A year in a page

My first year in Law School

Condensing how a year of law school has altered my perspective into a 1000 words is by no means an easy task.

As an 18-year-old, I was always fascinated by the various figures present in my life. How despite being made of the same elements in the equal chemical proportions, every person is different to the next. This difference is not just in terms of appearance but also in thought. However, I must concede I was way more interested in why people thought the way they did than about any difference in appearance. Back at my home in Trivandrum, Kerala, I had always ruminated about this aspect of the individuality of human thought, but frankly, I was bored of seeing familiar characters. I had assumed that this was mainly because the surrounding environment and society determined them to behave in a certain way, to which they conformed. When I packed my bags for Kolkata, I was in a way excited to leave this banality behind and meet a bunch of eclectic people from different cities who would broaden my horizon of thought.

So in a matter of a few weeks, I graduated from being an inquisitive student to an observant tourist in my college. Waves of culture shock hit me one after the other until I succumbed to the ocean of unfamiliarity. In this ocean of unfamiliarity, the people spoke a language I couldn't comprehend, they ate biriyanis with potatoes in it and even worse they thought in a way I was not used to before. Alas, to even begin to understand this quandary, I would have to sit in the backseat of my new Honda Judgement v8 and observe these "strange" people.

I didn't mind this new job. I patiently watched as people flocked together to form groups. These friend groups were quite dull to be very honest. They consisted of people who were very alike in all respects, no room for "strangeness". Even in such a diverse environment, people were hesitant to dip their feet in this ocean of uncertainty. All this I conveyed to my three friends in a language only they and I could understand-Malayalam. I eventually understood this need to group with such like-minded individuals. There is a certain sense of comfort you get in familiarity that adventuring into the unknown just doesn't offer. Eventually, groups got bigger; however, it was never so fundamentally diverse from the original. My group expanded as well; in the recruits were people from different North Indian cities. Later I would come to realise that these kids were pretty similar to me in the passions and interest we shared, the most influential reason of our friendship being these people mainly conversed in English rather than Hindi.

I would soon learn to stumble a few words in Hindi because of these people. However, it was not close to the eclectic bunch of friends I thought I would make when I packed to leave for college. The ocean was still uncharted territory for me, broadly speaking. However, my roommate was by far the most intriguing character in my journey through this ocean.
He was a bright kid my age from Sagar, Madhya Pradesh. We could never communicate properly until the last months of our second semester. There was a huge language disconnect. I would help him better his English and he would help me better my Hindi. We would describe to each other in fantastic detail how our childhood, our cultures varied, and this intrigued me more and more. How could I communicate with a boy so different from me in terms of everything, even language but relate to some part of him?

It was astonishing to me, how each of the 125 of us was so different yet I could understand them in some vague way possible. Sociology class was even more intriguing to that aspect. People from metropolitan cities had a different view from the others. A more "progressive" one, as they say. After all, everyone is but a mirror of their environment. From here on, it became increasingly difficult for me to dismiss opinions. I empathized with everyone.

If there's anything that law school has taught me in my first year, it is that truth and morals in this complex world are extremely subjective concepts. Law school has opened my mind in a sense that while you may disagree with a person on something, you can certainly always look behind the rationale of their thinking and in this investigation, you will always find a position of familiarity. Sometimes you need to keep your eyes and ears open and mouth shut.