A Mindful Mess!

This article has been submitted byVishaka S for the CLATGyan Blog Post Writing Competition. If you think this article is a good read, ‘Like’ this article on Facebook (the button is at the bottom of this piece) or post a comment using the ‘comments’ section below.
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Note to the Readers: Being the self-righteous and the goody two shoes writer that I like to perceive myself as, I must warn my readers that what I write below can directly be accredited to my current frame of mind and that if I were to write this article again, perhaps even a couple of hours later, I may have sung an entirely different tune altogether. Now, to bring you and me onto the same page, I must give you a vivid account of the circumstances surrounding me writing this article. It’s the end of my sixth week of internship under a Judge at the not-so-enchanting Gauhati High Court and here I am sitting in the Judges’ Library with the air-conditioning gusting chilly air right at my face and an internet-equipped machine under my palms. I must have nothing to whine about; and I am not whining. It’s just an inexplicable state of mind, a not-so-joyous-yet-not-so-dreadful disposition that I require my readers to connect with, and if you can, then read on!

Beneath all the glory, beneath what seems like a bed of roses or a stairway straight to a big pay at a top-notch law firm, and beneath all the partly delusional, partly veracious notions one associates the life of a law student with, dwells, coyly tucked underneath, the obnoxious truth of a deadly rat-race and a life-long commitment to struggle and eternal slogging. Internships, PPOs, moots, or, law firms and Courts – on the face of it are perfectly innocent words, speaking of nothing but virtuous accomplishments and everything noble, but are things that haunt a law student’s night’s sleep on a regular basis. I thought ISC was the end all and be all of my life’s struggle until I was bitten by the CLAT-bug. “Get into a NLU”, they said, “and your life is set”, and what a naïve ninny I was to fall for that.
I had once wanted to travel the world, write a book, learn how to bake a tropical fruit tart or play Taylor Swift on the guitar (What can I say! I was young and, like I said earlier, a ninny). I could be doing all that now, but instead, here I am, surrounded by at least 10,000 voluminous dust-covered books that could easily make a normal human being barf his guts out.
So what’s stopping me from exercising my right to choice and doing all the fun stuff? Not mummy; not pappa; absolutely no one and nothing. Perhaps, the only explanation is that I am an aspiring lawyer.
I have now come to terms with reality. I am different; I always have been, in an utterly disgusting and bizarre way. I have a tendency of inflicting and infesting my life with miseries. I grumble at every decision I make, yet I make them, see them to their end, and I also savour the gratification that comes along with it. All of it seems worth it when I envisage myself arguing my heart out in a Court of law. Each day of this quest empowers me. It’s like I have the power and an edge in life that the plebian shall never have. It’s like my friend likes to put it – “We lawyers are an elite class of people.”
For a life like this, the tart and the book can wait!
Perhaps, that kind of ridiculousness is a pre-requisite for a career in law and that’s what makes me so apt for it. As clichéd as it may sound, my life is a perfect concoction of bitter and sweet. The bitter may be slightly more prevalent than the sweet but the sweetness, when it comes, is sublime. It’s a painful pleasure and a pleasurable pain. Therefore, in spite of all the knowledge that I have now, if I were to go back and relive my past decisions, there isn’t a thing I would do differently.
People sitting on the other side of the desk during interviews or badgering relatives often ask me the most ludicrous question – Why law? And I sit their baffled and tongue-tied for I have not a clue. Some things, you know, are just right. They are just right. Period!