Everyone dreams.

In India, it’s preferable if a student dreams to get into IIT or study medicine. Those who dream of studying law form a part of the distinct minority. As someone who has had the luck (or the lack of it) to have performed well in science, even thinking about switching streams was an uphill task. When you have friends who are studying for IIT entrance exams, teachers who tell you to aim for IIT, relatives who want to see you in IIT:

1. You get sick and tired (pardon the cliché) of the abbreviation (IIT, I mean).

2. You have to work really hard to explain to these people why you choose to ignore all that they say.

So I finally did manage to make my point clear. Law is what I intend to study. Period. Paragraph.

One of my slightly deluded classmates then told me, “Dude! I wish engineering was as cheap as law.” Does that get your blood boiling? It sure did get my ire on the rise. Here is an individual who doesn’t know what the IPC stands for. He believes that his choice of career isn’t ‘cheap’ while mine is. Why? Because the intelligentsia doesn’t opt for law. That’s what I was told, albeit in slightly more crude manner: “Eh, very few proper people do law, da! You’ll get in, no competition only.” I’ll go to my grave disputing that statement.

I’m told that society is finally opening up to inevitable change. If every beta/beti became an engineer, life would be boring as hell. I have nothing against the conventional careers (Actually, law is more conventional a career than engineering, but *hush* they’ll get angry if you tell them this!) , but WHY are we incapable of accepting those who choose NOT to do what most are doing?

I know at least two people who’d make amazing lawyers. They think they’d do well in this profession too. Yet both are off to study engineering because it’s safe and they are good at science.

I don’t think I’m alone in experiencing this alienating behaviour. You tell someone that you’re doing law and they look at you as though you’re below their dignity. Any rank in IIT-JEE is GREAT while this two digit rank that you got in CLAT seems to be of no value. Yet the best conversationalists I know, the best informed people I know are lawyers or journalists.

Another new fad that has come up is “Law? Oh! You’ll make a lot of money!” Yes, I know that corporate law is a big thing and it pays well, but that’s not why most choose to study for a grueling five years. Not for just the money. There is so much more to law than crisp Rupee bills.

Cracking CLAT was one of the most satisfying experiences of my life. While I may not have been amongst that elite 55 who got into NLSIU (Yes, that is my dream school as it is for thousands of others.) I have managed to find myself a place in NALSAR and that’s good enough for me. It’s one among the top three law schools in the nation, yet I have to explain to people what NALSAR is and why I’m going there. And I’m expected to know what they are talking about when they say “I’m joining PESIT.”

*sigh*

Such is life.