The CLAT route…

The aspirant lawyer is in class 11 when he decides Engineering and Med school are things of the past….they do not attract him and his acumen beckons him to explore a new vista all together….a line of work that throws him a plethora of never before traversed roads…..

He googles “law”……and he is flooded with information. He is totally engulfed by this new avenue….He decides he wants to be a lawyer….Now with all the requisite information at this fingertips he sets out to join a coaching institute….the two premiere ones are called “LSD” and “I’m S”. He embarks on this journey. He is scared inside but his boiling enthusiasm and confidence spurs him on….

Uninformed people tell him that law as a career will entail him to a seat under the Banyan tree at Alipore Court in kolkata where he ll wear the lawyer’s robe and eke out a living by “soliciting” his trade through shouting “affidavit affidavit…….arre dada affidavit?…come here”…

He chuckles at such people and to prove his point he works harder at achieving his goals….He parrots NLSIU NALSAR and NUJS to his parents who by now have heard the rankings and the fervent criticism and the rivalry that concerns the top law schools….His parents encourage him and he continues his tirade about Strawberryfields…The summons or Invicta….

But as our protagonist is in class 12 and his board exams exert a lot of pressure…coupled with the list of failures he sees amongst his immediate seniors he starts falterin…He however has amazing teachers at LSD to “dope” him into believing in himself viz,Mr. Saurav Sutta who also smokes with him outside the classes and gives him snippets about law school life…These serve as our law school aspirant’s…fantasy and subject for evanescent reveries… If law school student attended I’m S classes then there was Mr. Gajni-ish Singh, a man of mettle, sound calibre I ve heard though I have never met him personally.

Its january 2010 and he has started filling his forms…CLAT NLUD NLUO Symbiosis Law School…he hopes to just make it somewhere..his fervent prayer before sleep every night is “God NLSIU NALSAR NUJS…NLSIU NALSAR NUJS…top3 god pls…accha nahin toh top5 pls…NLSIU NAL…” and he dozes off to sleep as Res ipsa loquitor and Ignorentia juris non excusat give him subjects of eventful dreams wherein…The National Commission for Backward classes and the Finance Comission have a battle in Mr PV Reddy’s backyard…

The great performance by CLAT office 2010 stuns him into realising Law school is not perfect but as ‘close’ to the idea of being perfect as possible…

May 2010…he has his admit cards albeit late but he does…they seems like tickets to the elusive hallowed portals of legal education but he realises that the big hurdle is about to crush him down…

CLAT preparation has gone to maddening levels where the aspirant has to study Civil Service GSMs and he is expected to know the law before he enters law school…but thats our legal system…criticising it on LI wont change the hard bitter reality so our hero goes on and takes up his cudgels for himself and enters the arena…May 9^th,. His fate his sealed…20 days don’t seem to pass and then lo and behold!!! Its the 29^th morning… butterflies perforn the salsa in his stomach as he is glued to his PC screen…clat.ac.in..every hour the number of hits increases by a lakh…he just realises that he has only 540 seats to himself…less priveleged that he is being born to a “general category” …Kolkata houselhold having neither a caste reservation nor a domicile…to back him up…he is hopeless…able bodied that he is…he doesnt even qualify…as a PWD…he starts thinking can i claim to be dyslexic and be a PWD??..i mean taare zameen par?…but his frnds from LSD send him chat msges on FB where they say results shall not be declared at 2pm but at 5pm…he employs some of his choicest swear words and gets back at biting his nails…CLAT office says no 7pm…then they say…9pm..

AND FINALLY AT 8pm…he gets to know his results…he has made it …joy knows no bound…it is the top 3…he has a double digit rank…and the number has a sexual innuendo…to itself…he chuckles…

Yes !!! He ‘s going to a law school…Mr Saurav Sutta congratulates him…He immediately checks up on his friends’ ranks…1100 1400 5500 56000 and the like…he realises that none of his friends have made it…he is gloomy and sad…doesnt know whether to call his friends up in case they mistake his empathy to be glorious sadistic pleasure…BUT WAIT his best friend has made it to the DRY STATE college…aah…he is so happy again…

He is a regular on LI and his seniors fight about law school rankings as LI publishes an analysis of CLAT 2010 results…he is saddened to see this bitter catfight…he ponders whether it really matters five years down the line which one of the tier one law schools you have passed out from …anyway…he goes gaga over his own law school…its building…its ambience…he is just too happy…even the mindless bickerings on LI cant take away his happiness…

He salutes Legal Poet and Bihari babu…he hopes to join their ranks one day and tilll then he reads about life in NLUS and danish sheikh’s take on NALSAR…and is all too eager to land up at his law school…he took the less traversed path but it paid off…now he wants to learn imbibe and assimilate from his law school, faculty and seniors…as he sets his right foot forward to foray into a life that was his dream…he seeks the blessings of all…advice and a bit of help from the ‘positive interaction’ as to how he can traverse the L School path and come out with flying colours…

To all Law Schoolites…he raises a toast…