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....