Today, it is going to be my College.
It took me 7 Years to complete a five year law course. You, my hopelessly bored reader would be expecting me to follow this up with an short justification. Na. I’d rather not do that. I’d , as usual give a comprehensive commentary making fun of the college, me and those seven years that felt like 17 or 27...
It was different from the way the N school kids did law. We were a community of blissfully happy kids insulated inside a cosy setting without a hint of what went on outside the college. We used to wonder why those kids who occasionally came down for attending our piteous moot court competitions from other colleges looked so stressed out. In the vacations, we sat at home watching movies or playing cricket or something. College for us, was just a level up from school. After college hours, I played “Return to Castle Wolfenstien” in the newly acquired AMD Desktop. During the vacations, I finished Max Payne-I and II.
There were never many classes. Most of the time, the college was kept closed due to some reason or the other.
The whole concept of placement was so alien to the campus that it was considered a disgrace to accept a job in a company or a firm. Not that it ever happened. Sure, there were stories about kids who had left for Bangalore or Delhi looking for jobs in Law Firms. But, even that was narrated with such contempt as if they had gone to become prostitutes/gigolos.
There were a couple of forlorn kids who sensed that something was terribly wrong somewhere and felt out of place. But everyone inevitably had that tired look in their eyes when someone spoke of a job in the Metros.
So what did the kids do after graduation? Well, they all either quit law or practiced law in the lower courts.
It was a very chilled out campus. I often feel that had some N school kid accidently stepped inside, he’d have probably thought that it was a regular government office or an Art School. The student community was the weirdest. Most of the guys were well above thirties. Most of the gals were ‘Married/to be married soon/desperate due to not getting married’ types. And a substantial number of them came Burkha clad. So it was tough to classify them by looking at just their eyes. Some were dropped at the college by their hefty thick moustached husbands with contemptuous expressions as if whatever we were doing was a criminal waste of time.
There was an All India Moot Court Competition every year. A handful of teams with flashy chicks and laptops would come down with the hopes of leaving with an easy win. This was the time of their lives for the couple of wannabe and perverts in the college. They’d sit on the wall, ogle at these kids and murmur amongst themselves. The wannabes would appear wearing Linkin Park Ts and smoked jeans, ready for service. The courts were the funniest. Two teams, two court officers and two or three judges. That’s all. An incamera proceeding. In the final round, for which the organisers would have struggled days and nights to get hold of some HC Judges to preside, the hall will be adequately packed with people whom no one would ever see after the function.
The wannabes would spend the next few months cyber stalking the chicks who had come down (in ORKUT). The perverts would entertain each other with made up stories of how close he was to hooking up with one of those chicks.
And everything would return to normalcy. Quiet gloomy corridors. Deserted classrooms.
All the hell would break loose during the exam days. Strange faces would appear and there would be introductions. “Hey dude this guy is our classmate.” If its asked why no one has seen him all these years, a bizzare explanation would follow. “You know, I am having a shrimp farm in the Tamilnadu border. I was looking after that” “I went to Dubai looking for a job. Was lucky to make back alive”. I have to say that most of these stories would be raw and amusing. Like how he was promised an office job and was dumped in the midst of desert to be a slave to an Arab looking after the camels. How he managed to escape and all. Sadly, most of the stories would be true.
Another chaos would be unleashed during the election time. Those days would be eventful. Fiery campaigning. We had almost every of those student political parties. SFI, KSU, MSF, ABVP, AIDSO to name a few. There would be occasional clashes. And then the college will be shut indefinitely. We’d return homes cheerful and pleased, for the closure meant more movies, games and TV. Every morning with fervent prayers we’d open the newspaper to see if there is anything on the reopening. After a month or so of more unperturbed life at home, which would have become monotonous by that time, the classes would resume. Unknown to us, those leisure days were added to and not subtracted from our academic years.
Some kids would go out for moots occasionally. And would come back with an attitude. It would take a while for them to become ‘normal’ again. Then for days, they’d be seen outside the Principal’s room, accounts section, dean’s room trying to get a refund for the expenses incurred in vain.
I can say that till the day I left the college, (even) a laptop attracted lot of attention. God knows if it’s the same or the attitude has changed.
I was just one of those kids. There was a strange naivety about those people. They were all sincere folks who are content with their lives, however miserable it is reckoned by others.
That “was” doesn’t mean I’ve evolved into something great. But at least, I don’t stare at girls smoking now. Some improvement.
