My first trip as a BSW student

The most prominent face I remember from our field trip to Deesa is the face of Raju. Raju is a twelve year old boy who lives in the slums. He attends the small school-like teaching center near his slums which is run by the NGO. He sits with children much younger to his age and sings the songs sing. What was prominent about him is his eagerness to learn. He heard us speak in English and wanted to speak in English to. He wanted to either study law like us or become a doctor. That hunger for knowledge and to achieve made Raju stand out. It made me wonder how many more Raju’s are there around India whose voice never gets heard as they are suppressed under the furore of survival.

We visited about 4 slums in our 2 day trip. Each of these slums had a school-like teaching centre set up by the NGO, which we were collaborating with. The teaching centre taught basic writing, arithmetic and reading to children. All these settlements were held by nomadic or De-notified tribes.

Our work mostly involved interacting with the children and filling our questionnaires about them. Most of the children were between the ages of 3-10. Very few (like Raju) were above this age framework. Gujrathi was mostly the medium of communication.  The children in general were very enthusiastic and were genuinely interested in what they were learning. Even the teachers from the NGO were highly enthusiastic about teaching. The overall environment was very positive and engaging.

After speaking to some children, the team could decipher the general trend of education in these areas. Firstly, any form of education was a new concept for these tribes. Their nomadic nature eluded them from education. It is only now that they have settled for more than a year in these areas. Thus only the younger generation have seen the light of education. Only now that these teaching centres have opened up do the children learn.

Secondly, nobody really had the concept of higher education in their head. The usual trend was that till the age of 11-12 the children studied and were then put to work. The idea of higher education or further studies was missing. The children were only sent to learn basic language and arithmetic which would help them survive. Nobody was thinking about anything more. This is mostly in the case of girls, as the concept of higher education seems irrelevant to the community folks. Also this trend is due to the need of helping hands. The parents usually need more helping hands as the brood grows. Thus most children study for the first ten years of their life and then go back to their parent’s professions. It made us wonder what the point of education was if it didn’t emancipate them.

The poverty in these areas was disheartening. Further, the exploitation witnessed by these people was nerve –wrenching. Many houses which were below the poverty line were conveniently given above poverty line cards. This reduced the amount of ration they could get and left them bereft of other privileges which they are entitled to. They also had to face numerous problems with attainment of a voter’s ID card. This is mainly due to their inability to provide a permanent address. But without ID cards they have no identity and they cannot access various privileges and programs they are entitled to. This was some of the grave problems we came across during our trip.

During our trip we also came across some horrifying incidents. One of them was the incidents where women from these nomadic tribes were being taken away by the ‘thakurs’. These higher caste men would come at night and take away women and left them after a one night stand. It was only when the NGO brought the police that these incidents stopped. It was quite appalling to see such incidents happening even today.

During our trip we also took a short visit to Dhanera village. The NGO workers had asked our help for solving a legal problem that they had come across in that village. The small nomadic tribe which has migrated from Rajastan was previously living in another village. They were given Voter’s ID card there by the heads of the villages. But this did not go well with the people of the village, as they realized this meant sharing of various privileges. Thus not only was the tribe brutally thrown out of the village but their voter’s ID has also been cancelled. They now live in Dhanera village but are unable to get a voter’s ID card as the authorities are insisting on a permanent address. We thus heard the problem of the people and then went to the BDO office to see the other side of the matter. We spoke to the BDO officer and asked about the current situation. The officer initially got a little aggressive and vehemently denied the possibility of the tribe getting a voter’s id as there was no permanent address. It was only when we showed him the government provision that states that nomadic tribes do not need permanent address that the officer calmed down. We left the village with the assurance that the matter will be looked into. How far that is true is yet to be seen.

Overall our trip was very thought-provoking and was a good learning experience. There are many children like Raju who belong to such tribes who never see the light of education. There are many such eager and probably talented children whose talent is never harboured.  Even today the importance of education has not been understood by these tribes. The main aim of education; emancipation has still not been attained. What we are creating today are mere English-speaking street vendors. Taking a rational perspective, the education given to these children is too low for helping them further in careers like law or medicine .Education is being provided but the whole concept of provided education has not yet been conceived on a rational manner.  As a student of BSW, this is what I and my classmates took with us.

We had gone to a small town called Deesa situated in Banaskatha district in Gujarat. We mostly worked with the children of nomadic and Denotified tribes like Devipujak, Saraniya etc. Our project dealt with child rights in the field of education.

A session with the sessions

He looked at me and my mother intently for a minute, and then asked if I could read Kannada. He was a sturdy dark man who looked hardened after years of being exposed to criminals. I gulped and shook my head. My answer affirmed what he thought about me. I was a rich English speaking brat just done with her first year in law school, who wanted a free tour of the session’s court in the name of an internship! He scoffed ‘What can you possibly do here without knowing Kannada?”

He wasn't the only one worried. As I looked around the office, all I saw were curious eyes. What was worrying was this curiosity had a high possibility of being because of my gender; there were only men in the office. I was supposed to turn up after a month. I had one month to learn to read and write Kannada. Life just got harder.

It was decided. I wasn't going to let my gender or a language barrier come in between. I wanted to learn about criminal law from the base, and I was going to have it that way. I wasn't a brat and I was going to prove it. I learnt to read and write Kannada in the next one month (being my vernacular, I could speak Kannada), and prepared myself for an experience of a lifetime.

I tied my hair and wore a kurti on my first day(adds to the aesthetic value). I was scared and lost. The whole of the area near the civil and sessions court Bangalore was filled with offices of advocates. Which one was mine? I finally found it after a 15 minutes’ walk up and down the area. My entrance was met with the same curiosity it had entertained the first time.

I went up to the first advocate i saw and introduced myself in English. He looked at me blankly and tried passing me off to another guy as the senior advocate was unavailable. Luckily, the senior advocate had his case cancelled and returned in a few minutes. Meeting the senior advocate was a relief. He knew what National Law universities were and asked me about myself. He understood i didn't know criminal law and explained the basics of the criminal law acts. He then passed on a file to me and asked me to read it thoroughly. The only problem was that the whole file was in Kannada!

I stared at the paper for five minutes. I had learnt Kannada but I wasn’t prepared for a whole file. The senior advocate soon left for some work. I was alone in the office with my file. I had all the time in the world.

Till date i don’t know how i understood the case. But after 4 hours of trying to read, I had understood the case. It was a dowry burning case. It was tedious and cumbersome to read all the witnesses’ statements, so i conveniently didn’t read it completely. It bothered me that the case was an open and shut case; the man had killed the wife for sure. I shut the file when a junior advocate returned. The junior advocate was nice to me. He asked me about the file and some general questions. He didn’t understand why i had to go all the way to Gujarat to study law. He even asked me if I was Gujarati  I tried explaining the concept of CLAT, but he thought it was a waste of money and condoned the idea of voluntary separation from parents. He thought i knew nothing and it was his responsibility to give me advice. I played along; after all he did know more than me about his field of work. Right before I left, he said ‘’ all this criminal law is not for women, too risky. I suggest you go for a company job. You can easily make 30,000 a month’’.

It was only when i came back home that i realized that my advocate was representing the accused. 

In the days to come, i learnt nothing was an open and shut case.

The next day i went to the session’s court with the senior advocate in his car. It was my first visit to the court and a court room. My face fell when i saw the court room. The movies had lied. The audience sat on the corners and the centre of the court room had a huge conference table where the lawyers sat. My advocate presented only for 5 minutes and then went to another court room. The court room was filled with lawyers, each waiting for their turn. I couldn’t hear much because of the noise, so i just looked around. Every time a case was announced; people entered the room and bowed. They left as soon as the next case was announced. As we left the court room, i followed my advocate and told him i understood nothing and asked bluntly who the people were who entered at the beck of the case announcement. They were the accused. He told me I’ll start understanding soon.

He left me in the first courtroom as he was leaving for a case in Kolar. He asked me to sit and just watch. I saw a beautiful woman on the accused box. She was puny and feminine. She looked my age. I wondered what crime she could have committed. The judge was taking the statement of an investigating officer. The investigating officer was getting harrowed by questions and was reprimanded by the judge for being slow and not precise. I caught the word ‘rod’ and a bit of the case. Each sentence the officer said had to be recorded, which made the process tedious and monotonous. When i reached my patience’s end, i left.

It was only the next day that i found out that the beautiful woman was accused for murdering her husband and it was a famous murder case that had hit the headlines in Bangalore some years back. I met another advocate the next day in the office. It was from him that i found out that the senior advocate was one of the best criminal defence lawyers in Karnataka and had fought some very famous cases. One such case was a rape case which had stirred the national headlines. My senior advocate later told me that was the only rape case he had ever lost. That was also because of the publicity it had garnered. “I had proved it in the court of law that she wasn’t raped”, he stated.

This new friend of mine in office was a devout Kannada and Kannada literature enthusiast. He was the first person in the office I spoke to in Kannada. He was shocked at my lack of knowledge on Kannada literature and taught me a little about Kannada literature. He even taught me a few big words and some proverbs. I listened to him intently. Having lived abroad most of my life, learning about my mother tongue was fascinating. Along with that I was told about the two biggest murder cases (both were breaking news at one point) my advocate was handling and was allowed to read the files. The depositions of the witnesses were in English, so this time my knowledge on the case was thorough.

It turned out that the innocent feminine woman in the box was pure evil. She killed her innocent husband using her boyfriend. My senior advocate had made most statements by the witnesses look uncertain or made up. In the course of my internship, I learnt the main arguments and how the case was going to be won. As fascinating as it was, till date I wonder where my loyalties lied.

Everybody looked like criminals to me in the court; even the dark complexioned scary looking lawyers. The only set of people who looked harrowed to me was the police. They looked like they were sandwiched between the criminals, lawyers and the judges. The most frightening part of my internship was sitting outside the fast track court. I would stare at the menacing looking men who were probably caught for rowdyism. They would stare back reflecting the same curiosity. The doorman for fast track court-46 soon became my friend. Every morning he would inform me if the senior lawyer was in court already and would tell me where to sit. It was reassuring that there was someone in the court room who acknowledged my existence.

Soon monotony seeped in. It got boring to just sit in the court room without actually doing anything. Moreover my presence was hardly noticed. The senior lawyer was too busy, and the junior advocates didn’t know what to do with me. A different environment, lack of someone to talk to and unending stares in the court eventually does get to you. But I decided to make the best of it. I would go with the senior lawyer in his car back to the office because that was the only time I could ask him questions.

By the end of two weeks, I wanted to quit. I wasn’t given any work; all i was told to do was go from one court room to another. The most interesting session i saw was the cross examination of a witness in a murder case by my senior lawyer. The courtroom was filled with lawyers who had come to see his performance. The senior advocate hassled the witness to the extent that by the end of the session, the witness was made to look unreliable and uncertain. The witness started sweating and asked for a seat midway. By the end he had forgotten the name to the friend he was standing with when he witnessed the murder!

I didn’t quit, I just learnt the trick. The problem was I used to leave by 4 as I lived far away. But the actual office work only started at that time because that was when all the advocates came back to the office. I decided to stay longer and pester everyone for work. By now they were comfortable with my presence. They would speak to me and ask me about my life. Nobody really understood my ethnicity, but that was understandable. They treated me like a kid who needed assistance at all points, which again was good. I asked all my questions, which were incessant, and got my answers. At the end of my internship I know for a fact that I had learnt a lot about criminal law. I understood the law, the facts, and the procedure. More than anything I understood how cases were won. Even the clients got used to me. They thought i was some sort of secretary. Every day a man would come waiting to have a word with the senior lawyer. Every day he would leave without meeting him. When bored, I would speak to him.

I was finally given work. I typed a notice for one of the advocates. I insisted that i take the dictation for a bail petition. I was warned that the senior lawyer dictated very quickly and i would not be able to catch on. I still persisted. Finally i did take the dictation and they were right. The senior lawyer just spoke in his usual speed. It was my job to make sure i wrote with the same speed. It was difficult but I tried my best. I stayed till 8 that night finishing the bail petition. The next day the senior lawyer told me that a lot had to be changed but it was a decent job owing to the fact that I was a first year student. Well, at least I tried.

I still remember my last day. The junior advocates were discussing the famous murder cases in hand and i was pitching in. My client friend and my junior advocate friends asked me why i wasn't sitting in my regular place. It was like i was a part of the office. They told me about how I was going to miss the trials. It was taken for granted that i was coming back next times I have holidays. I had managed to break the ice and prove that I could survive a hostile and scary environment and my gender or the fact that my reality was poles apart from this world wasn't a deterrent. My mission was accomplished.

Will I ever go back? Probably not. In the beginning being able to defend the tougher side, irrespective of guilt, was something that fascinated me. Conscience was for outsiders i thought, a true lawyer keeps his emotion outside the courtroom. The first twinge of conscience i felt was when my senior advocate told me about the rape of a 9 year old he fought. After a couple of days at the court, the idea started sickening me. What was the point of it all? Of using your talent? I felt like even if I did become a hotshot lawyer, I would not be able to feel job satisfaction knowing I was letting a criminal back into the world. As much as criminal law and the rough world i hardly come across living in a plush area ensnared me, the work as such didn't appeal to me. But at least now I know that. I wouldn't have if I had not tried.