Cycling, Serendipity & Zemblanity

I had a potentially dangerous, but eventually funny accident last Tuesday while riding to the Leiden Students' Movie Night. At a fairly high speed, I was flung over the handlebars of my bicycle when the dynamo came loose and got stuck in the front wheel. Funnily, I landed on the grass, without a scratch. The front mudguard came loose and a couple of spokes in the front wheel were slightly bent. The bike had dutifully served me for over 2500 kilometers over the past six and a half months, but the time had come to move on - at least as far as recreational riding was concerned.

   

Re: Rocking the kasbah

Karan Thapar in his 'Sunday Sentiments' dated February 6, 2011, revisits the oft-debated issue of the socio-economic disparities in India. He reflects upon what the possible consequences of these injustices could be, against the backdrop of the current turmoil in Tunisia and Egypt. He suggests that India must watch her step, lest she should suffer a similar revolution. While the article does address extremely pertinent issues, the author’s analysis leaves much to be desired and a rather sour aftertaste.

Dhobi Ghat

Given Aamir Khan's recent movies, I expected the film to be melodramatic. I had read that the film was an ode to Bombay and expected it to be an aggrandized portrayal of the city. However, it wasn't either. It was a stitched collage - stories of seemingly parallel lives quirkily intersecting - weaving through the melancholy of Bombay. Incredibly, this movie did not tell what the city does to you or how it does it, rather showed it doing what it does to people. 


I liked the movie very much and was reminded of a line from New York Times' review of Arundhati Roy's The God Of Small Things in which it described the book as is "heartbreaking and indelible". The description could easily befit Dhobi Ghat, I felt.

From Golm, Germany

On Friday last week, Nirumama and I drove from Dossenheim to Luxembourg to Nishithbhai's. The Luxembourg trip has not much to write about, except that I loved the drive to and fro, and that Nishithbhai and I went to the cricket nets to chance our arms at batting and bowling after over a year. And I also discovered my new interest in chess, a game I utterly disliked before.

The realization that my carbon footprint had grown

Delhi

I think i have kind of started settling in Delhi. It is radically different from Bombay and it takes a while to come to terms with how this city functions.

With more than three thousand years, Delhi is the longest surviving capital city in the world.

Sunday Sundry

What comes to your mind when one says: “art exhibition”? People, champagne in hand, staring at canvass smeared with color that makes you think the artist might have plagiarized your child’s accidents with water colors, new age or classical music playing in the background? Women wearing expensive jewelry, perfumes, hair color air kissing? Or men wearing suits and wives stepping out of their dirty big German cars talking, in weird accents, about means to combat climate change? Something elitist?

Well, pictures like these would definitely flash across my mind. Not that I am against the whole elitist cliché associated with art exhibitions – I enjoy it myself at times. So, once I went to a much hyped about art (performing arts) event with a couple of colleagues of mine. I was thinking of wearing my cool blazer and leather boots, but decided against it when one of my colleagues said that she believed in art for the masses and was just gonna wear her jeans, t-shirt and flip-flops.

Today I happened to be at Jehangir Art Gallery, looking at some modern art. When you think “modern art” one would think only the elite who’d understand (or at least pretend so) what’s on show and dare to venture. But much to my pleasant surprise, the gallery was chock-a-bloc with people one might condescendingly categorize as “lower middle-class”. True, there were times that the curators had to ask the visitors not to touch the artifacts, but then it was a delight to see these people appreciating what most of the “upper middle-class” might grudgingly call elite modern fart. My activist colleague would have been proud.

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King’s Circle garden is one of the few densely green parks left in Bombay, with many tall, lush green trees. One of these trees, if I am not mistaken, has stood there for around to two centuries. It is a lovely Peepal – most Hindus revere a Peepal tree as holy. The amazing part about this park is that it is actually a traffic island on an arterial Bombay road with hundreds of thousands of cars driving around its circumference on a daily basis. Inspite of the manic traffic around it, it always remains calm and peaceful inside itself. The mere sight of this park, while one is waiting for the traffic light to turn green, is soothing to the senses. Hundreds of people throng this park everyday. Correction: hundreds of people thronged this park, until last week. Today I was riding back home, admiring the lovely park, only to find the people missing. I enquired to find that the MMRDA is gonna construct a flyover over the park. Sixteen trees will be axed tomorrow to make way for the flyover. The Peepal tree too, amongst those sentenced.

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My dad just told me of a report on NDTV today. It is supposed to have said that the river Ganga might cease to exist by the year 2030. Apparently, about eight square kilometers of the mouth of the river has dried up in the past one year. The corresponding figure, the report is supposed to have said, was four square kilometers for the previous year. It is mind numbing to imagine the impact it could have, if the Ganga were really to dry up! And Al Gore will tell us that the possibility is nothing less that an inconvenient truth.

One name however, immediately crossed my mind – a gentleman by the name of Mahesh Chandar Mehta (or as many law students would know: Mr. M.C.Mehta). I told my dad, knowing how naïve it was to say it, “M.C.Mehta wouldn’t let this happen”. “What will M. C. Mehta be able to do all by himself”, my dad questioned. It was only once my dad asked that question that I could really understand what the man has done for the country so far.

Almost single handedly, with a little cooperation from the Justices of the Supreme Court, Mr. Mehta has successfully fought many an environmental battle over the past two and a half decades. A few prominent cases amongst are the CNG case, the Ganga Pollution case, the Taj Trapezium Case, the Oleum gas leak case… you could ask any law student and one would give you a seemingly endless list. That is what Mehta has been able to do, all by himself. And what’s more? Mehtaji’s integrity has never, in a mission lasting over a quarter of a century, been questioned and he hasn’t been shot dead!

Easter Greetings

Hope it has been a great Easter weekend for you guys. It surely has been a good one for us here in India. In fact, it has been more than just good for us. India, quite infamously has very many holidays as we have very many Gods! But alas, Bombay being Bombay, isn't quite always as fortunate. However, this Easter weekend has been a nice long one for us and that is a real rarity in our city, which races with time with steel wheels on iron tracks.

This year the Gods seem to have come together and smiled upon us - we've had four consecutive holidays – Thursday was Id-e-Milad, Friday was Good Friday, Saturday was Holi (Bombay mostly works on Saturdays as well), and then today – Easter. So, it has been a great mini vacation for us!

Hope you too have had a ball of a time.

Cheers!

some blah

There is a marked difference between being sound at something and being good at something, isn’t there? And at times one may confuse the former as not only being good, but maybe also being great at something! The founder member of the firm I work with calls it the MBA syndrome – MBA for ‘Mane Baddhu Avdeche’ (Gujrati for “I know everything).

My mentor always tells me that there are no shortcuts in any practice when I used to get hassled, everytime that I could not find something instantaneously. He always told me that the legal practice is a lot about knowledge which comes with a lot of experience that one gathers along a rather long and circuitous journey and that one must enjoy every moment of this journey. Because there are no shorcuts.

I guess that is why they call professions “practice”. Its all about practice – like cycling – one needs to internalize the balance before one can do what seem like gravity defying stunts. After all its all about balance, which comes with practice, doesn't it?

Rodent Of A Car

I recently got an email about the the much talked about the Rs. 1-lakh Tata micro-car, which is likely to be launched sometime in 2008. Here are my first thoughts:

I am a car afficinado, all right; but when it comes to this new 'revolution' Mr. Tata seems to have successfully endeavoured to bring to life concerns me a great deal. Firstly, because the car runs on fossil fuels; and secondly, because it is so inexpensive - given that we seem to have no carrying capacity to accomodate large numbers of these that seem to be on the cards.

I am taken aback by the fact that the car is likely to come with a diesel variant! It might make business sense for Tata not to think electric car, lest it should lose its USP, which is its cost advantage; but it amazes me as to why Tata would not drive their car environmentally cleaner fuel modes like CNG or LPG, given the fact that Tata has the necessary technology; widespread availibility of these fuels; and most of all, these fuels are incredibly cheaper than either of the two oil variants that Tata proposes to run its micro-car on - in line with the motto of building a cost-effective car, which competes with motorcycles and scooters!

Second, most apparently this is a car for urban roads - do we really have the carrying capacity to accomodate large numbers of these small four wheels? Imagining a scenario where half the two wheelers turn into the Tata 1-lakh car is as scary as any nightmare - Do we have as much parking space? Do we have as many lanes? I think the already scary situation is all set to get worse.

It amazes me further that Tata - a company that pom-poms itself as a pioneer in the field of CSR is manufacturing rodents of cars. I would tend to think that there is tremendous scope for business in public transportation. Should Tata invest as many funds in the railway sector or Eco-friendly buses, it stands not only a great opportunity to stake its claim as the numero uno in bus manufacturing, but also generate revenue from the international carbon market. And we are all aware that a certain Mr. Tata is capable of doing so.

Mondays and Fridays

Last winter while interning with a Supreme Court Lawyer, I used to regularly follow Court proceedings on a daily basis and I was amazed at the Special Leave Petition (SLP) days -Mondays and Fridays. I was amazed on two counts: firstly at the manner in which almost every matter would be given a minute or two before being thrown out; and secondly, and more importantly, the sheer number of cases the Court heard.

The Supreme Court of India hears close to 60,000 cases in a year, most of which have done rounds of numerous fora at lower levels and appealed right through to the apex court. In contrast, most other apex judicial bodies around the world hear only a small fraction of this number. Also, most of these cases that our Supreme Court hears are SLPs and there are very few constitutional matters with of 5, 7, 9, 11 judge benches.

There are two questions that arise in my mind in this regard. Firstly, what causes so many appeals to the Supreme Court in this country? And secondly, why have Monday and Friday hearings at all? Could judges not decide whether or not to entertain an SLP by simply looking at the papers, given that counsel are barely heard?

The answer to the first question, it seems to me, is rather obvious – litigants are simply dissatisfied by lower court judgments. I guess these could be the reasons:

1. Corruption amongst judges of lower courts;

2. Intellectual capacity of Judges of lower courts;

3. Judges may tend to decide a case in a manner that minimises the risk of it being overruled on appeal, at the expense of justice (so, for example, in a case with 9 contentions where 4 favour the plaintiff and 5 favour the defendant the judge might decide all 9 points in favour of the defendant, lest the judgment should run a greater risk of being overturned on appeal);

4. Judges on a division bench almost never differ.

As yet I cannot find much reason for the second question, but looking at the disparity in the number of lawyers present in court on SLP days and those on final hearing days, I would think SLP days exist to provide for lawyers that might otherwise be unemployed!