- If you were to introduce yourself to the junior batches, what would you say?
I’m an activist-lawyer, an academic and a playwright. I see each of these roles as inextricably linked and trace my interest in occupying them back to my time at NALSAR. I’m currently in the third year of my PhD at the University of Melbourne, and it’s been quite a thrill so far.
- How would you describe your years at NALSAR?
It’s now been a decade since I graduated, so it’s fair to say that my perception of my time there has evolved constantly. What do I think about NALSAR at this moment in time? Early evening tea on the steps outside the mess. The claustrophobic panic of our 9 pm hostel curfew whistle. The abject terror of being ragged in the boys hostel during my first year. Countless walks on the 2.8 km stretch. Hours in the library spent doing anything but study, then cramming notes at the very last minute, then the freezing cold air-conditioning of the examination hall. The excellent weather that always interrupted the final exam. Pulling off a full length Oscar Wilde production. The abundance of community, knitting together friendships that have survived for over a decade.
- What courses/professors at law school have had the largest impact on you?
Two courses, both in my second year, basically changed my life. I’d drifted through my first year in a haze of not-caring and probably would have continued if it hadn’t been for the professors behind these classes. In the third semester, during our class on Sociology and the law, Professor Kalpana Kannabiran included an essay on the impact of sodomy laws. The essay, and the conversation we had in class around it, felt like coming home, even if I didn’t fully realize what it meant for me – it would be another year before I came out as a gay man. If that course and class helped me realize there was some kind of space for me and my identity in the law, our subsequent course on Law and Poverty with Professor Amita Dhanda made me fall in love with the possibilities of the law. I remember the headiness of her classes, the rush of realizing law was a living breathing entity that was always enfolded within our everyday experience. With Professor Dhanda, I had the privilege of attending her subsequent courses on Jurisprudence, Administrative Law, Judicial Process, Disability Law and Justice Education, and I often find myself returning to the things I learnt in her classes, even now.
- What led you to choose a road less travelled?
As far as the mainstream was a career in a law firm, I did consider it and sat for recruitments in my final year, but also had a gut feeling that it wasn’t the right fit for me. I’d had some internships with law firms before, and I was as bored and unmotivated in those settings as I’d been during my first year of law school. Litigation didn’t seem to be an option either because I didn’t think I had a particular kind of tough temperament for it (and I’m increasingly sure this is true). In the end, I opted for a job at the Alternative Law Forum (ALF), a collective of human rights lawyers in Bangalore who were simultaneously invested in critical and imaginative forms of legal research. It was going to be a fraction of the salary I would have earned at a law firm, but just the thought of it made me feel both at peace and also incredibly excited. So that really was it, I chose the only road I could conceivably live with.
- What kind of challenges did you encounter while choosing this path? How did you overcome these?
The most obvious one, money, has never really been a problem. I found that the fairly low salary that I had at ALF was still enough to afford me a modest standard of living – particularly given I did not have carer responsibilities. I did eventually leave for a higher paying job at an international NGO, but it was after five years at ALF. Of course, there are sacrifices you make, but I think there are always costs and benefits with the vocational choices you make and I was and am content with mine. The much bigger challenge was not being clear about a trajectory – at the time I graduated and for quite a few years after, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to end up in academia, even as I was sure I wanted to do creative, intellectually challenging work with the law. I kind of improvised my path as I went along and I wasn’t always sure where I was going – 5 years ago I was convinced a PhD was not for me, and now here I am, doing this thing that gives me a lot of joy.
- How has your journey been so far?
Besides what I’ve already shared, I think what’s been interesting is the ways in which I’ve journeyed away from the law, and how that path has ultimately led me back to it. The best example I think is my work with theatre: I turned to it at first because I wanted to escape something that felt stultifying about the law, which at that point had ceased to inspire me. I then found myself writing and performing theatre that was all about crafting a different kind of relationship with the law, one which could potentially be nourishing. I think that’s been really fascinating, discovering different ways of relating to law, realizing my responsibility to it. I attend to that responsibility in the academic/theatrical space now, which I didn’t see myself doing when I was in law school, but it is incredibly rewarding.
- How different are the skills which you are using now compared to the skills you learnt at law school?
It’s surprising how often I find myself going back to the skills I picked up then. The skills of close reading and critical thinking that I picked up thanks to Professor Dhanda and Professor Kannabiran have held me in good stead – of course you acquire layers to that skill as you go on, but I’m very grateful for the foundation that their classes gave me. Another thing I learnt: the value of collaborative work, whether it was doing group projects or editorial work or even theatre. It makes your research and practice less lonely, and you learn so much. Some things from law school I’ve had to try and actively unlearn. There’s a way we go about our activities of thinking and speaking in law school that is argumentative to the level of being antagonistic, rooted as it is in the adversarial nature of the courts and the legal profession. I think that can risk turning us into overtly suspicious thinkers, critical in a way that is both destructive and doesn’t necessarily allow us to discover new insights about the world. How, instead, to be curious and receptive to the world, to practice hope without it being dismissed as naivete? A big challenge, and something I’m still figuring out for myself.
- Any advice for juniors who wish to explore beyond law?
First, I think soak up the law in the time that you have at law school: read legal theory, read judgments, parse through statutes, have conversations, write. You’re in this institution, so make the best of it. Once you’re done with law school, and IF you have the privilege of being able to do so, resist the compulsion of having to follow a linear path. And if you do end up having to follow said path for a while, that’s okay too, try and see if you can find time and community to do the other things you love. It might be that your other explorations aren’t a full time pursuit which is fine – as long as you are able to find a measure of satisfaction and meaning in the course of your working week, that’s more than enough.