Aaaaaaaaaaaaagh!!

Just sent boss mail meant for boy (there should be a law against reply all...really there shud!!)....do you think he'll mind if i steal away early in the morning and send him my resignation when I am safely in antarctica?

The mail is liberally sprinkled with unparliamentary languge...but not the F word thankfully...it is cribby, whinny, come back soon i am bored kind of a mail (boy is currently in blore tormenting a new generation of mooters)...oh and it also cribs abt work boss asked me to do.

In addition, boss has TMI about power politics between my maid and me. He also knows abt a failed matchmaking attempt (you who were one part of it know who you are). It also makes disparging remark abt boss's second in command and calls him by disrespectful nick. I was going to, but thankfully did not, make ultra disparging remark abt our super-boss, which if it were made public, could get me into serious legal trouble...the arundhati roy kind of legal trouble....

On the plus side- i havent mentioned boss, nor cribbed abt him, nor used his nick (tho he knows what it is and from what i hear, doesnt mind). It is also not a particularly mushy mail, so there is very little, though still some, cringe-worthy stuff for outside eyes....

Come to my aid guys... give me suggestions to hack into his account and delete the mail.

the zoya factor

Read the Zoya Factor this weekend (my weekend that is: Tuesday/Wednesday-dont ask, long story!). The book had lots of week points but was very high on the feel good/ warm fuzzy factor so I would recommend it highly.

The story is cliched- well not the basic storyline, but how the plot develops, the characters, etc. I also couldn't really connect with the protagonist. She seemed a tad bit dumbish, and not even in the cute scatter-brained type of way. And the writing itself was a little bit contrived- you know the strained type that doesn't really flow?

That said, the book does draw you in. Its chick-lit, unabashedly so, and it uses the cliches of the genre to good effect, creating many of those giggle-out-loud moments, or the big-smile-plastered-on-your-face-though-you-dont-even- know- it's-there situations. And like i said before, it leaves you with a warm fuzzy feeling. Perfect lazy sunday afternoon read. One review I read said that the book makes you want to fall in love all over again. Well I wont go as far as that, but I know what the reviewer meant...

The bigger impact of the book on me has been that I've decided to write a chicklit of my own. Big Feet and I are collaborating on it, with music advice (yes, it's that kind of book) from mem. We have the basic plot line figured and we plan to use the next couple of days (yaay, holidays!!) to get the outline down, and who knows, maybe even a chapter or two??

So, here's to our first million!

Trade-offs

Interesting posts by Alice and M (yes guys, I cyber stalk you!!) which got me thinking abt what I want from life, et al. And I realised that, though it is an unpopular sentiment (:-) ), I actually like what I do, and wouldn't want to do anything else- that is, this job is good for now, but I know I will move on sooner or later- but the general career choice stays. I like being in academics. I like being paid for thinking, and for expounding ideas and- call it megalomania or idealism- for hopefully making a difference, somehow, sometime, somewhere.

And even this job has been an amazing experience. It's definitely been the steepest learning curve of my life, far out-curving 5 years of lawschool and a year at Yale. Its given me amazing insights into our legal system. Sure its been disillusioning and disheartening to see what our judiciary is really like, but all put together, its been a lavish seven course food for thought meal.

Other bits are not that good. The bureaucracy in this place is grab-your-head-and-bang-it-againt-the-wall frustrating. The librarian--oh well-dont get me started on him...And the boss. He can make me want to scream and/or burst into tears at his attacks of craziness, his obdurateness and his sheer bull-headedness. Also his complete lack of sense of time....He can also be fairly scary because his reactions are unpredictable....

That being said, he is a great boss in many ways too. He gives us a free hand around the place. We are free to come and go as we please. We can work on whatever we want (unless he really wants us to work on something in particular, in which case he will try to manipulate us into thinking that is exactly what we want to work on!!). And above all, he is funny, witty, liberal (which came as a shock to me as my previous experience of him was anything but...), passionate about his work, and very very intelligent.

So anyway, I get to work on what takes my fancy, generally at the pace I want, with fair control over when I come and go, get a great house to live in, no commuting time, and a wonderful wonderful location (albeit in a dead city).

I still get up in the morning ever so often and think- is this what i want to do for the rest of my life? not because I dont love my job, but because it comes with a subsistence level pay check...So here is the trade-off. I can do what I love doing, with fair amount of control over my life, but with very little money to control it with (and boy does lack of money pinch!!!), or I can sell my soul (which is what a corp job would mean for me) and be rich but hate every minute of it.... who is to say which is better?

Tell me...

...is it abnormal to still mourn a relationship that ended two years back?? to miss someone you knew for all of one year, however close you might have been??

and tell me, is it terribly, abnormally, freakily, inexcusably wierd to personify, to use terms like 'relationship' and 'someone' in talking about a dear departed, sorely missed and deeply mourned laptop?

inculcating good habits

iro·ny (noun) : (1): incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result (2): an event or result marked by such incongruity b: incongruity between a situation developed in a drama and the accompanying words or actions that is understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play —called also dramatic irony, tragic irony

Well, my story for the day falls somewhere between the tragic and the comic...So I switch on TV to watch the news- or what passes for news these days...maybe it's just me, but I just cant see the national importance of Rajesh Talwar's daily routine in jail...so anyway, there's a break and ads come on. First off is this ad where a woman runs to her neighbour's house screaming, 'have you seen my daughter? She hasn't been home since last night...."

Before the neighbour can respond, neighbour's 7-8 years old daughter pipes in with words to the effect, "oh, she must have run off with some guy'- adding lots of daily soap mirch masala in the statement...

Voice over: Is this what we are teaching our children...Let us inculcate good habits in them....

Next shot: same kid sitting on her mother's lap watching Sita defy Laxman's diktat and step over the laxmanrekha only to be kidnapped by Ravan. Voice Over: Ramayan, Ek Achchi Aadat...(if you haven't figured it out already, this was ad for some new-fangled version of Ramayan on one of the channels...)

Hmm..so where do I begin?? I cant seriously believe that the people who made the ad didn't see the irony of the situation...Mem's theory is that this must have been a very disgruntled set of ad agency people who had a bad day in office and decided to screw the client...well, I hope that's true, because really it'd be terribly sad to live in world where we teach our daughters that it's better to be kidnapped than to run-off on your own (how can u even think of exercising choice or volition and all that???)....that if you decide to think for yourself instead of bowing to the superior knowledge of some male schmuck who knows better, and if you step out of the boundaries set for you, then bad things will happen to you...You will get kidnapped, people will have to fight wars over you, and regardless of how noble and decent and not-at-fault you are, you will have to prove your "innocence" through ordeal by fire. Yes, I can see why this is much better than the daily dose of rot we see on TV!!

This is the second time I've come across such a stark irony of deeply inculcated patriarchal beliefs...first time round, it was the first day of crim class, and Ramu was teaching us the difference between actus reus and mens rea. He took two examples one after the other to illustrate his point. The first was theft, which the indian penal code defines as: . Whoever, intending to take dishonestly any movable property out of the possession of any person without that person's consent, moves that property in order to such taking, is said to commit theft.

Second, he read out section 498: Whoever takes or entices away any woman who is and whom he knows or has reason to believe to be the wife of any other man, from that man, or from any person having the care of her on behalf of that man, with intent that she may have illicit intercourse with any person, or conceals or detains with that intent any such woman, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to two years, or with fine, or with both

As we lawyers fondly say: Res ipsa loquitor....

Ramu of course missed the irony.

oh baby!

what is it about being married that gives people-even relative strangers-the impression that:

a. you have suddenly become a baby-churning machine

b. they have the privilege of discussing your reproductive choices with you??

seriously, i have been married for all of 3 months, with no intention of procreating for a loooooooong looooooong while, but I'm already fed up with the apparant ease with which people intrude into my personal space on this issue! boss for example, in an attempt to show that he has feminist sympathies (after i lambasted him for daring to call me-even jokingly- mrs. my-husband's-name) turns a popular blessing on its head and keeps saying, "hope you have a thousand daughters". how very evolved of him, no? and then, in my presence, he keeps telling others, in another see-see-i'm-so-liberal- vein, that this is his blessing for us! urgh! totally eww-inspiring! next time he does it though, i've decide to come back with a "oh haven't you heard??they've figured out you dont need to be married to make babies!!" seriously, I will.

I even had a well-meaning high court judge, whom i've met all of 3 times tell me- as one career woman to another- that I should'nt put off procreating just to advance my career....oh, and this was completely unsolicited of course!!!

So why this sudden diatribe? before we got married, i told boy, in no uncertain terms, that babies are not on the radar for a long long time, and that he should let his parents also know, coz i dont want any- we-are-getting-old-we-want-to-see-our grandchild's-face-before-we-die kind of drama in my life. what i never thought of doing, was to give my own parents a similar lecture....thinking that as they have encouraged me all my life to make something of myself, they, if at all, will be against my having babies before my career is well on track. but of course, if only parents could be so predictable...so yesterday mum calls, and in the midst of general yapping, gives a fake-high-laugh (which should have been enough to warn me that this couldn't be good) and then says,

" ha, ha, you know, two weeks back, dad had a dream in which he saw you, boy, and the two of us, and we were all playing with a baby...so he got up and asked me to mark this date...ha ha ha...but of course since you cribbed later about chum cramps, it was all just a dream...ha ha ha"

me: blank

mum (repeating, with very faint interrogative tone): yeah so this was only a dream...?....

me: what do u THINK it was???are u CRAZY????

mum (backtracking, aware that she has stirred a hornet's nest): no, no, i said it was only a dream....

me: mum, dont even dream about it...at least for 5 years, then we might start thinking...

mum (alarmed): no, no, u shudnt leave it that long...boy will be too old by then...

me: whoa! whoa! whoa!! dont even go there ok! you want babies to play with-get bro married off and ask him to give you babies...or for all you know the baby dad saw was his...after all havent u heard, they've figured out you dont need to be married to make babies!! (ok, so this was a heaven sent opportunity to try out the line....)

mum (in full damage control mode): no, no you do what you want. obviously you know best. I was just telling you funny dream. Oh, dad's calling. ok, beta, bye! good nite!

now you have to know how my parents operate to understand this whole thing...they are not pushy...they dont do pushy...that's too unsophisticated...so there'll be little hints here, significant pauses there,-nothing overt that you can pin them down on- but enough for you to know, what it is that they want, and what will REALLY make them happy (reminder to self-DON'T ask parents what they want for birthday/anniversary for a long long time!!)

So. I dont know what shocked me more- my parents discussing the possibility of my procreating????(EEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWW) or that they would actually be happy if I started so soon?? of course, as a direct result, boy is walking around with a smug-superior-smirk on his face, and once in a while going "ha, so you thought my parents will bring it up first, did you??" trust parents to let you down in your important battles in life- carving a career for yourself, making your own choices, and of course, winning the my-relatives-are-better-than-yours feud with your spouse!!

Wonderful World

I am not much of a nature person, and once the rains get properly underway, i positively hate them. but there is something about the beginning of monsoon- the first clap of thunder,the sudden cooling of temperature and the forceful gusts of wind- that gives me goose bumps. the heightened-sense-of-being-alive kinds...

Back home, school used to re-open in the middle of June just as monsoon struck, and there was the excitement of meeting friends after a long time, going to a new class, and anticipation of new things. This is now so wired into my genetic code that the first flush of monsoon brings about a certain mix of nostalgia and anticipation thats hard to describe...a visceral feeling of standing on the verge of something big and wonderful... Some people get spring fever. I always fall prey to the monsoon bug myself..

Then there are the unique monsoon smells...the smell of wet earth is one of the heavenliest ever...and then each place has its own unique first-spell-of-rain-aroma...law school (in my first few years at least) had this overpowering eucalyptus scent from the wet trees between the hostel and the acad block, and my first few memories of law school are of running to and from class under the canopy of these trees as rain fell all around me, and of dancing in the rain outside the hostel during Univ week, kicking off slippers and racing each other from the phone-booth to the mess or playing rain-rugby in the quad...in later years followed by vodka shots in the room to warm us up;-)

Rains in Bhopal have their own magic. The parched earth and the dried up lake have sprung to life overnight...a mist hangs over the surrounding mountains giving them an etheral, sun-and-dew-drapped-lazy-sunday-morning feel...and everything is green again. There is again that sense of anticipation, of limitless possibilites, and the urgent need to sip hot coffee and nibble on deep fried samosas (which we substitute with choy and chips). And everytime I step out of home and look out onto the surrounding valley, lake and mountains there is a single breathless moment when I feel overwhelmed by the beauty of the place, and I think to myself, What a wonderful world....

In "mem"orium..

Give goss....These simple words have sustained me through five years of law school...

....through hours of boring lectures, when "give goss" scribbled on the back of the notebook produced reams of information, bitching, "personality anecdotes", and quite often fits of giggling.

...through dead evenings right after project submissions and mid-term exams when the next set of deadlines were far away and there was nothing to do....

....as opening line of conversation aimed solely at eliciting information about/ not- so- subtly discussing the object of one's affections....

....through 5-minute coffee breaks in the middle of exams/project submissions, which turned into hours long bonding session on everything and her boyfriend

.....through dull internships when office time and internet connectivity were productively used to hook onto the grapevine.....

...through the first few months after law school when we were still in regular touch chatting or on the phone and when every conversation began not with a "wassup" but with a "give goss", and there was goss to give...

lately though, the anticipation behind the words has dulled into dreary routine...I still start conversations with close friends with a "give goss". this elicits one of two responses:

1. Me: " Hey dude! give goss"
Friend: No goss yaa. U tell.
Me: No goss here also yaa.
F: Then wassup?
Me: Nothing. U tell
F: Nothing
---
2. Me: Hey dude! Give goss
F: X(or Y or Z, generally X and Y, or X and Z, or...u get the picture) is/are getting married!!
Me: Oh ok. then wassup?
(to confess, since I have been in position of the said X (or Y or Z, actually X and Y) I cant really complain about this, bit what the hell its my blog.
F: Nothing.
---

Is it because we are getting older and wiser and more mature and therefore less excited about things that were previously deemed goss-worthy? Are we all running out of things to say? are we, as Mem opines, settling into routines where the daily grind takes so much out of us that we dont have time for the little "frivolous' pleasures of life? or is it because we are out of the claustrophobic environment of law school which at once repelled (most "give goss" session generally degenerated into general law school cribbing) and attracted us (most law schoolites I know, including me, suffer from "law school exceptionalism" - we believe we have been through an exceptional experience that no other campus can match, that unique bonds have been created here that others cant understand...we even have our own lingo and our own codes...i know from experience that in a gathering of law schoolites most non-law schoolites feel excluded and uncomfortable...)....but back to the larger point- have we grown up and out of that world that so definitely shaped who we were and who we have become??

Whatever may be the cause the demise of give goss from my life has definitely "left a void" (quoting TA - ah the number of goss and giggle sessions this particular phrase inspired!:-)) which is difficult to fill...it was such an important part of the law school experience that from amongst all the small little things that defined college, this continues to be one of the most painful to say farewell to.

Umm...what?

So ok, I don't want this to be a blog about wierd cases I have read. But, what to do, my life is really so sad, that wierd cases form the highlight of my work day. Here is another gem- interestingly also to do with movies. This one is relating to the movie "Kabbhi Khushi Kabhi Gum". The petitioners took objection to national anthem bit in the movie- they didn't like the portrayal of the song and the fact that people in the theatres didn't get up to respect the anthem. Case comes before the MP High Court, and the court in its lengthy and erudite judgment declaims on the importance of respect to the National Anthem. In their own words [with running commentary by me]:

"22. National Anthem is to be sung with magna cum laude and nobody can ostracize the concept of summa cum laude [huh???]. In the case at hand, as we have noted earlier the son of the protagonists sings the National Anthem as a surprise item. The presentation, according to us, is in medias res [excuse me??]. The child actor forgets the line and utters the term "sorry". To some it may appear lapsus linguae[this one i understood!!] slip of the tongue or a natural forgetting but if the whole thing is perceived, understood and appreciated in complete scenario, it is the script writer's fertile imagination and the Director's id est [pardon my french, but what the %^&$ does that mean??]. It is deliberate. A deliberate slip of the pen. It is because there is in a way, deliberation to project a dramatic effort to show that the scene depicted in the film is on an absolute terra firma[ oo, another familiar term!!]. The writer and director have totally forgotten that they were portraying the National Anthem of a great country.
In 'Shashtras' this great country has been described as under :
"ASMAD DESHA PRASUTASYA SAKASADAGRA JANMAMAH SWAM SWAM CHARITRAM SCHIKSERAN PRITHIVYAM SARVA MANAVAN."
Not for nothing, in one of the ancient epics of India it has been so said :
"API SWARNAMAYI LANKA NA ME ROCHATE LAKSHMAN JANANI JANMA-BHUMISCHA SWARGADAPI GARIYASI." [ok, maybe i missed this class in law school, but since when have the shastras had the force of law in independent India?? Again, I did sleep through the consti courses so I'm not very sure about this, but I do remember reading something about this concept of secularism in there somewhere....umm, maybe in the opening line of the preamble???]
They have not kept in mind 'vox populi, vox dei'. [ here we go again!! I really did think English is the only European language officially allowed in MP Courts]. The producer and the director have allowed the National Anthem of Bharat, the alpha and omega of the country to the backseat [ok this was sounding greek and latin to me before...now its sounding physics and maths].
On a first flush it may look like a magnum opus of patriotism but on a deeper probe and greater scrutiny it is a simulacrum having the semblance but sans real substance. There cannot be like Caesar's thrasonical brags of "veni, vidi, vici."[ this I do know, but relevance please?] The boy cannot be allowed to make his innocence a parents rodomontrade, at the cost of national honour. In our view it is contrary to national ethos and an anthema to the sanguinity of the national feeling. It is an exposition of ad libitum.[ i know another ad word- ad nonsensicum].

I am suing national law school. Reading this judgment makes me think they never tought me anything. Even if they did, it was never this much fun!

glorious uncertainties.....

Sometimes, not often, but often enough to keep me on the look out for more, the law cracks me up. Crica 1860s a group of lawyers in London raised a toast to the "glorious uncertainties of the law". Some 30 years before, Charles Dickens was proudly proclaiming that "the law, sir, is an ass".

Indian courts and our lawyers, circa 2008, live out both declarations. Exhibit one: the following case that I came across accidently (for the legally minded amongst you- Shah Rukh Khan v. State of Rajasthan, MANU/RH/0664/2007- and no I was not running a search for Shah Rukh Khan on Manupatra!!). The facts, in the words of the Rajasthan High Court, are as follows:

In a nutshell, the facts of the case are that, in 1996, under the direction of Mr. Rajiv Mehra, a Hindi film Ram Jaane was released for public viewing after due certification by the Central Board of Certification. The Petitioner played the role of the protagonist in the film. In the later part of the film, the hero is tried for triple murders. In the courtroom scene, the defense lawyer gets up to defend the hero who is, however, bent upon confessing his crime. He, therefore, questions the conduct of the lawyer and says:(This lawyer well knows that I have killed the three persons, yet he tries to save me. Why? For the sake of money, no? For the sake of money, he sells his morals. He sells the laws. By selling the laws, you people have turned life into a misery.) (English translation of the Hindi dialogue)

3. According to the respondents Nos. 2 to 7, the said movie was released in Kota as well. When they went to see the movie, they found the above-noted dialogue as defamatory against the community of lawyers practicing in India. They claim that because of the said dialogue, the respondents were subjected to ridicule and anger from those who were sitting in the movie theater. They also allege that their neighbours ridiculed them as well. Hence, the respondents Nos. 2 to 7 filed a criminal complaint against Mr. Shah Rukh Khan (the Petitioner), Mr. Rajiv Mehra (the director), Mr. Pravesh Mehra (the producer), Mr. ShriKant Sharma (the co-scriptwriter), Ms. Juhi Chawla (the heroine), and M/s Vinayak Film Industries (the distributors in Rajasthan), and M/s Unkown Distributors[amazing name, no??] (distributors for India) alleging defamation and criminal conspiracy, offences Under Section s 500,501 and 120-B of the Indian Penal Code ('IPC, for short), before the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, No. 1, Kota.

Are these lawyers who take themselves so seriously really surprised that they were "subjected to ridicule and anger"?? The Magistrate in question actually took cognizance of the case, and dismissed an application to discharge the accused!! Thankfully the High Court quashed the proceedings, but not before taking us through a catena of Supreme Court judgments, theories of Hobbes, Kant, Rousseau, etc on social contract and the purpose of state, quotations from every creative artist worth his/her salt down the ages on aristic freedom and what it means to be involved in creative activity (sample: "According to Bharat Muni, the author of Bharat Natya Shastra, the function of an actor is to capture the "ras", the essence of the moment, and to portray it in such a manner as to immerse the audience into a specific emotion for the moment. The actor is but a conduit for carrying the preconceived emotion. Understood thus, drama can be viewed as a means of audience's liberation from their mundane existence....The learned Magistrate has overlooked the aesthetic aspect of the case, the aspect which makes a film a film, or a work of art, art."). waah, waah!!

Interestingly, throughout the case, the court, in deciding when a "class of persons" can be defamed, refers to various decisions dating as far back as 1858 which state, for example, that "If a man wrote that all lawyers were thieves, no particular lawyer could sue him..." or "no action would lie at the suit of anyone for saying that all mankind is vicious and depraved or even for alleging that all clergymen are hypocrites or all lawyers dishonest." I wonder if the judge was having a toungue-in-cheek go at the complainants:-)

The whole case and the seriousness with which it was taken, cracked me up. But the killer line came from a Patna High Court decision cited in the judgment:

"Advocates as a class are incapable of being defamed."

Now there's a defamatory statement if I ever heard one!!

Excusez Moi...

All women I know-barring none- have two facets . One is our general everyday persona; the other our relationship one. And since most women I know are strong-willed independent career oriented lawyers in everyday life, it distresses me to see them struggle through relationships, putting up with all kinds of &^%$ from the men in their lives. We have this incredible capacity for feeling guilty. We can justify anything and everything that goes wrong with us, particularly in relationships, as being our own fault-we are either too sensitive, or not sensitive enough, or too high maintenance or too easy to please, or too nagging or too indifferent- you get the picture....
Why, I wonder? I guess, when society is busy enough blaming women for anything that goes wrong with us(she got raped/felt up/harassed??- well, she must have led him on; she wore provocative clothes; she should have known the consequences yada yada yada- I can even cite Supreme Court judgments that take this line), we internalize this blame-game thingie....Nothing explains why otherwise strong independent women consent to be in abusive relationships for years together; why some feel guilty for wanting the boy to be more committed and others feel guilty for not caring enough, why they excuse so much in the men they are with....Which is the true us though? Is it the everyday persona that's a mask? Or do we accept certain relationship rituals and role-plays without really believing in them?
Do men go through this perpetual self-castigation? Do they have this in-built guilt churning machine inside them too? I dont know, but I sure as hell hope they do.....i'd hate to feel that on top of everything else, we got a raw deal on this one too...
Read this for an interesting take on power justifications for perpetuating social structures even if men and women had been a bit different....

Why...

One hottish afternoon in May,
Jobless for once in office that day
Thinking of ways to kill the time
Thought I'd come up with a rhyme
Proud of my own smartness then
Took up paper and 2 buck pen
pen would'nt work, I decided to type
When i remembered this blogging hype
Just as a lark giving it a go,
Don't know if I have much to show
But hoping it will help me see
A bit more of the inner me....