NLS Inmates Review journalists had conducted a famous sting operation in the Cauvery Bunker in 1942. They managed to catch on tape the popular mooter Adolf Hitler (ID no: 0273) bursting into a furious monologue following the release of his first year Reval results.

In light of the growing resentment against the structural problem of Reval, we are now declassifying the video from our archives.

Original video from: Der Untergang

Sceptics argue that it’s a wilful move by the important man to become more elusive

August 18, 2018 | By: Aman Vasavada | Image by Mukta Joshi

Ganga’s foreman, Krishna Gowda Sir, is widely acknowledged as the humble little fellow who successfully duped parents into thinking that their spoilt and lazy lads have finally learnt to do their own laundry and clean their own rooms.

Obviously always in demand, his ringtone echoing in the passages is a fundamental feature of MHOR’s afternoon ambience, second only to the desperate yells of “Gowdaaa Sirr” from those who still don’t use Jio. Unsurprisingly, the adoption of the John Cena theme as his harbinger has become the talking point at MHOR dinner tables.

A very vocal faction of lazy Delhi boys speculate that the transition is a deliberate signal by Gowda Sir that he’s done with their shit and will henceforth be as elusive as John Cena – the WWE superstar with the motto “You Can’t See Me” who has been sighted even less frequently than some Ganga boys have been sighted in the 8:50 A.M. classroom.

If their theory holds true, the domestic lives of many will be crippled. “We are considering seeking project extensions for having to do our own laundry”, complained one of the boys, who refrained from naming himself.

All may not be lost, however, as another source claims that there is no hidden agenda behind the ringtone. “Everyone is overthinking this. I’ve seen Gowda Sir watching the Royal Rumble in the common room. He’s just expressing his fandom.”

Ominously, Gowda Sir was not available for comments.

As we go into press, GWC is investigating the claims and SDGM is on alert to counter any spontaneous violence triggered by the act of 40 irritable men waking up in the bunkers of Ganga to the John Cena theme blaring on Gowda Sir’s trusty Nokia, all because that one piece of shit on Cauvery’s top floor was too lazy to come all the way and call him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love,

A Proud Non-Cool Girl

On a dark BU highway, CLAT rank in my hand
Giant library tower , rising up through the air
Up ahead in the distance, I hear of submission deadlines
My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim
I had to look for lifelines.
There it hung on the noticeboard;
The list of placements was swell.
And I was thinking to myself,
“This could be Heaven or this could be Hell”
Then he kicked open the door and he showed me my cube
There were voices down the corridor,
I thought I heard them say…

Welcome to the Laa School Life, macha.
Such a BT place (Such a BT place)
But there’s a saving grace.
Plenty of fun at the Hostel Himalaya
Any time of year (Any time of year)
It’s lit af here.

The system is fully twisted, it’s got some crazy demands.
It’s got a lot of shitty, shitty ploys, to bring you despair.
How they dance in the Acad quad, Trying to forget.
But they’ll always remember, and they’ll always regret.

So I called up the alumnus,
“This place is breaking my spine.”
He said, “Be the monster it wants you to be, then the rest will all be fine.”
And still those voices are calling from far away,
Wake you up in the middle of Torts class
Just to hear them say…

Welcome to the Laa School life, macha.
Such a BT place (Such a BT place)
Until you match its pace.
Then you’ll be livin’ it up at the Hostel Himalaya
What a nice surprise (what a nice surprise)
Can I live this life?

Results on the website,
That F by my name looks so nice.
I thought, “We are all just prisoners here, of our own device”
And in my roommate’s chambers,
They gathered for some scenes.
They had won it with skills and belief
But I just couldn’t take this grief.

Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the gate
I had to get that Uber fast
But the app just won’t book it.
“Relax, ” said the night man,
“We have blocked all these sites.
You can drop-out any time you like,
But you can never leave! ”

Welcome to the Laa School life, macha.
Such a BT place (Such a BT place)
Until you match its pace.
Then you’ll be livin’ it up at the Hostel Himalaya
What a nice surprise (what a nice surprise)
Can I live this life?

Dear First Year,

It has been nearly two months in this place now for you, and I am sure you are tired of being inundated with contradictory advice on how to survive (or thrive) in this godforsaken place. But bear with me, because my advice is fairly simple, and has the advantage of being delivered by someone who is not a stud, so don’t think it is unattainable. It is this: do not, under any circumstances, become like me.

I entered this place with all the realism of a child, expecting everything to magically fall into place for me. When things went wrong – as they were bound to – I went overboard trying to prove I fit into this place. I quit chasing the things that actually mattered to me, the things that shaped me, and went after grades and committees and social status. But I did not do enough for any of these things either – I abandoned moots halfway, and crammed the syllabus at the last minute. I became a receptacle of nothingness, unchanged by the learning that was so easily available to me in this place.

But not only was I untouched by the good parts of law school, I began losing the few passions I did enter the place with. My writing was, if I may say so myself, once filled with allegory and beauty. It has now become a rehash of everyone else’s, echoing all the crap that I am reduced to reading online. The language that was once a source of solace for me has begun to wear me down. Where I could once read Guy de Maupassant and Victor Hugo in the original, I now struggle to switch between the three simple tenses and accord my verbs and adjectives. I no longer sketch or doodle for the heck of it, but as a means of killing time and to avoid studying the next order or bare act. And my reading? Well, I suppose I shall always have books, but they, too, sometimes feel like one more chore to finish.

I can’t even claim to have any character. My ex and (once) one of my closest friends, who once told me he loved me for my ferocity and bravery, has virtually cut me off because he couldn’t stand to see me function as a shadow of the person that I used to be. My convictions and ideals have suffered, and the people around me will not hesitate to admit that I am neither revolutionary enough, nor passionate enough for the causes I profess to believe in. And I am weaker than I ever was – two years at the counselor with no sign of progress, a lack of money the only barrier between me and alcoholism. I long for a smoke every day even though a cigarette has yet to pass my lips.

The truth is, dear First Year, that I allowed the madness in the place – the competitiveness, the bitchiness – to seep inside me and take root there. I let it shake me out until I was insecure about even the little things that did not matter, because every time someone got ahead of me in any area it was like conceding defeat. And I let it wring me dry of any passion or emotion, turning me into the kind of person who, instead of seeking love or friendship or any meaningful human connection, contents herself with the increasingly elusive orgasms from jacking off to shitty porn.

All I have now for companionship is anxiety and envy, and I only have myself to blame.

For those few seniors who will read this and accuse me of self-pity and seeking attention, to those who suggest that I am overly defeatist in my attitude: I haven’t given up. I’m fighting myself every day: telling myself life isn’t all a race, getting things done, pushing myself to come out of my shell, seeking out new experiences, trying to rediscover what I once loved. But I have reached a point in my life where I have to run just to remain where I am without moving forward. God forbid if I were to stand still. And I know as well as any of you that being seen as weak – publicly – is the last thing that is likely to get you help in law school. The only reason I’m writing this is because most of this harm is self-inflicted, and possibly also systemic and cyclical, and I want to serve as a cautionary tale, if I can do nothing else.

The gist of my letter, dear First Year, is this: law school provides you opportunities to grow as a person. Use them. Find yourself, find new people, learn new things. But do not let the madness get to you. Hold on to who you are – the good parts of who you are – in the face of whatever challenges law school and life will throw at you. Because if you truly give it a chance, law school can do so much for you.

Do not be me, the one dumbfuck who allowed it to wreck her.

Ever yours,

Anonymous.

Those who date nonconformists often wonder

How they must please their significant other.

But I’ve figured one of these types out:

Let me tell you how it’s to be gone about.

The first thing to do is to stay away from convention

(Fancy dinners are something you must never mention).

Do whatever you can that’s not the norm,

Find a way to not conform.

Don’t gift him on his birthday, because dates are an illusion.

Heck, find him a way to start a proletariat revolution.

Elaborate plans are mainstream; abandoning them is your goal

You must also work to demolish gender roles.

Take selfies and pull funny faces,

Do risky things in public places.

Take him to a talk on workers’ rights,

Debate the Manifesto throughout the night.

But don’t give him flowers, he doesn’t like those,

And don’t take his pictures, he doesn’t like to pose.

But listen and learn from his newest stories, please

And write him poems just like these.

Surprise him with amateur stand-up comedy shows

Take him to a part of town that no one knows

Find a cuisine that you’ve never tried before

And eat at roadside stalls some more.

But when you meet him, hold him close

Run your fingers over the bridge of his nose

You’re so much in love, you know it well

But you don’t have to say it: he can tell.

O sweet-faced, soft-eyed Medusa of steely heart

We bow before thee, offering obeisance to thy wickedness

Clad in unsuspecting innocence. Thy power over us is unmatched

For thou could be the difference between Life and Death

Pass and Fail

Attendance and Shortage, yet none have

Understood the caprice that governs thy bureaucrat’s mind

Capable of spinning out regulations on the fly

And leaving even students of the law dazed.

1. Unity is Everything – You’re nothing without your batchmates

It’s a cold hard truth in most places, law school in particular. Be it vindictive teachers who just don’t give you attendance or merely a quest with the Exam Department, you’re going loco if you solo it. Moreover, in the absence of any grievance redressal system apart from the SBA (which generally follows the policy of non-intervention/mediation rather than representation), it’s going to be pretty damn hard, but not impossible. But if you’ve got your batch’s support, there’s nothing you can’t do. They’ll stand for you, your cause is theirs too, and there is no way the college is going to consider throwing out 96 students. Hence, you are invincible.

2. Embrace the dissent

Any movement brings with it a lot of dissent, even from within. Rather than ignoring it, it’s better to work with it. For instance, a lot of people disagreed with putting up posters that expressed our disagreement with the professor in class. Big issue but nothing a little bit of wordplay couldn’t fix. The result: you’re going to end up being a lot stronger than you look. Kind of creepily goes in tandem with Sun Tzu’s advice, “appear weak when you are strong.”

3. People are going to cut you short – “But what about the kids in Africa?”

You’re going to get a lot of eye-rolls, prepare yourself for loads of unsolicited advice. “Like seriously, why can’t you just ignore him”, “you’re going to unnecessarily piss the admin off”, “you know nothing is going to come out of it, drop it”, “why can’t you guys just resolve it already”, “it’s just one incident”, “focus your efforts on bigger issues”, “now they’re going to impose a dress code”.

Who said it was easy being an activist? It is disillusioning, and at these moments you really want to give up by undermining the relevance of incidents. But just because most people choose to roll with it doesn’t mean you have to. Don’t rationalise it, don’t let the apathy get to you, it’s never going to be “OK”. There will always be people who don’t agree, don’t let them bring you down.

4. Hope is a good thing

In this world of endless silences and red-tape abyss, swimming against the current is a herculean task. But you’ve got to keep at it, and being positive helps. Don’t go overboard with the optimism but don’t let pessimism take over either. Be in consonance with reality but hope for the best (yes, prepare for the worst too). Pessimism loves creating cracks in that great wall of solidarity.

5. (Social) Media really ups your bargaining power

Many of us chose to distance ourselves from the manner in which the matter was reported. It was irresponsible, distorted and sensationalised. But I begrudgingly admit, the media, including social media, really changed the bargaining dynamics. Nobody cares about what nobody knows. Injustice is best perpetrated in the dark. In broad daylight, it’s difficult to hide. Sometimes, switching the lights on is probably the best option you have. Social movements and the media are inextricably linked. Greater the coverage, more the bargaining power.

Also, the comments section is priceless (for beginners, start with the TOI). It makes everything you do worthwhile.

6. No guts, no story

You need guts. There can be no two ways about it. If you don’t have enough of it, refrain from dishing it out often and hopefully you’ll have enough of it stored up for D-day. Our whole batch had turned up in shorts for the ADR class and in what turned out to be a little anti-climactic, the professor didn’t seem to notice. The fact that my batch had gone to such great lengths to express their solidarity gave me courage to stand up and refuse to sit down until he apologized. Within minutes, the whole batch was standing up. So guts can come from anywhere, really. Needless to add, please keep your good sense intact while binging on the guts.

     7. It can be a long haul – believe in your cause

Taking up any cause is going to be challenging. Which is why it is imperative that you strongly believe in it. There are going to be no-response days, overly stressful confrontational days and all other kind of days you can come up with. Many of them are going to coax you into giving up. Since it’s going to be your belief in the cause that will prevent you from taking the bait, stronger is always better.

8. Don’t get vindictive

It is almost tempting to feel vengeful, especially in the face of a brazen opponent. But keep calm and evaluate your options. Ego leads to destruction, even the winners must pay a price. On the other hand, a win-win situation doesn’t hurt anybody and we all go home happy. What would you rather choose? Come on, go get your Godfather on and make them an offer they can’t refuse.

Views are personal. Number of reasons are proportional to length of shorts.

I recall Professor Nandimath using a phrase more than once during our orientation ceremony, with all us wide-eyed wee little first years listening in awe to how we were becoming part of an intellectually elite institution: Academic rigour. It lies at the very core of our existence at Law School. Four projects, eight exams, three months. Really hits you like a whirlwind when you first get here. Add to that the constant reminders of the standards you’re expected to uphold and how they’re falling. Throw in the challenges of mooting, debating, writing publishable papers, etc. for good measure. Could it be anything but obvious that our lives here are brimming with academic rigour? Actually, it couldn’t be anything but wrong. Blatantly wrong.

Lawyers rely so often on distinctions for their bread and butter, so let’s make one here. A packed schedule does not constitute academic rigour. The hours in a day you spend engaged in something Law School has thrown at you does not determine how academically rigorous your life is. The idea I’m proposing is simple: quality, not quantity. How many of your courses are challenging you intellectually? Do you look back over a period of time and think to yourself: Man, my thought process on this issue or general way of thinking has become so much more mature? Let me be clear at the outset: I do not wish to undermine the challenges we face at first trying to get used to this crazy schedule and mad rat race. But once the dust has settled, it’s good to take a clearer look and ask questions such as the above. Of course, you’re entitled to ask: why is this question even important? Because it helps us think about why we are here in the first place.

Terry Eagleton recently wrote a devastating critique of the modern university where he argued, in essence, that education in the UK has become way too commodified, and that the university as a center of critique has ceased to exist in the face of capitalist forces. He says that we are in the age of the ‘entrepreneurial university’ that values education only for the contribution it makes to the marketplace. While the point I am making does not delve nearly as deep, I am troubled by what passes for learning at Law School today. One can hear complaints on two seemingly contradictory fronts: one, that our learning is not of enough ‘practical relevance’, and two, that even in courses where the syllabus is not trite and meaningless, we do not explore the nuances that make the subject interesting. It is these nuances and their centrality to the course that constitute academic rigour. The first question is better suited to professional treatment than my own naïve speculation, so I will confine myself to the second. And my answer to it is this: if Law School isn’t giving you academic rigour, take it for yourself.

I’ll be blunt: the system sucks. As much as The Lonely Island said it does. The ‘rigour’ of the institution is killing the academic spirit and not strengthening it. To be sure, a host of other factors are responsible. We have many more distractions than the legendary Law School-ites of yore who have achieved spectacular things in life. And let’s not get the wrong idea here: the spirit of inquiry does not require us to become bookworms who leave the library only to forage for food. That said, the extent to which curiosity and a desire to learn are noticeably absent in this institution is alarming to say the least.

As a member of Stud Ad for the last three years, and someone taking an interest in its activities for all my time in Law School, I have seen symposia on topics ranging from the Takeover Code to refugee law. Diverse as these sessions may have been, they had one thing in common: they saw a woefully low turnout of students from Law School. Very recently, the dean of Cornell Law School delivered a lecture on property law that was attended by six people, three of them being faculty members. This does not prove that there are no more genuinely interested people. They may have had unavoidable reasons like project submissions that kept them from attending. After all, rigour rears its ugly head far too often. But even factoring this in, it does show a considerable amount of apathy among our student body. It is precisely this apathy which I believe needs a cure, and it is not an insurmountable problem.

The bottom line is this: do not let the aforementioned sucky system ruin the academic experience that you can potentially have. We are all fortunate to have a relatively smart group of peers, an excellent library and enviable connections that enable us to get the likes of Noah Feldman to deliver lectures here. Use this wisely and you stand to gain an unimaginable amount. One thing we need to bear in mind closely is that this is primarily a vocational degree programme. Therefore, you approach the law with a limited knowledge base and worldview as it is. Do not be so caught up in working the system, getting your grades and securing your future that you ignore why you are here in the present. Before trying to score a publication for the piece on cyber crimes you just wrote, stop a while and consider how much criminal law you’ve read. It takes years of study and research to write meaningfully on any subject, and it is absurd to panic if you haven’t done so in two or three years of Law School. A related problem is time management. Among those of you who’ve read this far, a sizeable proportion will be thinking “This is all well and good, but we simply don’t have the time.” Trust me, you do. Our supposedly rigorous system can be worked with surprisingly few hours devoted to it. One way to make time is by not treating extra reading as a luxury that you will get to if you have spare time, but viewing it as part of your schedule: an essential activity without which you will become brain dead.

Eagleton is right when he says that in today’s knowledge economy, pharmacists are likely to be more valued than phenomenologists. But hell, if you want to study phenomenology, go ahead and do it. The Great Valuer is not sizing you up with his calculator. Not just yet.

References:

Terry Eagleton, The Slow Death of the University.

The Lonely Island, Threw it on the Ground.