class. That now becomes an international diversity, and only makes the experience more fulfilling. The upgrade analogy works in another sense as well. A problem with the typical National Law School / University model is that it creates islands, rather than have the law school as part of a vibrant academic culture. Being part of a real university (and not a School University) you really see that matter besides the coffee-table conversations you might have. For instance, at Harvard, you get the opportunity to cross-register for courses at MIT, HKS etc. that really help to broaden your perspective on how you think about issues. Having an economist in a class full of lawyers on global anti-corruption makes you see problems in a whole new light. Or, you might see entirely new issues – take a class in coding, or introduction to literature, or racial consciousness in America. Not having made good use of this cross-registration process is one regret that I will leave Harvard with.

Focusing now on the LLM program more specifically, I must say a bit about being an LLM. I found it was quite like a case of what goes around comes around. The LLMs at most of these places in the U.S. are treated just like how we treated LLMs back at NLS – as the “Other”, excluding them from most college activities and harbouring a culture that viewed them as inferior. On multiple occasions the LLM Class discussion groups here would whip up a frenzy over the unfairly exclusive behaviour of the J.D. students or teachers, (the American equivalent of the LLB) towards the LLMs. Usually, LLMs are part of the same classes as JDs, and several episodes where my LLM classmates would complain about feeling discriminated against because their names were difficult, or because they weren’t getting the inside jokes based on American pop culture. I remember a particular episode when we found out that LLMs could not apply for editorial positions in the Harvard Law Review owing to their policies. For me, each of those conversations had a past parallel at how the LLM classes were treated by the LLBs (including me) in my time at NLS. And looking back, I found it even more absurd than the treatment here. In the U.S. the LLMs were part of the same classes and they could validly point to our foreign-ness and lack of American legal training to justify a measure of difference. But what made us so superior to the LLMs back home? Having a degree from NLS, a place which we bitched about to no end?

This piece by Abhinav Sekhri (Batch of  2014) captures some of his experiences of pursuing an LLM from Harvard and provides some food for thought. We, at Quirk, wish best of luck to those applying for an LLM and hope to hear about your experiences too!

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.

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.

First year goes by too fast. Time itself warps under the overwhelming presence of all things Law School in your new lifestyle and we think it is only fair to warn our incoming first years to brace themselves for what they’ve signed up for.

The most obvious effect of this overbearing atmosphere is the development of the ‘Law School State of Mind’ (Alicia Keys, eat your heart out). This State of Mind is a chronic cognitive anomaly, endemic to a few acres in Nagarbhavi. It alters one’s perception and sense-experience, often not along the lines you expected. As you would have already noticed, Law School does not really match your picture of everyone looking dapper in blazers hurriedly roaming around with their briefcases and discussing the Constitution of India all day. Life is anything but monochrome here. Flux is constant.

Before we proceed, let us formally welcome you.

Welcome to the Law School State of Mind. You are now a part of the latent, human infrastructure that defines this institution and its culture. You are now a module in a meta-network of ideas that shall reconfigure your being in numerous and inexplicable ways.

You may find yourself in an environment previously inconceivable to your unenlightened mind. Your bubbles will be burst and new ones will be moulded, except you will recognize their ephemerality this time because now you are woke af. You may stoop to what your erstwhile morality would have considered its nadir, but you’ll walk away with a smile because of your new worldview. You might achieve more glamour than you had ever dreamed of but remain unsatisfied because your desires are now unconventional.

You shall henceforth abide by the Law School Standard Time, which lies at UTC+5:30+the prevailing mood. If the mood around you is lazy, you know you can afford to be late – that’s just how the meta-network governs your every action. At the stroke of midnight hour, when the rest of Nagarbhavi sleeps, the Invisible Hand shall lure you to the hallowed steps of Chetta. There you shall find your fellow moths congregating around this life-giving flame as they seductively demand their nightly rations of Maggi and Coke. You shall learn the essential arts of procrastination, avoidance, subversion, retrospective justification, et al – collectively connoted by the term ‘scamming’.

Things will transcend from Positive Interaction to Perfunctory Intoxication, now that Freshers’ is done with. Events will enslave you. Your consent is a joke. Soon enough, though, you will be revelling in this very slavery, begging and scamming your way into volunteering for something every week for the various personal gains you can derive. Experts have found that most inmates of Law School are victims of Stockholm Syndrome. You are always going to be against the system. But the system is going to suck you in anyway. And you are going to end up enjoying whatever you do. And that is how you emancipate yourself.

You will land up in daily situations you couldn’t have imagined yourself in. You may find yourself championing a cause in the streets in the morning and hours later brooding over the human condition while smoking a fag and watching the sunset on the roof. You may simultaneously find yourself enthusiastically exploring new foods, products and places by the day while voraciously consuming a genre of pop culture you once had no idea existed by night.

Congratulations. You have now been upgraded to You, version 2.0. Code name: Law Schoolite.

Are you here for the academic excellence this institution allows for? By all means, delve into it. But it is likely that You 2.0 won’t be so excited about studies in a while. Making projects is going to become akin to all the messy municipal roadworks here in Bangalore. Both involve digging up random shit at five different places, leaving things stalled for a long while, and ultimately, on a final, extended deadline, scrambling to somehow connect all the shit and make it look like a completed effort. Not very exciting, huh? Examinations will represent a period of chronic panic-attacks or existential nonchalance (depending upon your personality), either way resulting in four all-nighters fuelled by your choice of stimulant, ranging from some mild Chetta coffee to a gallon of Tzinga to your choice of prohibited elixirs.

Does it have to be this way? Not at all. Many people are only superficially affected and many develop greater legitness and propriety along the way. But this is what the Law School atmosphere shall push you into. You are the warrior; the master of your own ship. I’m just showing you how the sea behaves.

Are you here for the opportunities? Don’t lose your sanity while trying to build up a great CV – a mission all of us tend to embark upon right from the start. Don’t become a typical Law School robot who spends its time trudging through BT all along and finds its true happiness only with a bottle of Old Monk. Make choices that will let you enjoy your time here, not merely those that could embellish your résumé.

The takeaway, young warrior, is NOT that the Law School State of Mind is an evil, coercive puppeteer that you must defend against. It is good to embrace it; to experience it. But do not let it devour you. Allow it to reform you but you must be your own filter. Explore with a semi-permeable firewall that lets in only what you want to let in. Be one with the State of Mind but do not become the State of Mind.

To the dear incoming first years,

Yesterday must have been a day of unbridled joy for you. I still remember checking my result, and how absolutely ecstatic I was to know that I really was going where I had dreamed of being for 2 whole years. It was only a little over a year ago, but feels like it’s been a lifetime since then.

As you will soon realise, cynicism is a trademark trait you will pick up in law school. Faced with cutthroat competition, bitchy batchmates, unpalatable mess food and some well, terribly boring professors, it is quite easy, too easy really to start thinking that all the anticipation and excitement about being a student of this supposedly prestigious institution was really quite misplaced.

A lot of you may have friends from school or home who will now be your seniors in law school. And us law schoolites, being the way we are, would have probably told you only about the worst in this place, and not the best. I am guilty of it myself, seeing the worst in everything is perhaps disturbingly common here.

But do not let any of this bother you. Revel in your success, revel in having achieved your goal. This is the one month of your life, wherein your CLAT rank will be representative of the pinnacle of your achievement in life, so enjoy it, you deserve it.

Come July, enter the gates of this lush, green haven with the same twinkle in your eyes that you had when you imagined this moment, over and over again, through all those tedious hours of CLAT prep. A batchmate of mine took a picture in front of the library tower on her first day here, captioning it- “At NLSIU, the Kingdom of my Dreams”. And it really can be, if only you believe. It’s a different matter that she left in two weeks and proceeded to give an interview to Punjab University trashing NLS… Alright, she was a bad example. However, even if the rest of us weren’t as social media- public about it on that first day, all of us felt it.

It’s easy to let first trimester get you down. When you’ve topped your class all your life and now you’re in a class with thirty people just like you where some erstwhile topper has to come thirtieth, it can be hard. When you haven’t read a word of economics all your life and you suddenly have to understand how the reproduction of rats can possibly be an economic problem and write a ‘research paper’ (ooh, fancy words!) on it too, it’s easy to feel defeated. And when you sit for hours in boring Tort Law class, you will begin to question why you ever thought law could be interesting.

Some of you may already be very well- read, world aware, mature and wise. But for the rest of us, like you and I, law school is an eye- opening place. Has anyone every made you aware of your privilege? It had never happened to me, not before law school. (Shout out to LawSoc for that!) Occasionally, you will feel like some of these classes are genuinely making a difference to your life, and the way you think. I remember excitedly texting my mother in some Legal Methods class saying, “Wow, I feel like I’m really getting an education.” This is not an everyday sentiment, (I mean who are we kidding, it’s usually along the lines of “God, save me from law school”) but when you do feel this way, and trust me you will, it will all be worth it. (Side Note: Don’t text in class. Or at least in first trimester lol.)

Committee applications will be exhilarating when you see everything that law school has to offer, and then disappointing if you don’t get what you want. There’s a lot to do in law school even if you don’t get a committee, so don’t be disheartened, there is always next year. Events like Spiritus and Strawberry Fields are flat out incredible in first year, and will make you fall in love with law school just a little bit more.

I could go on and on and describe every event in law school to you, so you’d walk into these hallowed hallways knowing everything that there is to know about this place. I’m sure many of you are already scrounging the internet, lurking on the NLS website, trying to find out as much as you can about this elusive island of excellence, we’ve all done it. But there is nothing like experiencing law school, naive and fresh with no pre-conceived notions. I wouldn’t want to cheat you of the experience that I had, neither the good, nor the bad.

So, dear incoming first years, come July, your life will change. It is up to you to decide if this is for the better or the worse, there is equal opportunity here for you to choose either option. I really do hope, from the bottom of my heart that it is the former.

Welcome to the National Law School. It sucks. You’re going to love it.

Always on your side,
A well- meaning, soon to be senior.

(Who also happens to be genuinely sad about the impending loss of her first year privileges- I have to BUY my own alcohol now?!)

P.S. Nagarbhavi, (affectionately: Nags) which is where law school is, is Kannada for “well of snakes”. Careful where you step, we saw one on our very first day, and you will never be safe from snakes in law school, if you know what I mean.

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This is not an article on ‘the falling standards of law school’ – the two of us haven’t been around long enough to pass a judgment on it. ‘Falling standards’ may just well be a product of our predecessors blowing their own trumpets, but we wouldn’t really know. However, there is one thing that we know for sure – the median Law School student faces a lot more competition today than he/she did a decade ago. Moreover, we believe that he hasn’t done a great job at responding to this competition and fighting it. Throughout this article, we have taken a great deal of liberty in drawing conclusions based on broad generalizations that we believe to be true for no reason other than the fact that we have verified our claims with each other. Therefore, our understanding of things might be entirely untrue and we would be happy to learn about anything that we might have overlooked. Before we begin, we wish to state that there is an inherent value to benign hypocrisy. For instance, when someone who smokes refuses to share a cigarette with someone who is untainted, the outcome is a positive one although the hypocrisy of it is painful. Similarly, the two of us have arguably not been great examples to those around us, but we think we have diagnosed a serious problem that needs immediate action.

This conversation was one that began when the two of us observed that very few students from our University attended the Lecture Series organized by Herbert Smith Freehills and the University of Oxford. The organizers who had come down for this course had come with the hope that there would be considerable participation in this course from NLSIU as has been the case with other Universities where this course was organized. When the Student Initiative for Promotion of Legal Awareness had gauged student interest in the course, more than forty students expressed their intention to join it and attend the lectures. Ultimately, the course was attended by ten students – not all of whom attended all five days of the course. It is understandable that out of a student population of 400, it is only a limited number of students who take an active interest in commercial law. Nevertheless, lack of participation from our University did not go unnoticed and was not taken kindly by the event’s sponsor.

Being a student who attended the course, I felt embarrassed at what had transpired and brought this up at the dinner table. It wasn’t long before everyone there felt that they too, at one time or the other, had witnessed a similar incident – one that did not seem to match our University’s advertised culture of academic pursuit.  It is my sincere belief that this is part of a larger culture of complacency brooding amongst us.

There have been far too many single credit courses, after-class lectures, symposiums, and conferences that have failed to see voluntary participation from the student body. The disheartening speeches we hear when a committee is begging students to attend its event has become all too common today. I issue the same disclaimer as I did with the HSF course – no student is expected to take a keen interest in every event organized on campus, but no one can deny a general lack of participation (or continued participation once the novelty of something wears off). This begs the question – what does the average law school student do with his time?

It is, of course, possible that this average law school student is working on a paper that he wants to publish or is browsing his reading material and preparing for tomorrow’s classes. He could also be writing his moot memo or working on a research project. However, going by what the two of us have seen, we don’t think that what the average law school student is doing any of these things for the most part of his time. Of course, there are several of us who can be found religiously hitting the books; we don’t deny that there are plenty of students of this variety too. But that does not take away from the fact that there are still a sizeable number of us who have not acknowledged the competition that is crawling up on us from behind.

Perhaps the reason behind this is nothing more than the success of our institution. The National Law School model was a novel idea that seemed to offer an entry point into a profession that was (and still largely is) seen as an old boys’ club. It allowed students the opportunity to pursue a liberal arts education and earn a professional degree at the same time. Students could justify a legal education outside of one’s hometown because of the pedagogy that the institution promised. The University advertised courses that would nurture academic curiosity in students and these students were, in turn, break new ground in their chosen area of law if they chose a career in academia or legal research. On the other hand, if you chose a career in a corporate law, you were told that the rigor of the B.A.LL.B course itself was something that would serve you well.

These promises were, by and large, fulfilled and the leap of faith that our predecessors had taken was rewarded in the form of seats in prestigious graduate programs, incredible opportunities in international law firms and a steady stream of rewarding careers in a burgeoning private sector. The best part of this arrangement was that it was our University alone that was churning out this new class of law graduates, that everyone was eager to get their hands on.

However, like any other success story, the ‘National Law School’ model was emulated by anyone who was perceptive enough to understand the reasons for its success. The result of this imitation is the fifteen National Law Universities and twenty odd private universities that boast programs that are similar to our own. Both these number continue to grow on a yearly basis and several of these universities are well past their initial gestation period and have successfully established themselves as competitors.

Further, around 50,000 people now appear for Common Law Admission Test as against ten years ago when the number had barely reached five digits. This increased competition in the admissions process (and the nature of the entrance examination itself) has come to mean that the difference between the CLAT scores of students across the top NLUs is marginal. Even on abstract markers such as the quality of their school education or the resources that they have access to, most students who study in an NLU or in a private institution such as JGLS or Symbiosis are comparable. However, NLSIU continues to lead the pack by capitalizing on its first-mover advantage – a privilege that it is yet to lose. This privilege is something that students from other universities are asked to compensate for when competing with a Law School student. But it is now time to admit these students who compete with us have not found this to be an impossible task.  

With the right amount of effort, students at other universities have been able to compensate for and even overtake their counterparts in our University. By attending lectures that we refrain from participating in, writing in journals that we think are either too hard to publish in or are beneath our sense of self-worth, seeking out conferences to present their papers in or by simply doing more internships, our competitors have been able to more than make up for what they lack in pedigree.

For instance, while both of us had interned in a corporate law firm, we had waited till the fourth year to do so. Although this might simply be a result of prioritizing other internship opportunities for some of you, the two us had chosen to take a break during several of our vacations where we could have interned instead. Our co-interns at these firms, on the other hand, had completed 3 or 4 corporate internships when we met them. When we asked them why they had not taken a break instead, we were met with the response “it is easy for you to get a job, but we’re not from NLS”. What we take for granted is a matter of aspiration for students from other Universities. Thus, it is not a surprise if in the end; it is the RMMNLU student who bags a PPO given that he has simply worked harder for it. A further clarification that needs to be made here is that while the average student at RMNLU might not being doing much more than what the average student at NLS does with his time, the top brass at RMNLU is sure to outperform our median. No one can blame a recruiter or a post-graduate admissions committee for preferring him/her. Perhaps the most visible indicator of this problem would be the number of internships with multinational firms that students from each University secure. These firms can afford to be more selective in their recruitment process considering that they recruit fewer graduates. Further, their recruitment processes themselves are more personality driven and less driven by pedigree. This was not a problem that an NLS student had to contemplate ten years ago as there was no RMNLU at all.

The Ostriches of Nagarbhavi

Despite the sad picture that we painted above, the average student would continue to do “alright” if things continued to be the way they are now. But that might sadly not be the case. There are three reasons for this. First, an extremely worrying school of thought that presently plagues the law school way of life is a fetishisation of the outlier. These outliers are those individuals who have done exceedingly well, both in their time in law school and afterwards, without much effort on their part (or so we hear). It is well and good to talk lovingly of our seniors who spent their law school lives engaged in all kinds of debauchery and went on to do great things despite it. These stories make for great conversations over a round of drinks but they are not examples to live by. Hoping that you will do as well for yourself as one of these legends is not ‘optimism’. The label that it should be given instead is ‘daydreaming’. There are several of us who have had to learn this the hard way.

The second factor that instills a sense of complacency in every law school student is the fact that he is told that he is assured of the bare minimum of an RCC placement. Every time a law school junior expresses his/her concern that they might not be working hard enough, they are met with the response “chill out, everyone gets a job”. The truth of this statement, however, is up for debate. One should not take comfort in the fact that almost every senior they knew was able to find a job when the truth is that almost half of every class does not participate in the recruitment process. The surprise that you might be met with when you find out that this might not be the case with your batch would not be a happy one. Moreover, even if the ratios remain constant, the day when firms look to other universities after skimming through the top thirty ranks at NLS is not as distant as we’d like it to be. Even today, the number of people who do not score a job on ‘day zero’ is significant enough to be a source of worry. If you are not going to be in the top thirty of your batch, we suggest that you have something else to show for the time that you spent in law school. Not everyone gets a job. Do not chill out.

The third issue that we are faced with is the sense of comfort that we derive from the achievements of others. Yes, there have been 25 Rhodes scholars from NLS; yes, we are the first law school from India to break at WUDC; yes, we have won Jessup twice; and yes, in the last decade twenty-five percent of the partners at all tier I firms have been from our University. However, you do not get to take credit for any of this. These achievements belong solely to those whose names are actually on the certificates. This truth needs to be digested by each and every one of us because we need to learn that we cannot bank on the achievements of others when we are looking for a job or applying for a masters program. Although this seems intuitive enough to understand, what we do and say as a community seems to indicate otherwise. Even when we are not engaged in a pissing contest with students from another university, we beat our chests as a batch in front of other batches for no reason other than the fact a few individuals from our batches have done exceedingly well for themselves.

The point that we are trying to make is not that every one of us should pull up their socks starting this moment and begin a quest for academic excellence. It is entirely fine if you want to laze around, binge on the latest Netflix series and get a beer every evening. However, we simply want to inform you that if that is what you are doing, you will probably not end up where you think you are going . We do not think that the average law school student is incompetent or incapable of doing great things. In our experience, students of our college are intelligent, capable and talented. The average law school student will ultimately do quite well for himself since he is all of these things. But so will any student from RMNLU who is willing to put in as many hours as is required to make up for what he lacks. If in your fourth year, you are unable to answer a question on the difference between an interest and a charge, you cannot expect smooth sailing. What we presently have is an immense competitive advantage – one of the best libraries in the country, a handful of amazing professors, thousands of opportunities every year to showcase our talent, and the trust and confidence that the world continues to have in our students. Each of us needs to make the most of this advantage if we want to keep it.

This piece has been written by Megha Mehta (Batch of 2019).

All views expressed in this article are tongue-in-cheek and for temporary comic relief purposes only. This article contains several annoying references to TV tropes. The author disclaims responsibility for any physiological or psychological side-effects of Failed Wunderkidness, including procrastination, binge eating, out-of-control spending, alcoholism and subscribing to nihilist memes on Facebook. This article is in no way an authoritative guide to recover from failed Wunderkidness and severely affected students are advised to seek help from experts in this field such as Rahul Gandhi, Arvind Kejriwal and Bobby Deol.

If you have watched the Gilmore Girls revival on Netflix (SPOILERS ahead- skip to the next paragraph if you can’t stomach) and read the corresponding articles on the net or your Facebook feed, you would know that everyone is majorly dissing Rory Gilmore 2.0. When Season 1 ended, she was the embodiment of a Strong Female Character^TM  -she had graduated from an Ivy League college, was on her way to being Pulitzer material and she didn’t need a man-though she’d enjoyed many. When Season 2 ended, she was headed down the same path her mom had gone, inevitably doomed to stay in the same small town drudgery and-so angry fans argue -to repeat the same cycle that kickstarted the show in the first place-underemployed, with an instable love life and *gasp* pregnant.

One particularly poignant commentary on the show suggests that Rory actually represents the Failed Wunderkids of our generation. Current millennials are used to being told we are special and destined for greater things; often without there being any sacrifice or loss on our ends. Being a Wunderkid is in essence believing and being made to believe that you are a special person and that your Life is Destined for Greater Things^TM (See also Jesus Complex). This complex is especially re-inforced if you’re one of the 80 or so prestigious few who gain admission into the hallowed portals of a National Law School.

However, the real transition from adolescence to adulthood is boring. You will not get to decide the future of the wizarding world or govern a nuclear dystopia. You will also most probably not get to make most of the major decisions influencing your life because Trump, Putin, your Best ‘Mitr’, your parents and the next-door Rishtaywaali Aunty will conspire to make them happen to you. The limited areas in which you will get to make decisions are things you have absolutely no clue about-your career choice for instance. Unfortunately, that Hogwarts letter is not coming but your tax statement definitely will. You will be forced to accept, through an arduous and possibly indefinite process beginning in your early 20’s, that you’re actually quite….ordinary.

What do you do then, once you realize you are a Failed Wunderkid^TM? While there is quite a lot of literature on how to be successful, how to handle success, how to maintain success and take away (from) other people’s success, there is little on how to handle failure. So here is a 10 point guide to help you make that leap to mature adulthood before you drown in the deep abyss of lost Wunderkidness.

(No it won’t really help you…but it will give you some amount of solace for 10 minutes between typing your projects so read it anyway).

1. Acknowledge your fall from Wunderkidness. Acceptance is the first step to dealing with any kind of traumatic event. We’re more egoistic than we’d like to believe and realizing your limitations will hurt. This doesn’t mean you have to develop a perennially low self-esteem and tell yourself you’ll never achieve anything, but you need to stop being over-ambitious.This is easier said than done. The Secret and Om Shanti Om advise you to chase your dreams and not give up. However, for failed Wunderkids it is crucial to realize that-you are not special, at least not in the way you think you are. You’re not going to be the next Bill Gates. If you were you wouldn’t be reading this.

2. You don’t have to develop a perennially low self-esteem and tell yourself you’ll never achieve anything
You don’t have to develop a perennially low self-esteem and tell yourself you’ll never achieve anything. You don’t have to develop a perennially low self-esteem and tell yourself you’ll never achieve anything. You don’t have to develop a perennially low self-esteem and tell yourself you’ll never achieve anything….and repeat ad nauseam.You will be good at something-but maybe not the best. You will be acknowledged for your efforts, but you might not get the Nobel Prize. Setting reasonable goals is the best way to salvage your mental health, even if your fellow Wunderkids accuse you of ‘compromising’. One unreasonable goal you can set for yourself is to ignore them.

3. Most people cannot handle failure either because they think only hard work is sufficient or because they think only good luck or contacts or jugaad with minimal hard work is sufficient. Success is a combination of both, and not in the 99+1 or 50-50 proportion which people throw around like it’s some fixed mathematical value. More importantly, success, especially within the law school context, is not compliant with Article 14. It is arbitrary. You have as much chance of becoming the next Chief Justice as you do of being hit by a bus while crossing the road or getting good food at the mess. Every micro-decision you make up to that point will be relevant but try as you might you can’t analyse every variable or else you’ll go crazy. You need to learn how to decide where hard work is necessary and where it would be smarter to just take the crooked approach.

4. You need to learn how to decide. Wunderkids fail not because they couldn’t realize their potential but because they didn’t want to realize it. At some point you were too scared of the options so you just decided to go with the easiest one available or unnecessarily put yourself through hard rigours so that you would feel like you made the right choice. Like Dr. Jugs said in Dear Zindagi (This is not my SRK bias speaking), sometimes you make the hard choice even though you aren’t equipped for it simply because you’re trained to think that success requires making hard choices. Conversely, sometimes you pick the easy way out because you’re too lazy or too scaredy-cat to follow a path you know you’re absolutely perfect for. No Hagrid is going to come and tell you that you’re a wizard-you’re going to have to realize your inner magical potential all by yourself.

5. Learning how to decide requires you to recognize your limitations. This is not the same as No. 1 because No. 1 requires you to accept that you have limitations in the first place. Assess whether your perception of your talents is self-inflated or externally imposed by over-ambitious parents/over-enthusiastic friends. If you can see that certain skill sets aren’t working out for you, devote time to developing new ones. If you still want to stick to the same path you were following, you need to dedicate time to self-improvement. Again, if you were Mozart or Beethoven, you wouldn’t be reading this. Non-prodigies cannot afford to be complacent-you’ll have to take the effort to cultivate your skills, or give up and ‘opt for the easy way out’ at the risk of forever being that ‘X Didi/Bhaiyya who is the black sheep and who fell into the wrong path’ to your entire extended family.

6. This is slightly harder than the earlier 5 things, but you need to be told this again-You just ain’t that great. It’s not that you really aren’t that great, but for some people you will never match up. To use legalese, your worth in a relationship is always a subjective standard with respect to anyone, be it your parents, friends, lovers or professors, and never an objective measure of how good/smart/talented a person you really are. You cannot expect them to be ‘reasonable men’. It’s not really something that ‘gets easier to accept with time’ but you’ll have to learn how to deal with it if you want to recover from the failure of your Wunderkidness.

7. A Wunderkid’s biggest fear is that once they stop being a Wunderkid people will stop loving them. Hence there is the constant need to achieve that perfect CGPA or win Jessup or get a corp job or be waxed and have your eyebrows plucked and wear the latest fashions 24/7 and do other things that are irrelevant in the larger scheme. Unfortunately, there will be people who will lose interest in you if they see your Wunderkidness receding because even after several millennia we haven’t let go of our ape mentality and continue to stick to the fittest in the pack. Even worse, there is no guarantee that there will be that one magical person who will continue to love you no matter what, and you might just end up as a crazy cat lady/eccentric bachelor. So if you are a failed Wunderkid, you have to learn to love yourself for being one and stop relying upon the parameters which the world formerly pointed out as qualifying you for greatness. This is again not something that will necessarily develop over time and you might end up with an irretrievable dent on your self-esteem.

8. The One Magical Person^TM: He or she does exist for some people, but not necessarily with respect to you. You cannot expect one person to be your best friend, soulmate, harbringer of your deepest erotic fantasies, shopping partner, source of gossip, pseudo-parent etc. rolled into one. If you do have that person, congratulations, you are a lucky b**** who should not be reading this article, have been watching too many Karan Johar movies or are suffering from severe delusions.The converse of this thesis then, and the one advantage of acknowledging it-is that you don’t have to be the OMP^TM to someone either. Wunderkids often feel this unreasonable burden to constantly emotionally satisfy the people around them, either to prove that they are the real All-Rounders^TM or to justify why they’ve been bestowed with such great talents. As a Failed Wunderkid this burden actually increases because you feel the need to compensate in your personality what you’ve been losing out on professionally or academically. Part of the transition from a Wunderkid to a normal human being is that you don’t have to live up to other people’s expectations all the time.

9. People will stay with you depending upon what they are looking for at that stage of their life and you will do the same. It logically follows that when they stop looking for whatever it is that they were seeking from you, or when your interests diverge, or they simply get bored, they will no longer hang out with you. At that time it will seem like an unbearable heartbreak when actually it’s just a blow to your ego and your belief in your Wunderkidness. You will have to accept failures and path-divergence in your relationships with as much equanimity as you do in your professional career. This does not mean posting a constant barrage of ‘I’m such a nice guy, but still she won’t be my gurlfrnd’ memes on Facebook but having the maturity to accept when people move on to more interesting arenas in their life.The converse of this is that you also have the freedom to explore what you like and are not doomed to build your life around another person’s choices (So what if I’m not a professional wrestler, at least I avoided the *cough* dangal *cough* of a helicopter father trying to fill the need for a son and heir by stealing my feminity).

10. As much as the prospect of not being a Fortune 500 CEO who’s pals with the President of the U.S. and lives in a 5 bedroom penthouse may hang over your head, it’s actually okay to be a failure. It really is. It’s another thing that coming to terms with the fact that you might live a mediocre life, personally and professionally, will be an awful experience. Self-actualization and inner peace are lot harder than passing DPC or securing the prized internship. However once you realize you no longer have the burden of living up to other people’s expectations, life becomes a lot easier. You will learn how to love yourself, stop stress-eating, take pride in being as much of a horrible person to others as they are to you and ultimately end up alone and crazed in a flat-or maybe not the last two. Hey, it’s still better than running for the elections!