Revamp!

Sometimes I wonder why I started a blog in the first place. I'm completely indisciplined, lazy and often, have not-to-sensible things to say...! But, because I have begun 'blogging' albeit sporadically, I am taking another opportunity to indulge myself today.

The time from my last blog post to right now has been extremely eventful in my life. I never thought that so many changes would happen in the space of short months, but they have and I am now living with it. I am not going to trouble the reader of this post (assuming there are any ofcourse) with the details of my life in the last nine months. Suffice to say that I've grown up a bit since then.

Coming back to today, the most exciting news I read was an article in the Hindu detailing Manmohan Singh's views on changing the entire system of legal education. To quote him," (the handful of national law schools) are only islands of excellence in a sea of mediocrity! [Excellent choice of words I thought] It was virtually God-sent because I was seriously considering writing a letter to Veerappa Moilly (I was still trying to figure out how he'd get it, but that was stage II!) and to the Vice-Chancellor of Mumbai Univ, exhorting them, literally, to change the abysmal state of legal education, especially in GLC!

I firmly believe that law is a subject that can both be a teacher's paradise and a teacher's worst nightmare. In the same way, it becomes THE best subject a student is exposed to, if taught well, and the biggest drag if taught poorly. And a small amount of personal experience has taught me that law is a fun subject to teach because it continuously challenges your creativity. You're wondering how best to put a particular subject into perspective so that it sounds and reads interesting to the students. Also, since it is a subjective field, the impressions and ideas that are thrown about in the class expand your thinking so much more.

Coming back to the National Law schools, the 'vision' that was unveiled (at the conference wherein Manmohan Singh made his significant speech about revamping legal education) included, inter alia, establishing a National Law School in every state. Now, I'm a 'day scholar', 'Mumbaite', 'GLCite' and to my line of thinking, while having a national law school is wonderful in its own way, I don;t think the hostel atmosphere, focussing all your energies in becoming a hot shot lawyer, 24*7, quite compares with the carefree, sometimes lazy, pure student life that you experience as a day scholar. You come back home by noon, go for your music, dance and other sundry classes, roam around on Causeway, curse Satkar food, take a random train to bandra, get your umbrella broken and torn during rains on Marine drive... you live happily, without a care, and collect enough memories to reminiscence on days when you're sitting up at 11 pm with one cup of coffee, taking a break from drafting/filing or whatever else we're cursing at that moment, talking to colleagues or looking out of the office window... Now it is not to say that 'National law school' students do not do all of the above things (of course, the above is restricted to Bombay, but am assuming the B'lore/Calcutta etc counter parts of the mentioned places) but in my limited experience with these students, I have found them to be extremely bright, driven and almost consumed with the idea of becoming a "successful- harvard/yale educated- Amarchand/AZB partner" lawyer image. While the image itself is perfect (and to confess, I've dreamed of it myself) I think sometimes that they don't remain students any more. They morph into these focussed workers, for lack of a better word, living and breathing their future personalities.

Again, this is not to criticize any one particular class of students. And while I use the term 'National Law School', this term is broad enough to cover students from all law schools, whether it be NLS/NALSAR or GLC/New Law College/Kerala university... anywhere. It is just a stray observation that passed through my not-so-acive mind.

In any case, the article has put me in a more optimistic frame of mind. I'm now convinced that in my lifetime we would see a sea change in the way legal education is imparted in our country and I would be extremely happy if I were to be a part of that face-changing event.

Work... and other things

It has been so long since i last posted that I'd forgotten I've a blog that I maintain. So it was when i was reading Dhvani's hihgly entertaining observations on teaching that I thought about penning a few lines on my life.

General events happening in the last four months:
1. I'm FINALLY a lawyer (yay!)
2. My reval results are taking an inordinately long time and hence, I've given up on them!
Bombay university has this way of making you philosophical.. its a sort of short cut course in Vedanta.. no theory.. only practicals..
3. I've begun work.
4. I've discovered that only when I'm pressed for time (like now) that I realize how many things I want to learn. For eg: I had all the time in the world to "learn a new language", "learn odissi", "learn to play the violin" before I started working. I wonder why these desires have intensified to such a point now that am frustrated that i "do not get any time to do all the things I like" becuase I'm working...!

Thats about it I think. More experiences in the next post.
Love to all until then

Birthday woes and wows :)

18th May dawned bright and early, and the usual excitement on a birthday morning was sadly lacking in me. I was generally grumpy about people not being in a mood to celebrate my bday, thanks to the grand celebrations we'd had for other functions (being my bro and sis in law's first anniversary and a tiffin-dinner arranged for some relatives) which had tired out my family. Although they had a perfectly acceptable reason to be tired, I persisted in my juvenile claim of a bday morning lacking zest. My general spoilt attitude hit home and my darling family decided that something needs to be done to pep up my day. 

So aside from umpteen calls and messages (thank you to everyone who remembered), my brother got me 2 books on his trip back from the US, my sister spent 3 hours at crossword with my dad (who took a break in between work!) and ended up buying me three books, my other sisters, with the brothers' help sat up making a presentation of my pictures with funny captions and put it up, ordered a cake, and the mothers cooked a yum Italian dinner.. In short, my unusually dull day had just gotten transformed into a classic birthday, thanks to the efforts and the love put in by each member. 

I shall forever remain grateful for the lovely family I've been born in and blessed with, to have the BEST siblings in the whole world, and the most amazing set of parents any child could ask for. 

This post comes as a tribute to all of them, who have, repeatedly, and in various ways, been there for me, making my journey of life, exceedingly pleasant! 

Thanks and hugs to each one of them! :)

Thinking up a topic to write..

I seem to belong to that category of people who think of the title of the piece they're going to write about and then start thinking along the lines of the topic. Since I have spent considerable amount of time 'thinking' about what i want to write, I labelled this post as 'thinking up.. etc etc'

Anyway, since I've mentioned thinking, I was thinking (!) about the various ways one could make their blog useful. Going through mine, I found it has zero utility value other than boring others with my relentless rambling, especially my exam woes. Unfortunately for me, very little else is going on in my life. And right now, my parents say, the focus should be studies. Of course, thats all very good, but the mind is a fickle creature and it craves to unleash its creatiwitty on a forum like this. 

Having said absolutely nothing in the preceeding paragraph, I think (!) that I should write a travelogue. Since I seem to have the compulsive desire to 'get out' of the city and visit new places, it'd probably interesting to write about my experiences.

Of course, those experiences would come under the aforementioned class of 'relentless rambling' and hence, this would be a travellogue with a twist, I shall state how one can manage to visit fatte places (ignore the lapse into colloquialism) with a minimum budget. Yes, my dear readers, it is possible to see the world with a fixed budget and I shall share my secrets with you (drums playing... for effect) More on that, after the papers.. And since Mumbai University deemed it fit to subject us to this ultimate form of unwanted stress, my posts will necessarily be deferred to sometime after 25 may! :(

My experiments with banking law

I'm wondering for the nth time what prompted me to take up banking law as my elective when Mumbai University had so helpfully left this paper as an optional one! I cannot fathom the reasons for my choice, despite the fact that most people in the class smartly left this subject on the shelf! My only consolation that my group friends (barring a few) are suffering the same fate as I (terrible I know).

Now, I'm a big secret fan and i think by constantly branding banking law as 'boring', 'terrible', 'unexciting', 'soporiphic', I'm just making the subject that much harder to deal with. Therefore, a change of approach is needed. From this moment on, banking is the 'doable', 'interesting', 'stimulating' and 'kind of fun' to do. (actually i'd started to put 'best', 'fun' etc, but i wouldn't stretch the secret theory to such insane extents either!)

Heres to new approaches! :)

Inter alia...

The title seemed fitting, because, though my exams are scarely 20 days away, i seem to be 'studying' among other things..

These aforementioned other things include shopping (for a trip that am only just "planning"), facebooking (the new cocaine), know it all quizzes on fb (to byheart the capitals and sound smart during dinner conversations) [acutally, mainly to best my brother, who has an irritatingly accurate memory for capital cities!], mickey mehtaing (its a new thing I've joined, have attended the calesthinics [refer previous post] and yoga so far and they have successfully succeeded (!) in breaking different parts of my body at a time).  

To add to all of this, i tripped and fell absolutely flat on an ironically uneven road, next to a gutter, while guiding my friend (who was parking her car), successfully managing to hurt both my knees. I thought i was being brave when i danced properly at dance class later, but I felt the foolishness of my actions catch up with me when i reached home and had knees the size of tennis balls (no exaggeration). I was extremely disappointed when none of these marks of bravado remained the next morning and i couldnt boast to anyone about my supposed fall :( 

Anyway, swollen or otherwise, my knees have given me a brilliant excuse not to go to "mickey mehta". Having said that, they did allow me to happily parade around bandra from 11am to 4 pm shopping :D 

Coming back to the studying bit, I have decided that i need  "banking law for absolute dummies" to get me through this semester !!!! Anyone volunterring to procure this for me???

Everyday musings..

I fall into that category of persons, who make great plans and resolutions in their head, but are seldom able to see it through according to their plan. After much thought, i decided the root cause for this behaviourial pattern is laziness. Although my head came up with a perfectly acceptable solution to this problem, I am yet to put it into action (a symptom of my class of persons i suppose)

Anyway, today is the day I have decided to be most efficient. Its 10.20 am. 

Results of my progress in the next post!