Neither traditional culture nor the pop variety teaches women how to be alone. Most, if not all, organized religions are pretty explicit in their disapproval of single/widowed/divorced women (or women of any sort really, but that’s another discussion). Even in literary/cinematic imagination, the Sexy Lone Male WolfTM is a much more popular trope than the Batshit Cat LadyTM .

To be a woman and to be alone is to be a failure, for our primary worth is supposed to be defined by our relationships and the caring labour we perform within them. You’re not allowed to ‘take time out for yourself’, because somebody always needs your time more than you do. There is always the ‘women’s safety card’ to chain you down if that doesn’t work. Which is why it is so important for young women to go solo-tripping, even if it be just to Gopalan to catch the latest shitty rom-com, to know and to experience the reality of being alone and surviving it. I toured a European city by myself, and what do you know I’m still alive, as alive as you can be in the middle of 4 th year and two legit electives anyway.

What was I doing in Europe, anyway? I was just, you know, participating in Student of the Year, as part of the fancy curriculum at Pindal Professional Global Law School with my best friends Shanaya and Raj. Raj has failed exams twice and is adept at playing the banjo. His catchphrase is ‘Palat’. I was doing all my travelling in Raj’s Italian sports car. The competition involved a treasure hunt in Paris followed by a swimming marathon in the river Danube…

…Yes, I was travelling on FAP, for an international competition. Admittedly, being a LFT requires privilege. None of this, including the delicious scrumptilicious rose-shaped chocolate- raspberry icecream at Gelato Rosa, Szent István tér 3, would have happened if it hadn’t been for the generous dole handed out by the college in exchange for a display of my semi-competent sabzi mandi bargaining skills.

LFT-ing in Europe is a lot more convenient than in India for many reasons. First, Free Walking Tours. You have the advantage of being with a large crowd and covering all the major tourist spots, even if you don’t have a companion or a personal tour guide. Obviously they aren’t really free; you’re supposed to give a nominal fee at your discretion at the end of the tour, as a token of your appreciation. But I didn’t mind paying the money. Did guys twice my age hit on me randomly while walking? Um, yes. Did I clutch my purse to me the entire time like it was my baby? I protected Bagwati more than I ever will my own flesh and blood during a holiday.

Would I ever have learnt that Austria and Hungary are jigri dost, and the Hungarian palace has been perennially bombed, and the miseries suffered by the Hungarian people due to *gasp* communism? Maybe. But man, they ripped a large one in that palace, those British airplanes. Second, most European cities have free Wifi everywhere, which means even if you can’t catch a Walking Tour, you can just pull out Google Maps and do a self-Walking Tour instead. Almost every major tourist attraction will be around the city square, so you won’t have to wander too much. I won’t lie though, there were at least one or two moments when I had to look deeply into the ice-blue eyes of a handsome Slavic hulk and give a seductive hairflip, to which he would reply, ‘Ich wib kein englis’ which means ‘I will love you passionately and till the end of my time’ in German. Just kidding.

LFT-ing while on a budget means that no Raj or Rahul is going to come in his BMW to ferry you around Europe. Raj and Rahul certainly ain’t gonna help you lug your suitcase on the convoluted route you have to take via bus, tram and metro line to your AirBnB so as to avoid being looted by hyperinflated cab prices. I have never been as regretful of packing 20 sets of fancy clothes in  Nagarbhavi Circle. I know now that I truly am a strong independent woman who needs no man to carry her bags. I also know that I will possibly be forever haunted, given the number of curses everyone else who wanted to get on that tram gave me.

Speaking of hyper-inflation, a particularly enlightening, blissful LFT moment was when, after walking for 2 hours to reach a bathhouse in Budapest, I discovered that they required at least 10,000 HUF to be paid in cash-no cards or any other form of transaction accepted. I guess the whole demonetization thing is still to catch on there. So I walked back to the tram station where I came from, as for some strange reason no bank had thought of putting an ATM nearby this evidently cash-hungry place. No wonder they’re having an economic crisis!!

Another lesson for aspiring LFT’s-don’t expect your trip to be flowers and daisies. There will be blood, sweat and tears involved, in addition to cracked soles and pernicious growths on the underside of your toes. Needless to say, by the time I finally got into the spa, it was no longer just another tickbox on my tourist checklist.

As I was contemplating on eternal philosophical mysteries such as what is the purpose my existence on earth, what goal was I born to achieve, is NLS actually just a psychological experiment run by a certain Dr. Padma to study the effects of sleeplessness, multiple deadlines and bureaucratic trauma on young adults, and so on, I was joined by a Turkish political scientist in the Jacuzzi. Before your imagination turns, ahem, steamy, we had a perfectly platonic conversation about our different cultures and educational backgrounds.

Yes I was in a public bathhouse with a heterosexual man and he did not molest me. Yes I was in a swimsuit and he did ask me out on a date and I said no because I am the heartless friendzoning bitch your favourite Dank Shitty Meme Page TM always warned you about. Yet, we continued having a polite conversation. Yes it is possible for men and women to be in intimate spaces wearing close to nothing and not you know, ravage each other in mindless lust like on the covers of 18 th century bodice rippers. Before I hurt anyone’s sentiments, I’m not trying to suggest that foreign men are somehow more adept at understanding consent women. My point is that these instances do pop up in life every now and then, like the rats in the Women’s Hostel water coolers.

I know what’s on your mind now. No, apart from what a gigantic slut/idiot I am for hanging out in a Jacuzzi with a guy who’s not my boyfriend/husband/whatever. Didn’t I face racism? Wait, or were you thinking about food? I missed Atithi and Maneruchi more than I missed my mom. At one point I even felt a hint of emotion towards mess food. European restaurants are tremendously expensive, and to make up for that, they have tremendously cheap street food. A pepperoni slice costs half or one-third the amount it would at home, and is twice as filling. As you can see, I’m an ardent believer in the high carbs, high protein diet.

It is scientifically established that women love seeking attention. I am no exception. Which is why when the pizza stall guy recommended I take a slice with jalapenos because I’m a ‘spicy Indian girl’ I was totally flattered. There is nothing more I wanted to hear than have the shopkeeper leer ‘Mirchi Mirchi’ at me while handing over the pizza. My DDLJ dream was complete. He even knew Hindi! Some memories are to be cherished forever. So you need not worry about racism or any sort of cultural stereotyping.

To wash down Mr. Spicy’s flirtatious zingers, I decided to get a drink. Budapest is famous for its ruin bars, pubs set up in the Old Jewish Quarter, in buildings/lots abandoned after World War II. The dark history of the exodus that took place then aside, if you want to experience European nightlife, there was no way you would miss out on Szimpla Kert. You know a place is meant for getting intoxicated if one of its distinctive features is a used car hanging down in the middle of the ceiling.

Except that there was a slight problem. I identify as a woman. Notwithstanding my supposed resemblance to a certain SBA office bearer, I look like a woman. I sure as hell was an alone woman, unless I was wrong about the Turkish dude being a gentleman and he decided to stalk me because according to Bollywood logic that’s the best way to get a Spicy Indian GirlTM . So any sane, rational woman would have obviously turned back and gone back to the AirBnB. If you haven’t already figured this out, I’m clearly bonkers. Screw Kirron Kher logic, the Palinka was calling out to me. To my surprise, I found an elderly Indian couple sitting next to me at the bar. I guess it was the Doing Unindian Things festival that day. Even after this little sojourn I did not go back to the hotel. I spent the rest of the evening at the Schezenyi Bridge, looking at the stars, in the backdrop of violin music. It was quite romantic. If only Spicy Guy had been there to share the moment with me.

Maybe I got lucky. Maybe if I had taken a different tram, or gone to a different bathhouse, or to a different bar, I would have been kidnapped by a sex trafficking ring. Maybe I was really stupid in the way I went about all of this. God knows I should have withdrawn more cash before going to that bathhouse. Where’s PayTM when you need it damnit? I’ll be honest and recommend that maybe you shouldn’t take it as an authoritative guide on how to travel in Europe. But remember that happy endings are overrated. Sometimes a fairytale is about taking the most mundane, frustrating, weird and possibly sweaty experience you have and making the most out of it. So stop waiting for Prince Charming/Raj/Dil Chahta Hai/Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara/Hangover/Generic Road Trip Movie GangTM . Be a LFT. And if you ever have the pleasure of meeting Spicy Guy, tell him I miss him!

Why does the New Year start on January 1 if Jesus was born on December 25? This is a question that has bothered us for a long time and none of the explanations that we could find on the Internet seemed to make any sense. One explanation that is offered is that while December 25 is the day of Christ’s ‘immaculate conception’, it is on New Year’s Day that he was actually born. Although this might be a product of a poor CBSE education, we’ve been taught that babies tend to spend more than six days inside their mommies. Then again, my CBSE education didn’t quite cover ‘immaculate conception’.

Another explanation that we found had something to do with the Roman Empire. As far as we know, there weren’t any wrestling franchises around when Christ was born and so, we’re dismissing that one too.

There is one explanation that we’d like to offer instead, and this would perhaps make sense to you too – It is fair to imagine that when our Lord and savior was born, all of the town of Bethlehem wanted to throw a party. But like the rains that seek to kill univ-week every year, the weather in Bethlehem messed up their plans. Sadly, for them, they did not have first years who could simply cover the place up with tarps and mop up the water when the rains were done. Thus, they had to wait a whole 6 days before they could throw a party. So on the sixth evening when the skies had finally cleared up, they decided to get wasted in honour of the little baby that had graced them with its presence. As it turned out, this party was so good that they decided that they’d throw one every year on the same day. Since they needed an excuse for this, they decided that it would be on that day that the New Year would start.

Since then, there has much that has changed with the world but there is one thing that has remained a constant – the party on New Year’s eve. Improvisations have been made to suit the times (although I have no idea what they did in the Prohibition Era) but the party has always carried on. Now, there are millions of New Year parties that are celebrated by gatherings of families and friends across the world. But over and above these, there are several places across the world that promise an iconic New Year’s eve – Times Square in New York, the banks of the Thames in London, the Las Vegas strip, and several others. But one party that has gone unnoticed to the world is the one celebrated by a small group of pseudo-intellectuals from the distant village of Nagarbhavi.

The parties hosted by this cult are things of legend. Soaked in Old Monk, these parties involve several hours of penance where the heathens of the National Law School dance ritually to 90s music in a trance induced by fumes of cannabinoids (some people stay sober; they’re pretty cool too).

We’ve been to these parties before, and sometimes we’ve got them wrong. Sometimes that cocktail was good, very good, so good in fact that we don’t remember having our fifteenth and were drooling in the toilet when the clock struck 12.  Other times we’ve paced ourselves, thinking this year will be the year we’ll be pleasantly hammered when the moment arrives, only to find that we spent the crucial seconds supporting that drunk friend who thinks he’s Captain Jack Sparrow.

We’ve tried angling for a new year’s kiss. You wake up reasonably satisfied with your efforts until you hear about what your friends did and the fomo hits you hard. So the following year you decide to go hard at the party with the brothers, only to find that this year everyone else is establishing a sure thing and the only story you have is a tragic tale of a third wheel.

There was that year when we tried jumping in a fish pond and were saved by one of those cool sober people. There was that year when said sober person started drinking and we returned the favor. We’ve rolled down hills, had literal pissing contests, and done much more. But after all this, you’re left wondering – how does one #RazeTheBar? Is there a secret?

Four years and several billion parties later, there is an answer. Always have that drink, but always sipping. Help the drunk, but only till you find someone else who can replace you.  Try keeping your brothers together if they stray – you’re their shepherd. And lastly, avoid the fifth years, they’re emo and will make you down – yes, we will too.

In hip hop culture, diss tracks are the way in which the stories of the greatest rap rivalries have unfolded. The “beef” between Kendrick and Drake is essentially a bunch of rap tracks with a line here or there making a snide reference to the other. The same goes for Nas and Tupac and Kanye and Jay Z (maybe it was more than a line when Kanye releases a song titled “Kill Jay Z”). This is a reduction of conflict to the literal in a space which allows you to broadcast it immediately to the world at large, assured that it will reach its intended target. It is a phenomenon I would call Diss Piece Discourse (or, if said with food in your mouth, “Dispy Disco”), and I would love to spend a few hundred words building a theory around this phenomenon. But let’s get to the reason you’re reading this, law school.

Law School communication has evolved from the start of my time here. The SBA Noticeboard has become an institution in its own right. While the old SBA page was mostly used for congratulating moot wins and general bragging while desperately trying to fight the shadow of falling law school standards, something changed with the SBA Noticeboard. The Noticeboard was a space of expression devoted singularly to the 400 people around you. There are multiple e-mail threads and controversies shaping this context if you’re willing to dig deep into your mails, but one thing is clear, no one estimated the force SBA Noticeboard would become. Mail threads just aren’t in anymore. Writing an e-mail is just too cumbersome: you have to move away from the social media you were earlier browsing to a glib Gmail user interface, open a new window, type in the recipients (hesitate for a minute before you type in pgstudents and mppstudents; you only do that if its really major), and then you type out your valuable contribution. Facebook is much more instantaneous, you’re on Facebook anyway, you click a notification, give your unsolicited opinion, press enter and go back to looking at doggo memes.

If you add batch/project group/PFL team/committee whatsapp groups to the mix, you now have a deadly combination on your hands. Not only is this super instantaneous, it demands a reply. It’s possible someone didn’t check their mail or their Facebook for a long period of time, but no one abandons their phone for that long. The ability of whatsapp groups, through both its “seen” feature and the expectation of a reply ends up demanding discourse. You’re officially ignoring if you were to leave a whatsapp message on “read”.

The ability of the SBA Noticeboard (and to a lesser but much more incisive extent, Whatsapp groups) to provide a common ubiquitous platform to air every grievance/need/opinion/thought/idea/rumination/question/wetdream/complaint/suggestion/whine/doubt/demand/fear/inquiry/more-whine/recommendation/contribution/some-more-whine/discussion has led to the evolution of diss piece discourse in law school. A form of communication where we talk to people in our immediate surroundings by tagging them on posts, alluding to easily decipherable anonymised references (saying things like “a certain 2^nd year”- for a place with only 400 people, almost everyone should assume that everyone knows everything) and worst of all, by not even referring to them. The saddest bit about the SBA Noticeboard is the complete and absolute bureaucratisation of interaction amongst the student body. Instead of asking the person responsible for a certain thing, there’s an increased tendency to float the question to the world and ask if “something can be done about this”. A malevolent hurricane of snide remarks and passive aggressive responses stringing together the bits and pieces that make this place up, reminding everyone of their jobs with the sheer force of visibility and laying bare the emptiness of our social worlds.

In a small student body of 400 trapped together for half a decade, what can keep us from driving each other insane is simply knowing each other. The next time a presidential candidate tells you they’re “approachable”, take a small breath and understand the rotten implication. When the mere achievement of being someone people ask questions to is converted into successful virtue-propaganda, realise what it says about general law school interaction. We were all too occupied with our responsibilities and our deadlines and our commitments that somewhere along the way we forgot to speak to each other normally, like human beings do. Now, when I want someone to stop singing at Chetta, the default reaction is to fire up that Noticeboard button with a healthy dose of self-righteousness and broadcast my whine. I can flare my whine up to all of the law school population and eventually someone will see it and do something about it if I tag them enough times. More so, I have the ability to demand a discussion on what I want to whine about. Joking around is trivialising the topic, we must all take my whine equally seriously. My victory in one of those unfortunate comment threads is quantified with likes. It is my bureaucratic fantasyland reality show where I have the license to become the human embodiment of an annoying notification, a space of absolute and unqualified entitlement, a story where I am both the protagonist and the author.

 It’s no different from a rapper writing a bunch of lyrics about some other rapper, the passive-aggressive degenerate clone of a rap battle. The next time you decide to broadcast your whine, just release a diss track. Atleast we’ll have new music to listen to.

Today we all know you as someone who won Jessup. But in your five years in Law School, what did you really prioritize?

I didn’t have any set priorities through the five years. Things sort of happened each year. I came as a blank slate, and things developed naturally. Which was good at times and very bad at times. I was introduced to mooting in my second year and I managed to moot with three very, very, very good people and that got me interested in it. The energy of the process was beautiful, and my legal education happened in the moot rooms. But that was a small part of college. Spending time with my friends with whom I became very close was a huge part. And then SF. I had chosen NLS because I knew of Strawberry Fields, and to be able to play whatever part in helping organise it was insane. Then there’s Surya and Chetta and Kaveri terrace. I’ve a feeling people think I was very methodological and planned and focused in law school- I don’t think I was.

That’s funny, SF is happening this weekend

I know man, I wanted to come. The Down Troddence is a band that we’ve been trying to get since my third year (and got once too). They have this one song called ‘Shiva’, which I’m sure they’ll play, which I’ve been blasting on my speakers for the last week. Dammit, I wish I’d come.

So were you also on a lot of committees?

Quantity over quality. I was on L-Tech in my first year, which was basically code word for going to the computer office and fixing stuff. There was no law and technology in it. After that I was on EMC, MCS and SIPLA. EMC was great for SF, MCS I joined because I thought I could try and help moot teams given how much help I’d gotten from my seniors and how helpful that was. SIPLA was a bit of a random one – I’m not sure exactly what I accomplished there.

How did you manage to balance your extra curricular with your academics? Were the two years of doing Jessup difficult?

Not difficult as such. It was all very exciting and fun, so the thought of it being difficult didn’t come across. I lucked out because the three people I did it with with the first time were fantastic (to say the least) and I was really enjoying it. They were tutoring and mentoring me in the most minute way possible, and now I realise that those few months were the core of my legal education. They also make me realise how much an effect careful, experiential learning has compared to years of taking exams and sitting in lectures and so on. The second year was similar, though the challenge was different. This time, the four of us were working more as a team, and learning the ropes as we went along. It was a hell of a lot of fun.

Point being that because I was enjoying things as much, the need for balance etc. didn’t realise arise in my mind. I had my friends around all the time, and so everything was hunky dory. As for other things, the classroom didn’t really interest me as such – there were subjects and teachers I was interested in but I never really read too much for class. So that was sorted. Maybe that’s one thing I didn’t do and so I had time for other things. Aside from that, extra curricular involved Surya, football, lots of music, terrace nights and my friends, whatever time was not spent in the moot or at Chetta, went there.

What motivated you to do it a second time?

I really enjoyed the process of mooting. It was essentially reading about an area of law and discussing it with friends (teammates) and trying to come up with good arguments, what was there not to enjoy. In my fourth year, I thought I would do it again, I’m not sure why. Perhaps I was lazy to try new things. A special challenger for Jessup was held, and four of us got together to form a team. There was no opponent. But we still didn’t make it. The judges said we were too shit. And then in fifth year I thought, bugger all, let’s just do it. Like most things, I didn’t really think it through or have any objective. I had to choose between joining EMC that year and doing the moot, and I sometimes regret that choice. SF that year was run by my friend Govind and it was phenomenal. But staying for free in Washington and arguing under glitzy chandeliers and free drinks came a close second.

I’m sure you’ve gotten this question a lot, but what do you think you did differently the second time? What’s the secret to winning?

You know, no one asks me about this stuff, so I don’t get this question a lot. This is the first time.

At the time I’m sure people were curious.

No, not really. When we came back everyone got drunk and then forgot about it. But, we didn’t do anything differently. We just enjoyed it and got lucky and that was all.

When you were in Law School, did you have any idea of where you wanted to end up, professionally?

No, I had absolutely no idea. I was playing around with the stuff we were doing in college, (moots and SF and friends) too much to think about what I would do afterwards. So I didn’t really pay that much attention or thought to it. Most of my friends were going to work in law firms, a few of them went into litigation, but for whatever reason, I didn’t consider them. It’s not that I wasn’t drawn to them, I just didn’t consider them too seriously. Like I said, it was very odd but I left college with a fairly blank mind. The thought of my mind was, “well, that was fun! now what?”

At what point did you decide that you wanted to pursue higher studies?

After college I had joined a judge at the Delhi High Court, Justice Ravindra Bhat, whom I had interned with while in college. Working with him was the most fantastic experience. I worked with him for a little more than one year. I applied for the Rhodes Scholarship then, not because of any quest to pursue higher studies but because I thought two years of a funded stay in a completely new place can only be helpful. Learning goes much beyond higher studies and I didn’t have this articulated as precisely then, but the basic idea was that.

When I joined Justice Bhat, I didn’t really have any ambitions of pursuing “higher studies” or anything of that sort. I was quite clueless. I joined him because I interned with him in my fourth year and as a person, he was amazing and his chamber seemed like an open place. When I was leaving college, he was the only light of hope I could see!

But I thought the idea of getting money to go stay outside India for two years, in a completely different environment, could only help. I didn’t have any academic inclinations. I enjoyed travelling. If it was possible to get a stipend and go to a completely new place then that was the best way to travel. That was basically why I did it. There was also a darker side to it, which was that I felt like Delhi (aside from Justice Bhat and some other work I was doing) was too claustrophobic, college had been too amazing an experience, and I really wanted to see what else existed to match it or exceed it. It was classic post college blues, but luckily, I had the chance to explore further.

So tell me a little bit about what you did at Oxford – what did you study there?

You can pick four subjects but you can attend the classes for any number. I picked human rights, equality law, private law and fundamental rights, and philosophical foundations of the common law, and attended seminars for a few others. Again, I didn’t have any specialisation or know what my “thing” was, like many others. I had many questions about politics, economy and governance, so I picked four subjects that I thought looked interesting in that direction.

The four courses were about 10% of what I learnt at Oxford, the environment, my friends, my college (Balliol), the clubs, associations, open lectures, travels in and around Europe were the other 90% of my learning. 99% (I like percentages it seems) of everything I saw or did in Oxford felt new, and somehow limiting myself to the four subjects seemed incongruous.

With so much input and so many new things, I was often very lost. It was scary sometimes because it seemed like everyone knew what they were doing while I was bumbling around. Luckily, I had enough people around me who were also exploring, and more importantly, I kept running into amazing experiences and people, so the learning continued. But, to be honest, I also had some very dark and doubtful moments – those nihilist phases where nothing makes sense and all you want is comfort, not exploration. I learnt a lot from those moments.

What were you hoping to get out of these courses? Did you see it more as an opportunity to learn for learning’s sake or did you ever consider it as a stepping-stone for your professional life?

You need to have an objective for something to be a stepping-stone. I didn’t really have anything further in mind to step towards.

After I graduated from college, the one year that I was with Justice Bhat, the learning was massive. Most of my legal education, the applied part of it, where I could channel my knowledge and skills into some real practical application came by talking to him or by working with him. His knowledge of the law, his understanding of the practical parts, of the political parts, of every other factor that goes into the process was amazing. In that one year, I had some inkling that the legal process is one way of doing things but obviously there are a thousand other ways of influencing the outcome that you want. It’s not just litigation. Just because you are a lawyer doesn’t mean you have to do litigation. Justice Bhat was very supportive in whatever exploration I wanted to do in that one year. He allowed me to roam around Delhi and do a little bit of my own work as well while I was with him.

At the same time, when I went to Oxford, I went purely with the intention of first, travelling, and second, to see what else exists. Luckily I didn’t have objectives, because my learning would have been more limited. I realized in that one year with Justice Bhat that I know very little and there was much more to know. Oxford was a complete shot in the dark. I was looking for a way to engage with the world that satisfied both my want to explore and also to do something positive. The courses that I chose seemed interesting. I didn’t have any idea whether I would use these for a job or for further studies or anything of that sort.

The same story applies for the second year in Oxford, only with a little more intensity. The second year I chose a thesis on something I was well-versed in (by way of theory, which I try to stay as far from as possible now), and enjoyed, and thought was relevant – the issue of how to play your part in large structural wrongs. Broad wrongs like climate change or something like that. At the time, a lot of my friends and I were talking about these really big things that are happening in the world but I felt helpless because I didn’t really have any control over anything. I found myself talking in a lot of big principles but not really doing anything. It was alright to talk, but if it wasn’t followed up with action, I felt it was inauthentic. That was my thesis topic for the second year, which was easy enough because you have to write 30,000 words over the course of one year, and you have a stipend. So that allows you 90% of the time to explore other areas, to do whatever else you like as well. So I was able to use that time to travel more, and, more locally. The more I was learning at Oxford, the more I felt like I wanted to lose myself, because I found my head filling up with ideas and information and thoughts and it was all very distracting from the simple, clear existence I had till then. Ignorance was bliss, but at the same time, I didn’t want knowledge to be confusing and distracting. Travelling locally to new places allowed me to do that – it was a beautiful way of travelling I discovered then (through Workaway), because you discover a whole new part of yourself when you’re in an alien environment with no trappings of your past self. The opposite of a Cox and Kings planned holiday basically.

So Oxford wasn’t a stepping stone in my professional life. It was a phase in my learning journey. That sounds like a good one liner I can use somewhere. Thank you Quirk.

If there’s one aspect of the Oxford teaching experience that NLS should emulate, what would it be?

I don’t think there is any point in comparing Oxford to NLS. Obviously there are some good practices that any university should adopt and Oxford has many of them. Basic institutional things like setting up associations and clubs and providing more administrative support and having a more rigorous academic discipline. Even tutoring, for example, where in addition to lectures you have either one-on-one or three-on-one sessions in addition to the lectures, which allow for a strong engagement. In my experience, they were two different worlds. And that makes sense, because Nagarbhavi is not England! To teach the same things would be redundant.

On a tangential note, one of the things that struck me was that Oxford still has the exam system at the post grad level. You did your four subjects the entire year and at the end of it, it would all boil down to one three hour exam and your grade would be dependent on that. These things are taken very seriously. For a fair number of people, the entire process became about the exams. Learning was still exam-structured. That was something that got to me slightly. In terms of the institutional set-up, there is a lot that NLS can learn from Oxford. But in terms of the content, or the style of teaching, that is something that has to be extremely unique. When I look back, I’m actually very curious about how or why so much of the content in Oxford law has made its way into the NLS curriculum, the social circumstances, the history, the environment are so different, that it seems that this blind pickup and drop of content is quite harmful in terms of our learning. The content must allow us to make sense of our surroundings and not provide a static set of information or ideology, that at least would’ve been very helpful for me in law school.

This is a huge question though about what are the best learning practices. I’m more actively involved in this area now in my work, so perhaps I’ll have a chance to say more in the future with more certainty.

Did you ever or do you envision a career in international law?

I wanted to at one point, but that vanished quite quickly. I did some international law work while at Oxford. I was representing the government in an investment treaty arbitration. It was practical, applied international law work. It was very interesting to see how that world works, to see how the law comes into operation in that area and to what extent international law is or is not useful and how it plays out domestically in terms of how the media sees it and how it’s all structured.

Justice Bhat is actually responsible for me dropping international law. He got me too interested in many other things and the idea of international law was a little rarefied at that point so I decided to drop it. Now, because I was working with a law firm for this government case I see that there are so many opportunities opening up for someone who is interested in practical international law work from India. So that field is open. I didn’t have that perspective or that vantage point earlier, but that’s not why I decided to move away. My top priority at that point, actually, and it was up until two weeks ago, was only to travel. That was really all I wanted to do, everything was somehow or the other structured around that. Along the way I found some very interesting debates, people, ideas, and projects, and I’m not trying to fuse all these things together in my work.

(Customary Cute Celebrity Photo.)

Where did you end up after Oxford?

In the dump. I did a mish mash of things. Right after Oxford I returned from London to Delhi by road with Geetha, my Jessup partner amongst other things. I couldn’t finish that fully, though Geetha went further than me and did a solo trip through Iran, which I think deserves a Quirk headline. Then I came back to India. I took about four months off to reflect on whatever travelling I had done and the learnings I had (which was again not an easy process, I had a classic “foreign return” phase, where I found myself commenting on India’s and Delhi’s cleanliness and what not …) Two major experiences here that I wanted to make sense of were a teaching job in Jamaica, which was one of the most sublime experiences, and some farm work in Morocco, those few months were so beautiful that I wanted to recreate something similar back in India.

After I took some time off to reflect on that, I had a little travel time again in south India. At this time, I met some amazing people (Norma and Calude Alvarez of Goa Foundation fame, Darshan Bhat who runs Creatnet Education in Delhi), who were inspiring bolts from the blue. In was also Auroville briefly visiting an experimental farm called ‘Solitude’, which is a permaculture farm. That again was a treat. Then I spent some time with Geetha, my above mentioned friend, near Kochi in a small beautiful temple town. You were asking earlier, what was different between the two Jessups, it helps when you like and ultimately end up going out with your moot partner. That makes work much simpler. I also had this very basic, but long time, interest in meditation so that’s why I went to Tiruvannamalai, which is where the Ramana Maharshi ashram is and the Vipassana centre. That’s also what drew me to Auroville.

By the end of all this, I was thoroughly confused but convinced that there is phenomenal beauty in this world. So I sat down and racked my brain about all the things that I’d done in the last three years, what excited me, what didn’t excite me. Based on that, I’ve picked up a few projects right now till April.

What are those projects? What are you working on?

When I came back to Delhi, I met this phenomenal man, Darshan Bhat, who runs an organisation called Createnet Education. He helps different kinds of people – businesses, school principals, any other group of people – to structure their thoughts clearly to achieve the outcomes that they want to achieve. I’m currently working with him, on work surrounding the idea of ‘learning how to learn’. How do you process all the massive amounts of information that you receive, to be internally clear and to achieve the goals that you want to achieve. This made all the sense in the world to me, because my learning in NLS, the High Court, Oxford and travelling (and everything else in the middle really) was that essentially experiences are created internally, by a translation of external output. So, if you are, as I was, trying to create a certain experience, or make sense of certain input, you have to work on the internal world.

In the context of college for example – you get a lot of information from your teachers, discussion groups, and committees. You have to process all that input and see what makes sense for you, which will be very different from what makes sense for the next person. Based on your background, experiences, so on and so forth. So that process of learning, which can happen in many different ways (and is, in my experience, happening all the time, everywhere), is what I work on right now.

Practically, I’m designing four courses. The first two are for law students and law professors respectively to help each group fine-tune the learning process in their own contexts. For students, it’s to help them answer (in experiential ways) what they are learning, how they are learning and if this learning is useful or not. Self-directed learning, simply. For the second group, it’s to ask, “you may be teaching, but are the students learning?” The second two courses are focussed on self-enquiry, to help participants understand themselves better. This is self-directed learning about oneself! Where you are the subject, object, teacher and student.

What ties all these courses together is the idea of self-inquiry and deconditioning ourselves, which is least in my experience critical to learning. This is my current work, its something that I’m just starting out and learning the ropes but it’s all super exciting!

Do you have any advice for present students at NLS?

No. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt in the four years since graduation, its that the learning process is a 100% unique to each person. That is essentially what I am trying to do now with the courses I spoke about, and with my own learning in my daily life. If I give any advice, it’s essentially just a reflection of my own experience at law school – yours would probably be very different.

This is going to be a really shitty interview, right? There’s going to be a lot of pauses and dot dot dots everywhere.

No don’t worry; I’ll edit it to make it sound as coherent as possible.

You can put a footnote: “He was very incoherent but Quirk has editorial guidelines to make everyone look presentable”

Prof. T.S Somashekhar has got the unique distinction of giving law school students more sleepless nights than any moot or project ever could. His dry wit, sarcastic comments and raw intellect ensure Economics I and II never get boring. We at Quirk decided to interview the man himself to find out what goes on in his ever calculating mind…

Last time I wrote for Quirk I thought I wouldn’t have to rant for at least 12 months. 81 days later, here I am again. I guess law school never fails to surprise us.

This article describes the journey the writer undertook in order to get his Criminal Law – I result declared. This journey began when the writer chose to drop out of the Univ Moot Rounds (because staying alive is always preferable to a better CV) and decided to make his project instead. So what does the Exam Department do to a guy who takes an exemption and also makes the project? Write Result Withheld against his name and decide to give him a series of minor heart-attacks for the next two weeks. (Apparently, I was supposed to get my project exemption cancelled before submitting the project.) The journey finally culminated in the result being declared. But not before the writer lost half the hair on his head trying to reason with the unreasonable. And not before he started empathising with Mussadi Lal from Office-Office.

I always used to think that the people who hate on the ED are exaggerating. I mean, how bad can it be? I understand that the ED can’t be very lenient with us. Because if that happens we will find teachers teaching empty benches. People shouldn’t hate the ED so much, right? But this was before I myself had to deal (read: beg, cry, grovel) with the Exam Department. At one point I even considered demanding trial by combat. I’m sure that other people have had worse encounters with the Exam Department, but mine was not exactly a walk in the park.

When college reopened, I decided to go to the ED personally (this was after I realised that simply writing e-mails to professors won’t help my cause). I saw other people standing outside the ED. These people had hope in their eyes. Maybe today ED will finally pass their attendance make-up which dates back to 1976. You could say that the ED is just like a typical Indian Government office. But then you would be terribly wrong. In reality, the typical Indian Government office is like the ED.

The ED is playing a game with me. And the name of the game is ‘Let’s test this guy’s patience’. I am just an unwilling participant, catering to the whims of my overlords. They make the rules, I follow. They own me. I’m just one of their many toys. This game is a complicated one. It has many levels and each level involves subjecting the student to more stress than the previous level. In this game of getting your result declared, you win or you die.

The rules of the game are:

1. Withhold student’s result.
2. He will approach us. Let the games begin.
3. Student will try to reason and negotiate. Don’t listen to him.
4. Make him write an email to a certain professor explaining the reason behind withholding of his result.
5. Student writes to professor. Professor writes to ED.
6. Student will think the matter has been resolved. Student is an idiot.
7. Ask student to explain why he dropped out of Univ Moot Rounds. Unnecessarily involve MCS Convenor in the game.
8. Ask student to ask MCS Convenor to ask the professor to ask the Exam Department to declare the result. Such asking, much wow.
9. Student is hopeful again.
10. He will personally come to visit us. Tell him result will be declared the next day.
11. Student is now bursting with enthusiasm to finally see his result.
12. But wait. LET’S MAKE HIM WRITE ANOTHER MAIL TO THE UG CHAIRPERSON.
13. Student writes mail to UGC.
14. Result declared.
15. Student has failed in Criminal Law – I.
16. Blow the final whistle.
17. Examination Department 1, Garvit Sharma 0.

After playing this game, I naturally felt exhausted. But apart from the exhaustion and a newly-formed phobia of electronic mail, what surprised me was the fact that ED has not yet linked the declaring of results to the Aadhaar Card. That would have made for an even more interesting game.

No matter how annoyed you are with this entire process, you can’t afford to lose your cool (a task which I find extraordinarily difficult) with the ED. Every step you take, every noise you make, will determine how the ED decides to fuck you up again. And when your Uber rating is better than your GPA, you have to take every step very, very carefully. I understand that I might have fucked up a little when I made the project after taking an exemption. I also understand that I should have informed the ED that I’m backing out of the Univs so that they could have revoked my exemption. But it probably shouldn’t have taken two weeks to sort this matter out. We are hitting sadism levels which shouldn’t even be possible. If you want me to write mails to a hundred different people, please tell me in one go. Not in instalments.

Also, the ED withholds results if your library/mess/DISCO (girls and boiz) dues are not paid. So if you are at home chilling and you fail in an exam, you won’t even realise that you ought to start studying. Just because you forgot to pay 17 bucks at the Hostel Office for the shitty food they serve in breakfast. Just impose heavy monetary penalties on those who refuse to pay up their dues. No need to mix exam results with mess food. And weed. And alcohol. And cigarettes. And other contraband stuff.

Anyway, here’s to hoping that I don’t find anything to rant about for the next 3 months (reduction in duration because life in Law School has more plot twists than a Dan Brown novel.)

Thanks for reading. May your attendance make-up get passed soon.

One job that I have faithfully performed for the last four years is being my batch’s class representative. As college designations go, it isn’t the fanciest, the most prestigious or even the one that receives the most hate. (The last one will always be reserved for MessComm). It does, however, keep me occupied and every once in a while it makes me feel like I am doing more in college than playing Age of Empires every day. But the one time every trimester where every class representative’s phone is flooded is the week leading up to project submissions.

To understand what exactly my job is, one needs to understand how project submissions exactly work. In my opinion, every project submission has three phases: the one where you think of working, the one where you try to work and the one where work actually gets done. The duration of these phases vary depending on the kind of person that you are. I am truly jealous of my friends who manage, time and again, to begin phase three a whole week and a half before submissions. But I’d like to think their lives are more boring than mine. I, on the other hand, begin phase three 36 hours before the date of the submission. This is less than ideal. But at this point I am still better off than those who have texted me asking me how likely it is that I will be able to convince the UG Chairperson that the internet has, once again, had the life sucked out of it at the exact moment when we finally thought we could stop using it to stream Westworld and use it for what it was meant for.  Everyone has picked up their phones and registered their voice on the batch WhatsApp group – “Can we please ask for an extension? We’ve had no time at all to make our project”. The vendor at Wholesale Wines will beg to differ.

Thus, I write to the UG Chairperson. As always, we’re given fewer days than we had asked for. The batch laments that there has been a travesty of justice and we have been robbed of our due. We’re left with only one authority to approach – Vice, of House Chancellor, first of his name, king of the LLMs, LLBs, and all the animals in between.

I draft the application asking for an extension with more loathing and self-hate than a catholic teen playing with himself while watching ‘Schoolboy makes gardener trim his bush’.

Soon I have my application drafted and I take it to the vice chancellor’s office. ‘Ask and ye shall receive’ reads the noticeboard outside his door; motivating me as always to ask for more. I’m lying, the noticeboard had today’s thought for the day, pinned there faithfully as always. But I ask for an extension anyway and the extension is granted. I have now destroyed the next few days of my life along with that of the rest of college.

“Why do you say ‘destroyed’? Why all the loathing?” you’re sure to ask. Here’s why –

The problem with asking for an extension is that it eats away time that you would otherwise use for more meaningful pursuits – watching a movie, reading a book or trying to build your capacity for old monk. There is that odd time in every person’s life, one that would fall in phase two of the aforementioned three phases, when you really want to begin your project but 9Gag seems to be more vibrant than it ever was. You begin to browse the most obscure corners of the World Wide Web and maybe even indulge in a bit of NRAP (Non-Recreational Academic Pot: the kind you need to get yourself to focus just the right amount…or so we tell ourselves). Our distractions may be varied, but I can say with a fair amount of confidence that this phase is one that everyone experiences. What an extension does is extend this phase. After the general extension comes through, it gets extended by two days. It gets extended by two more days when the Moot Court Society comes out with theirs, and goes on getting extended when each committee, board, club, council, and association rolls out one of their own.

This time is not an enjoyable time for anyone. You shy away from any activity that would take more than an hour and a half because you need to get back to making your project. You don’t want to go on a holiday because you’re going to use the weekend to “just sit and write”. You have multiple tabs open on your browser and you convince yourself that you will get to them right after you finish this one last YouTube video. One last Chetta run before you get work. Nothing gets done.

All of you who know what I’m talking about here (and I’m certain that 90% of you do) should realize that you have had very little time to do what you really want to do in college because of phase two. Ever wonder why most of us have managed less than four or five trips to somewhere other than Nandi hills? (It’s shameful if you count that as a trip) Ever wonder why you haven’t ever had the time to publish in an international journal? Ever wonder why you’ve not been to more than forty bars in Bangalore – a visiting professor who was here for five weeks told me that she managed to visit eighty-two; that’s double the number that I have managed in four years. None of this has been possible because projects have always got in the way.

But what do we do about this? My suggestion is simple – we get the SBA to make a representation to the vice chancellor asking him to never grant an extension again. It doesn’t matter if the internet is actually bad and we can’t meet the deadline, I’d rather take a project carry than have us continue living the shitty life that we’ve lived. This is the only way that we will actually be able to get back the time that keeps getting stolen away from us. I say that this is the only way because I know that the alternative is impossible – that we actually manage our time better.

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.