Blue bottles

I’m back. Dark and ready to deal with the Present. A long week later, My family and I are closer than ever. Warmer than ever. Sun Burned than ever. A big kiss and many thanks to Tipu Sultan for bringing us closer.

Welcome aboard fellow cruisers…this is officially day 1 1/2 of my pre madness holiday…
After an “enlightening” bus journey, my seized and cramped limbs have settled down to their original shape(or the lack of it)….
I am, my dear children, home in the very own namma bengaluru..Bangalore for my darling N.I friends…
Notes to the little one I left behind…
1. Yo Appu! today I was thinking of Iago and cracking up. That was funny man. Mum saw the EncorE pics. Ha Ha!!
2. Bangalore rocks man. Have loads of gossip to share.
3. The courier with my letter is coming like tommorrow. Please give it to Joshi.

The pictures are coming soon. we are leaving tonight. Bon Voyage to me….

Lakshadweep..here we come!

And Best Of Luck sweetie for your B.Com finals. And luck to Tink’s dad too!!

It’s that time of the year we feel the need to celebrate being XX. What the heck.. we deserve it! Happy Women’s Day!

19.Feb.2005 – 7.Mar.2005
ILS Law College, Pune. 3rd best in India.

It’s an aneurysm! It’s a Few Good Men! It’s a shark attack! No, It’s just the novice moots. And believe me, you can’t handle the truth.
Everybody (including me) in the beginning assumes that the Moots is some kind of Tom Cruise movie… i.e. Have some kind of jerky romance with a fellow lawyer(preferably a woman shorter than you), get a little drunk and hit the barman/himbo/your Colonel/hand that feeds you and then at the end of 87 minutes come to your senses and then give a stunning perfomance as a serious lawyer sans research or any other mind numbing activity (make your ugly co-star do the ugly work), grin a crooked grin as if in self mockery and Voila! You have won the case… Much to the surprise of yourself/your client/the woman you’re with/barman et al

If only life were that easy…. Or glamorous.

The real story is horrific. Tantamount to cruelty! Slavery!! Blistering Barnacles!!! They start of with giving us some unknown case with so many loopholes that you can actually hide convicts in it(go Pip!). And then (parental guidance necessary for this travesty..) they leave us…ALONE.

It’s like some freaked out coming of age ritual where the Elders let young women and men(separately) alone in some kind of jungle to sort out their whatever. Hakunama tata go bhad mein. So they let us in, armed with a measly case (which could be in Latin for all we understand of it) and Politeness to stave off this huge tsunami of aggression and ambition. People, who are to be Lawyers are scary. Scarier than a night out with the werewolves. Sharks are nothing compared to us novice mooters. If they can smell blood in one out of a million parts of water, we can smell out a person hoarding important books in less than a nanosecond and tear them apart in some sort of obscene frenzy.

Ok…So you’re given a week to pretend to be worth the education you are given. A week to work out the essentials of the case, research like there is no tomorrow, put in seven hours of pouring into tiny print of musty books that have never seen the light of the day and then still be strong enough physically hold off the others enroaching your material. Forget letting live, you have to guard your beduffled brain like it’s some sort of key to an ancient treasure. Metaphorical Blood spills all over with small wars being fought over who gets the Mulla Civil Procedure Code. Even an ostrich doesn’t guard his eggs with as much fevour as the Mooters do their PTCs . And a squirrel is nothing over the keen, feline dexterity one develops to slyly hide books in the wrong shelves (other than the assigned shelves). Where is the Love?

Amidst all this negative chi, there is a threat of the of the Seniors masquedering as Their Lordships who are rumored to be moonlighting as Vampires. They latch on to your weak neck and siphon out all the “knowledge” you have gained, with a few well chosen questions. And you’re standing there dumbstruck with your overworked brain whirring in quiet desparation Googling the nearest searches you can get to the aforementioned questions. “Your query did not find any matches to the above question.” What? This cannot happen to me after I beat this guy up over the AIR 1967 Supreme Court manual. Can it? Is this some horrible turn of Fate because as a child I refused to eat spinach? A Classic case of Karma biting you in the backside?

As you stand there squirming under the Big Brother scrutiny you ‘discover’ that
1. Your Research was inadequate.
2. You missed the 456th footnote that was torn off by a fellow Mooter in an attempt to gain a Leg Up. And that is the Landmark judgement of your case.
3. The guy you had beaten up over the AIR manual is in fact your judge….

…You realise with psuedo calm that you are resigned to this situation. And then you come together with the shrewd survival skill of your monkey ancestors and politely confuse the judges beyond the point of no return. A bow later, you’re out..Free.

You throw the cases and the research into the biggest bin that’s available and come back to discuss your monumental slicing of self confidence and self worth with fellow mooters. And enjoy their unconditional pity and consolations with a sad smile of your own.

Three days later… you come back to College to see the Evaluation Sheet that you have done phenomenally well and your ‘presentation of arguements’ was “unique and refreshing.” A euphemism for ‘what in the name of the blindfolded lady were you saying?’

The pics are coming up…The Valentine Day pics with the four of us got messed up. Will not put it up for Public viewing… Kanika, Shivani and Apurva this(unfortunately) is for you…

Hey people.
The Open Space meetings are coming up. I suppose all of you got the mail? They are showing three Iranian movies and a lot of other discussions are happening. So see you there…

This is only for the Pune crowd.