What does it take for a decently intelligent and an ordinarily hardworking person to make it through a fierce competition? A lot of luck. Surely, there is a perennial attempt to undermine the role that luck plays. Jefferson is quoted to have said that the harder he works, the luckier he gets. This is true to a large extent. When one prepares confidently and waters down all weaknesses, the chance of success does increase. But, does this stand valid when the competition is so intense and the scope of success so small that the margins are highly miniscule?

CLAT – the Common Law Admission Test – will have around 1.4 Lac takers this year. The saturation of IIT-JEE coupled with the romanticising of National Law Universities has caused this heavy increase in the number. The unfortunate pandemic situation forced extension of deadlines to fill in the form, opening up a window to those deciding at the eleventh hour to try a shot at this exam.

The number itself, however, is not much of an issue. Afterall, several other exams in India have over half a million applicants. But, it’s the narrow scope of success that is worrisome. The 22 NLUs under CLAT all total to 1,355 seats for the General Category, with almost an equal number for the Reserved Categories. Comparing this to the total applicants, less than one percent have the chance of landing in an NLU. I repeat, not even one percent! To put it another way, if a candidate goes to take the exam at a centre which caters to five hundred students, a mere five will taste success.

While all this competition is one thing, the CLAT this year has been particularly spiced up with a lot of pattern and syllabi changes. The purpose was to streamline the process so that those with the best of Reasoning abilities and Knowledge are selected. This is surely a noble aim. CLAT, over the years, had become too mechanical where students simply understood the general nature of questions and toned themselves to solve those. This lead to a flourishing of coaching institutes thumping their chests of producing high rankers as they spoon-feed students with the ‘past year questions’ that neither gave them any substantial knowledge nor prepared them to be a good law student. It so happened that most students would know the answer to a Legal Reasoning question simply by looking at the facts or the principle, without as much as pondering over the rationale of their answer.

At the outset, I do appreciate these changes. They were much needed and had to be done years ago. But all these changes seemed to have created another problem, a problem much larger than they sought to solve. The new paper requires the candidates to be very strong at the language. A student might have excellent reasoning abilities, but they can only be utilised once she passes the hurdle of being swift, strong, and immaculate at the language. It is only when one understands the large paragraphs and the demand of the question that she can ponder over the given options and choose the correct one. If one does not process the given text within the given time, she does not even reach the stage where her reasoning skills are tested. This causes a huge barrier to those who have not had opportunities to hone their linguistic skills.

To make it all worse, the lack of adequate language skills can be attributed to the poor school standards across the country. Those who are privileged to have grown up in urban upper class households with educated parents and high-standard schools are clearly ahead in the CLAT race. Although the previous pattern was not on-point in testing reasoning, it was, if nothing, more accommodative of students with an average schooling and a determination to fill in the gaps. It is quite uncomfortable and disheartening to see plenty of students message me their doubts and queries using wrong grammar. Many simply do not understand the given text and ask for an explanation. At the risk of being extremely judgemental, I sense, at that very moment, that these students may not stand a chance to be in the top one percent that CLAT is going to skim off for NLUs.

It seems that the zeal of reforms has made the Consortium reckless as they undermine inclusivity. Given how small the margins are going to be in the eventual rank list, mis-reading even a word in the paper can mean failure. It is hard to see how a student with average schooling, poor exposure, and high pressure may crack the exam and walk to an NLU. The competition has turned a stream into a river, the pandemic has added a flood to this river, and the Consortium has narrowed the flood-gates allowing only the privileged to pass through.

Ultimately, it will be unfair for those who make it to the NLUs to credit their achievement entirely to their hard work and intelligence. Similarly, it will also be unfair to undermine the skills of those who fail. CLAT has, unfortunately, become a game of chance at which, even before the exam, thousands have already lost to a privileged few.

I feel numb.

I’ve generally thought of myself as an emotional person. I’ve had strong opinions about plenty of things and indifference towards none. The idea of being reserved and letting something go has been alien to me. Those who know me well know that I am quite vocal, sometimes with disastrous consequences. All this, however, is not a virtue. I tend to overdo it and make irreparable damage.

Overtime, I had learnt to exercise restraint and let things go. I chose my battles and made my point only when I felt it to be essential. But lately, this has been going south. My selective picking of what I must support or oppose has been tiring. Not because of my lack of energy, but because I find no utility in it.

When Article 370 was rendered ineffective in an effort to ‘merge’ Kashmir with India, when the Supreme Court ordered the construction of Ram Mandir, when the Parliament passed their CAA, when the Government proposed the NPR and NRC, and when the Tablighi Jama’at was made the scapegoat, the battle lines drawn were exactly the same. Those of my friends who are on the right side of these issues do not have to be engaged because our outrage and views are in sync. And those who are on the ‘right’ side cannot be engaged because of their obvious prejudices.

Thus, the very point of being angry at something gets defeated because there is no release. And all this pent up anger simply leads to such repression that it numbs all the emotions.

At the risk of sounding pessimistic, it is obvious that I have no power to bring in a change in the hearts of those who thump their chests with nationalism. This is not because they do not understand reason, but despite it. Engaging with them drives you in circles and exasperates you. The tale ends where it had begun. There will not be any change of hearts, but the minds surely become toxic. The ego of one’s ideology is too strong to be countered by reason.

There is, however, a larger point here. The idea of India has been pretty obscure. It is the indefinable feature which ought to have strengthened the nation by according both respect to the diverse traditions and dignity to an individual. But, was this idea a lie? In an effort to inculcate tolerance, we seem to have, over the decades, tolerated the intolerance. Eventually, the intolerance became powerful enough that it has put this idea of India in jeopardy. Or did this intolerance only remove the façade over the rosy idea of India which never really existed?

We’ve been told that India is about the pursuit of substantive equality, liberty, and fraternity. But the graph on these has only been diving downwards. Perhaps, the idea of India never was the truth. If it was, what does it take to live it in practice rather than merely preaching it in the ideals? Even if this idea is true, it seems to be only slipping away from our sight. We all have already chosen our positions on either side of the line, only to gradually strengthen it. This could be just a phase in this country’s history, or the death of our dreams.

In this prime-time-shouting-matches age, we all will continue to fight. We will assert our positions using every debating technique in the arsenal. We will grow our differences amongst us. And we all will, unfortunately, continue to defeat India.

What a time to be alive. Of course, being alive is the first of all priorities. But never did I think that we would witness such incredible times. The pandemic has shaken the world in every aspect. Lakhs have already died across the world, and those who battled it and survived have been through enormous difficulties and trauma.

Several unfortunate news stories have sunk my heart further. The deaths of sixteen migrant workers sleeping on the tracks, another twenty-four in a road accident, and the miseries of those taking long walks to try and reach their homes has been too tough to watch. All this invokes both anger and helplessness.

The response of the government has been inefficient and disheartening to say the least. We seem to be doing exactly the opposite of what the situation demands.

The first lockdown was announced with a four-hour notice. As the migrant labours scrambled to pick up the little belongings they had and head to their home towns and villages, we suspended all public transport. These daily wage earners now had no wage. The governments promised to provide them all food, but only after verifying if they deserve it or not. They were asked to register online using their Aadhaar Numbers, obtain their own registration numbers, and queue up at a crowded distribution centre.

Even in this crisis, we couldn’t declare that the food will be provided for every person who seeks it. And that’s because of the apprehension of ‘leakages’ – that those who are not ‘entitled to be beneficiaries’ should not take what isn’t meant for them. How ironic is it that when a person uses every provision of the Taxation Law available to reduce his taxes, he is known to be a smart businessman; but, when a person simply wants food to not starve to death, he is looked at with suspicion to be a moocher!

The biases have come out as obvious. We will bail out the corporates like Yes Bank which have crashed due to their own mismanagement, but will not help the vulnerable labourers who are vulnerable due to the government’s mismanagement. Even in these desperate times, our policies are pro-corporate as we help these wealthy capitalists by enabling them to retrench labour without any obligations, not to mention the dropping of Minimum Wages baselines. Because we may compromise the basic social security of the workers, but will not risk any chipping away of the business owners’ profits.

The labour had no choice, but to take a long walk to reach their native places. As they reached their towns and villages, they have been seen as Corona carriers. The administration in Bareilly went so far as to make them sit on the roads in a group and spray disinfectant over all the people using a fire engine. If this had to be done, it should’ve been done at the airports with all the people arriving from abroad. They were the ones bringing Corona to India, without which we’d not have the pandemic in the country.

Amidst all this, the power surely found what it was desperately seeking. A scapegoat. This came in the form of Tablighi Jama’at which conducted their meetings a few days before the lockdown was announced. The drill was the usual and all the developments were on the expected lines. Muslims have been targeted as conducting #CoronaJihad and vilified for conducting a meeting even when there was no restriction for the same. The Foucoult’s cycle of power and knowledge played perfectly well as the Government, the Media, and Ideologically-motivated people peddled a sensational narrative of hatred. It was disturbing that we found none of this surprising.

After two months of this ordeal which exposed the vulnerabilities of the weaker sections and the extra-ordinary power of the Government, we are on the path to open up the economy. Defeating the entire purpose of the two months of lockdown, we’re easing the restrictions, doing the exact opposite of what we ought to do. When we had a few hundred cases, the lockdown was brutally imposed with the Police misusing their powers by beating up anyone they saw on the road. But now that we have almost two lac cases, our Government wants us to go out and carry on with our routine. And there is hardly any voice which questions this planned execution of irony.

The episode has only started. Every development that shocks us today becomes the normal tomorrow. And this race to the bottom is furiously fast. If I think of it now, I shudder to imagine how this year will end. But then, I am sure that’ll be just another normal by then.

It’s been a while since I’ve been here. Over six years, in fact. I’ve often thought of writing and waking this dormant blog up. But, I had neither the courage nor the inclination. If anything, I only tried escaping the reality. The struggle and pursuit of my aspirations left me so weak that I wouldn’t dare put this journey in writing. The biggest of all fears was that I may, sometime in future, look back and read things with a disappointment of what it could have been and what it is not.

I am here now. Severely heart-broken and relying on a façade of happiness to hide all the pain. Reality is too much to take. Up until a few months, I could rely on random meaningless validations from others and maladaptive day-dreaming of my own. But that has proven to be unsustainable and the house of cards collapsed, reflecting what I always feared to witness.

The only hope I have is to rely on Him. Him, I trust, of course. And through Him, I trust the destiny. The burdens seem small and the shoulders relax when you surrender. I’ve tried being charged and pushing myself with the pretense of having good control over what I do. But, I give that up. Not only because I failed. But also because I am exhausted. If these years have given me any wisdom, it is to not hold yourself uptight and lead the journey, but to let go and chain yourself to time as it takes you on its path.

Courage does not lie in being strong and powerful. It lies in being submissive when you have a choice not to. Submissive, of course, to a larger plan. To destiny. To Him.

My mother’s father passed away when my mother was six. Throat cancer had gripped his life and he knew that he was about to die in a few weeks. As a young man, in his forties, he was, for a good reason, worried about his six daughters and two sons. He had no property except for a small paddy field and a ramshackled antediluvian house. No source which could yield enough money to sustain the entire family. Eventually, he decided to quit looking for alternatives and took over a conscientious task of writing a guide for his wife’s sake as to how the home is to be nurtured. So he wrote one letter everyday which contained scrupulous details on topics starting from upbringing of the kids and providing bread and butter to the family, to living the ‘life’ in the best manner possible. Each of these beautifully written letters consistently ended with the same sentence: If God wills for my survival for another day, you’ll read more in the next letter. All of this was, of course, in Urdu. He also happened to know Hindi, English, Persian and a bit of Arabic. He had such love and fascination for ‘language’ and its usage that not a single day passed by without using some or the other Urdu/Hindi/Persian couplet in his daily conversation. His favourite – Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib.

On the other hand, my father’s father too was a grand lover of poetry. Attending mushairas (poetic meetings) was his routine. Every anecdote that my dad tells me about him contains a pair of Urdu verses. His conversation would remain barren unless a couplet or two were spoken. And again, his favourite – Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib. But then, he too was gone by the time I entered this world. The more I’m told about him and his way of life, the more I feel bad for not having met him.

My entire family, from both maternal and paternal sides, has been so much institutionalised by Ghalib, that all they wanted to know was if the new born child was a boy or not. And what if it’s a boy? – He would be named after Ghalib! I have, by virtue of my name, inherited the legacy of poetic love both my granddads had. None of them saw me, but I’m certain if they had, they would have been in love with me, at least for the sake of the name that I carry. What adds spice is the fact that Ghalib’s father’s name was ‘Abdullah’ which also happens to be my father’s name.

Ghalib, undoubtedly, was a brilliant man. He authored around eleven thousand couplets in Persian which, however, failed to bring him accolades that a mere two thousand in Urdu could. Legacy has it that when Sir Syed Ahmed Khan went to him to get a foreword written for his well-researched and illustrated edition of Abul Fazl’s Ai’n-e Akbari, he wrote a Persian poem criticizing Sir Syed for wasting his efforts in writing about something which had happened a few centuries ago. Sir Syed immediately dispensed with all his interests in history and archaeology and became a social reformer. Eventually, he established Mohammedan Anglo Oriental College which was transformed later into Aligarh Muslim University, one of the largest in the country.

But, what made Ghalib so great? They say that a bare philosophical poet cannot do much if he’s leading a good life without being carked. Well, they’re right. It’s the circumstances and environment which makes one write. And Ghalib wrote. He wrote in such fantabulous and dulcet manner that the title ‘Father of Urdu Poetry’ is an underestimation. His views on life, grief and death were as poignant as anything could be. In one such wonderful couplet, he says:

Qaid-e-Hayaat o Band-e-Gham Asl Mein Dono Ek HaiN,
Maut Se Pahle Aadmi Gham Se Nijaat Paaye Kyoun?

The prison of life and the bondage of grief are one and the same,
Before the onset of death, how can one expect to be free of grief?

All this did not come to him out of the blue. He could hardly make peace with his life as he had to brook the death of all his seven kids even before any of them could reach puberty. He then ended up adopting his nephew who too passed away within months of adoption. And all he would do was to write!

Haan Ae Falak-E-Peer, Jawaan Tha Abhi Aarif!
Kya Tera Bigadta Jo Na Marta Koi Din Aur?

(Indeed, O master of the skies, Arif was still young!
What harm would it have done to you if he had died some other day?)

[Read more of the above poem here]

In spite of all this, he had perseverance towards his faith. He prayed and believed that the woes will be gone soon. It didn’t happen, but he still had faith. And he wrote as he waited anxiously for a good turn.

Ghalib! Na Kar Huzoor Mein Tu Baar Baar Arz!
Zaahir Hai Tera Haal Sab Un Par, Kahe Baghair.

Don’t make repeated pleas, Ghalib, to your Lord!
Your situation is evident to Him, even without mentioning it.

His pleas weren’t heeded to. He was in the same state of affairs till he left this world in the year 1869. And now, he rests here, hopefully, in peace. A man of his kind. No one similar shall ever exist on this planet!

Tomb of Mirza Ghalib at Hazrat Nizamuddin in Delhi

Husn Gamze Ki Kashakash Se Chhuta Mere Baad
Baare Aaraam Se Hai Ahl-E-Jafaa Mere Baad

Beauty is spared the strain of ogling after my demise,
Despotic beauties, after me, shall in peace abide.

Mansab-E-Shefatgi Ke Koi Qaabil Na Raha
Hui Maazuli-E-Andaaz-O-Adaa Mere Baad

None now deserves to wear the lover’s honoured badge,
Airs and graces of the beauties will now neglected lie.

Shama Bujhti Hai To Us Main Se Dhuan Uthata Hai
Shola-E-Ishq Siyahposh Hua Mere Baad

When the candle flame is snuffed, smoke begins to rise,
The flame of love has donned the sable after I’ve died.

Khoon Hai Dil Khaak Main Ahwal-E-Butaan Par, Yaani
Unke Naakhun Hue Mohtaaj-E-Hina Mere Baad

My heart bleeds inside the grave when I think of beauties sweet,
And realize that their nails are thirsting for the henna dye.

Kaun Hota Hai Harif-E-Mai-E-Mard-Afgan-E-Ishq
Hai Mukarrar Lab-E-Saaqi Pe Salaa Mere Baad

“Who will drink the bowl of passions overbold?”
There will be no reply to this question once I die.

Gam Se Marta Hoon Ke Itna Nahin Duniya Main Koi
Ke Kare Taaziyat-E-Mehar-O-Wafa Mere Baad

The saddening thought chills my heart that after I’m gone,
Untended and unmourned will love and passion lie.

Aaye Hai Bekasi-E-Ishq Pe Rona ‘Ghalib’
Kiske Ghar Jaayega Sailaab-E-Balaa Mere Baad

The thought of love’s helplessness fills my heart with grief,
Where will the devastating tide go, when it’s done with me?