You should probably not read my list and just skip to reading Worm. But if you really need a reason …
- Web serials are the future. Yes, Quirk isn’t the only thing that is moving online (ha!) novels are, too. Web serials are a great way for relatively unknown writers to do offbeat, cool things that traditional publishers wouldn’t accept but that readers love.
- Web serials are also the past. Know who else wrote his novels in the form of serials? Charles Dickens.
- Worm is about superheroes. It is about fun, witty, creative superheroes. Check out some of the most fun superheroes recently – they haven’t had the best powers (Superman is boring) but they’ve had absolute rubbish powers like turning into the size of an ant and done fun things with them. That is Worm for you, in a nutshell.
- The main character of Worm can control bugs. She uses it to take on (spoilers) the Superman-equivalents of that world. She wins. Enough said.
- There’s no good and bad in Worm, just different shades of grey. For a small time there the author had me sympathizing with the white-supremacist. His interludes, posted from the point of view of different characters, really add to the story. Game of Thrones fans will enjoy.
- Like all the best superhero stories, Worm isn’t just about superheroes. It deals with very complex issues like racism, class conflicts, disasters, morality, and really bad leaders. Worm mirrors our society in ways that are beautiful and occasionally disturbing. Here’s one of my favorite quotes from Worm: “Why is it that the people who are most concerned about good and bad are the ones who have the least idea what they mean?”
- Worm has some of the most seriously terrifying super villains I have ever encountered. This is helped by the fact that people have really cool and unique powers, but seriously, the Slaughterhouse 9 can give anyone nightmares. The author doesn’t need gore to scare you.
- Worm has a breakneck pace. Poor Taylor never catches a break, but it’s a delight to see her battle enemies that are bigger and stronger and smarter each time because the character progression is so natural and believable. And because of its unique format, you can read one chapter a few times a week like it was originally published or binge read it and *cough* waste a month of your life *cough*.
- Everything makes sense in Worm. By the end, you will be in awe of how well everything has been plotted in Worm and how much the world and the events have an internal consistency rarely seen even in published novels.
- Worm is already an underground hit and has a cult following on the internet (don’t believe me? Check out r/parahumans, TV tropes, or this fan made Worm audiobook). In my opinion, it is a book deal or tv series deal away from becoming a mainstream classic. When it does, remember, you heard it first from me!
Not a fan of superheroes? I mean, it doesn’t really matter because you should still read Worm, but you can check out some of my other favorite web-serials – Mother of Learning (Groundhog Day, set in a magical school), Midnight Moonlight (the book Twilight should have been), and Ra (for everyone who enjoys magic explained in a more scientific fashion).
]]>This article was written by Sakhi Shah (Batch of 2017).
Dear Law School-ite,
I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but chances are very high that you either are, or on the path of becoming, a boring person.
It’s not really your fault. It is the product of generations of wisdom that is handed down to you from seniors, wisdom that amounts to essentially this: be afraid. In our collective imaginations, we have made Law School into a monster with project submissions at its teeth, six-day weeks as its claws, and the trimester system itself as its dark heart. We pat ourselves on the back for passing each trimester and submitting each project. We struggle through days of watching TV shows and the occasional all-nighter right before the exam. We have succumbed to a culture of complaining, where more time is spent thinking and cribbing about what you’re doing than actually doing anything. I will admit that I have fallen prey to this myself often in Law School.
Sadly, what I’ve learnt is that this not only destroys your enthusiasm for your own college experience but also makes you a pretty damn boring person. Exhausted by the imaginary struggles of doing the bare minimum work required to get through college, we tend to think that there is just no time for pursuing anything with any real interest or passion. Most of us stop reading, stop painting or dancing or singing (except at Univ Week). We start joining committees to get them on our CVs and then do the bare minimum over there as well.
Occasionally, it makes sense to go through that very CV and think about what you have on it that makes you interesting. What do you have on there that you could talk intelligently about to a person you met at a party? Which part of your CV is something that you achieved rather than just a position you were at? In the hyper-competitive world that we live in, is anyone particularly interested in either a laundry list of boring generic positions of responsibility overloaded with multiple committees and a so-so performance at many middling moots? Are they interested in how you got through sixty courses and exams and projects (i.e., what all your peers did) and how difficult it was? Nope. These things are not inspiring and they’re not valuable. They make you boring.
The first step to being an interesting person is to stop telling yourself how difficult Law School is. We are in class for five hours a day. This includes your breaks and your commute (in most cases). In many classes, we switch off mentally or physically, taking this time to nap, work on other things, daydream, or read. Compare this to several other Law Colleges in the country (and the non-undergraduate courses even in NLS), where students are in class till 4 or 6 every evening. Compare this to a law firm, where you will be at work (and working hard) for perhaps 12 hours a day. Hell, if you think law firms are drudgery, think about the entry-level requirements of any profession – to do well you will have to work very hard for many, many years. If not anything else, do what we’re very fond of doing and compare yourself to colleges in the West: how many classes in all five years of Law School do you read a hundred pages a day for?
Once you realize that Law School is not difficult, you also realize that you’re wasting a lot of time. I have a challenge for you: for one trimester, refuse to do any college work after six in the evening. From say three to six, devote yourself with energy to whatever task you’re doing. This time is more than enough to make good projects, read for class, and study for exams, provided you do it about five days a week and don’t spend more time worrying about how hard it is than doing it.
You’ll find you have a lot of free time on your hands. Now, use it. If you came to Law School as one of those lucky people who know what they want to do with their lives, spend your time identifying your next goal and taking concrete steps towards achieving it. If you want to do an LLM, work towards research and publishing papers. If you want to be in a law firm, read more than necessary for every class so you’re turning in papers and answers that are so far beyond the base level that a teacher can’t help but give you an O.
However, if you, like most people in Law School, have no idea at all what you want to do, you’re going to have a different task. You must work towards finding interesting things. You must attend campus lectures and go into research centers. You must go off campus and explore Bangalore. You must run marathons. You must party like you mean it. You must open yourself to opportunities till you can find one that you find so exciting that it keeps you up in the night and wakes you up in the morning. And you must stick with it even when it stops being exciting, even when Law School gets hard.
Note: this cannot be something you do half-heartedly. If you write, you can’t be the person who writes the occasional over-laborious poem. You must know everything anyone has ever said about writing. You must read. You must write every day and write different things.
It doesn’t have to be a moot or a committee. If what gets you out of bed is League of Legends, play till your fingers bleed. Then find a way to create something or engage with it. Make video tutorials about your favourite game. Write a blog post based on your favourite book. Write a Quirk article on Happy Hours in Bangalore. Write a collection out of the stories that your grand-parents told you. Being passive is not acceptable. You must create something of value to the world, something that will have measurable standards of success, such as people following you on YouTube or being published by Quirk. (Sadly, a personal record of how many shots you can down without passing out is probably not valuable to the world.)
Perhaps you will end up finding your passion in life. Perhaps (and more likely) you will simply learn transferable skills that you can use to build a life and a career you enjoy.
Becoming a non-boring person requires sacrifices. One of the most important will probably be traditional achievements. When your friends become Conveners of committees or do moot court competitions, you will question whether you are hurting your future prospects by not having a laundry list of such activities on your CV. Even if you do go the traditional achievements route (and we do need Convenors and mooters, we always will), you must question at every stage what you are doing that is remarkable. Bringing the deficit of a committee down by a few lakhs is awesome. Organizing the same festival in the same way that people have done for ten years … maybe not so much. Another sacrifice will be that of time. Joining a charitable initiative or a journal in fourth year because you need to look like a good person in your applications isn’t enough for you to do remarkable things in that initiative or journal. Doing amazing things requires you to pay your dues and learn how things are done so you can build something truly wonderful in whatever field you choose.
Three and a half years into Law School (and many applications later) I have learnt that a CV can only be two pages and it is usually not enough for a laundry list of stuff. The only things that are staying on there are the things where I did something remarkable, and I’ve found that the remarkable is only hidden in the nooks and crannies of my work. It’s the stuff I stayed up nights to do. It’s what got me out of bed in the morning. It’s what was not average.
I’ve also learnt that you can’t fake interestingness. Most interviewers, prospective clients (and prospective love interests) have seen enough people with the full gamut of achievements on their CV. There is a point when you realize that your CV is identical to that of most other people you know (or worse, that it is not and you have not done anything). In such a situation, what makes you unique or noticeable? What makes people sit up and notice you?
And most importantly, beyond anyone else, what do you want out of Law School? What do you want out of life? And how are you going to get there?
Law School is not the real monster. The real monster is a culture of mediocrity that we are slowly and surely building in our educational institutions, workplaces, and personal lives. Though this culture is not your fault, it’s only solution lies through personal effort, sacrifice, and experimentation. You (even the first years) have been here long enough for the transition period to be over, and chances are, so is your starry-eyed period. When the dust clears, who are you going to be? And what is Law School going to be, because of you?
Regards,
Sakhi.
National Law School often considers itself a bastion for LGBTQ (Hereinafter referred to as “Queer”) rights in India. It is unquestionable that we are a visible part of the queer movement, especially the queer legal movement, in India. Some of us would like to believe that we have always been open to a discourse on queer rights. Conversely, some of us would like to believe that NLS students today are more open to queer rights than we have ever been in the past. However, as most of us ideally learn in first year, history makes fools of all of us.
Pre-1997: Problematic Freedoms
The first few generations of law school students were, perhaps, dramatically open to challenging gender roles. It was possible for a male student to wear skirts to class and openly flaunt his nail polish collection at Univ Week. However, in many ways, earlier batches did not have the vocabulary to articulate queer rights. Prof. Sarasu recalls how her first ever motion in the university debate rounds was to argue for and against homosexuality – a motion that most of us would find difficult to be opposition for in law school today. At the same time, the idea of decriminalization was not even debated – whether in classrooms, or out of it. As one alumnus very succinctly puts it, “Sexuality wasn’t an issue that people took seriously.”
All of this changed in 1997.
1997: The First Ever Conference
Picture this: two students, sitting in the library together, working on a project on an issue that no one in law school considers particularly relevant. Then one of them suggests that there needs to conference about this. Despite initial fears of how they would be perceived as a result of the event (“I still have to live in the boys hostel, you know”) these two students – Arvind Narrain and Kabir Bavikatte – decide that it seems to be a good idea.
Implementing it, in an era when a simple Google search couldn’t put you in touch with a wealth of LGBTQ support groups, is a little bit harder.
They started by contacting Bombay Dost, who put them in touch with a lesbian activist group from Bombay, who finally put them in touch with Good As You and Sangama in Bangalore. “We had to go all the way to Bombay to find someone back home,” quips Arvind Narrain. Nonetheless, the idea struck a chord with many people. Good As You helped raise money, and influential people came from all over the country at their own expense, all of them believing that this group of young law students had the potential to do something momentous for the nascent queer movement. Shockingly, without any coercion, the event saw massive participation – across batches and from around the city. It was also widely covered by the press. Perhaps the only hurdle that the organizers faced was having an overlarge banner on Gate 1, which they were forced to remove by a scandalized faculty member.
Still, banner or no banner, a conversation had started.
The Alternative Law Conversation
Soon after the Conference, the Alternative Law Forum was set up by a set of prominent students and faculty. A resolutely pro-queer group, they greatly helped further the queer discourse on campus because they came and actively discussed on campus a subject that had never even been talked about in classrooms. “There were those two courses we conducted at that time,” says Arvind Narrain. “So many of the people who attended those courses went on to be activists at the national level.”
Suddenly, queer rights had become a topic of conversation in law school. It was no longer possible to make thoughtless or malicious comments about queer people, either within the classroom or outside it. When Justice Verma came to law school shortly after making derogatory remarks about the queer community, students attracted the wrath of the then Vice-Chancellor by having a black band protest against him. However, despite this, it was not easy to be openly queer in law school. Most students, if they came out at all, would only come out to close friends.
Naz Foundation Judgment
In 2009, the Delhi High Court gave its decision in the case of Naz Foundation v. Government of NCT, Delhi, a great triumph for the queer movement – outside law school and within it. “It is not so much that Naz or Koushal changed anyone’s opinions,” says Padmini Baruah. “It was more that they gave us an opportunity to discuss the queer movement and the challenges it faced in society. It did prod people to think – people who wouldn’t even have bothered.”
However, despite this growing discussion of the queer movement, academic engagement was very limited. It took almost 16 years for law school to having another conference about gender and sexuality.
2013: Conference on Gender and Sexuality
“Having this conference in law school after a huge gap since 1997 was important to me and to others directly affected for the communicative value it had. It was an act of speaking up and being heard,” says Sakshi Arvind, who was Convenor of the Law and Society Committee in the year this Conference was organized by them. In many ways, the Conference was a reflection of a more mature conversation around queer rights in India. Discussion touched upon both the growing legal issues as well as on complex topics such as intersectionality in the queer movement. Many of the speakers were from the Alternative Law Forum, and there was a general feeling of having turned a full circle. Arvind Narrain, a speaker in the 2013 Conference, notes that, “We were all awaiting the judgment in Suresh Kumar Koushal v. Naz Foundation, and the Conference reflected the optimism and trepidation regarding the judgment.”
Suresh Kumar Koushal v. Naz Foundation
When it came, the Supreme Court judgment shook the queer movement, and individuals within campus. “Koushal was one of the most defining moments in law school since it brought the queer agenda to the forefront once again and initiated a discussion on the same,” says Akshat Agarwal. “The support was in fact overwhelming in some sense. As a queer person it perhaps made me more aware of my surroundings and made be conscious of my own identity.”
Students and faculty actively participated in the protests that were held after the event. Members of the queer community screamed, shouted, burnt things, danced, cried, and mourned the promise of Naz. Discussions were taken to the classroom and on online forums, and the Student Bar Association actively condemned the judgment. Very soon, however, law school went back to talking about other things.
The Vandalism Incident
Like Koushal, another unfortunate incident that greatly contributed to the growth of the discourse around queer rights was the writing of a homophobic slur on the bulletin board of a faculty member. Faculty, individual students, and committees sent out strongly worded emails vehemently condemning the incident. Another group calling themselves #NLSSpeak occupied 19(1)(a), filling it with messages of solidarity for queer people around campus. The message was clear: homophobia would no longer be tolerated in NLS’ public spaces. On the other hand, the incidents themselves were troubling to many people, who consider them a reflection, within NLS, of the growing intolerance in society.
Pride
Another event that prompts law school to remember its queer community is on the day of Pride. While Pride has always seen some participation from the law school community, the last two years have seen a record participation in Bengaluru Pride from National Law School. Last year, especially, a large number of first years participated very enthusiastically. In many ways, Pride is a celebration that sensitizes individuals without the need of any words: it is difficult to hold onto your prejudices after dancing, shouting slogans and walking a few miles in the shoes of queer people – especially queer people from outside the privileged walls of NLS.
Within our Privileged Walls
Has the discourse on queer rights, however, actually made life better for queer people within NLS? Opinions are varied. “Personally, I do feel that NLS is a safe space for queer people,” says Akshat Agarwal. Indeed, many queer people do feel comfortable to come out openly on campus. Discussions about queer rights, and Section 377 have also, albeit slowly, entered classrooms and question papers. Sakshi Arvind, on the other hand, has this to say, “NLS was never actively hostile towards queer people. Certainly not. But then, that doesn’t help – there are different ways of making life difficult for people!” Queer people on campus do have to face massive discrimination – from jokes to concerned attempts to ‘change’ them to hatred behind closed doors.
However, the general consensus is that the attitudes within Law School are as diverse as India. It is also believed that the attitudes are a reflection of the varied socio-economic and cultural backgrounds from which students come. With the influx of students from different backgrounds, many of whom have not had the opportunity to ever discuss queer rights, and with a growing consciousness of a queer identity of sorts, conflicts have become a serious concern. Queer people and allies on campus have come together to provide each other support and to raise consciousness about gender and sexuality on campus, in an initiative called the NLS Queer Alliance. “The idea behind the initiative was to ensure that the incoming batches to law school had someone to go to in case they wanted to talk and to ease the process of coming-out,” says Akshat Agarwal, one of the co-founders of the NLS Queer Alliance.
The Way Forward
“NLS has a queer culture to a small degree. It needs to get wider recognition, and become a part of normal discourse, not just what the three of us are doing,” says Padmini Baruah, who is also part of the NLS Queer Alliance. Certainly, it is not possible for the student body to sit back and relax and consider its job done – inside and outside campus, there is an urgent need for queer rights to be debated, recognized, and protected.
“The discourse has to continue,” says Professor Sarasu Thomas. “We have to educate people if we want to make NLS a truly safe space.”
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I’d like to thank Arvind Narrain (‘98), Vikram Raghavan (‘97), Professor V.S. Elizabeth, Professor Sarasu Esther Thomas (‘95), Sahana Manjesh (‘13), Sakshi Arvind (‘14), Padmini Baruah (V), Vani Sharma (II) and Akshat Agarwal (IV) for agreeing to be interviewed for this article.
Please note that this article is the first in a series of articles, and if you’d like to share your perspective about the queer movement in NLS, I’d love to hear it.
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