This article has been written by Shivi Dangi (BA LLB 2025) and Arth Doshi (BA LLB 2025). The illustration is by Gunjan Jadiya (BA LLB 2023).
The NLSIU campus. It’s magical. Believe us, we are not kidding. To start with, we have four gates and most of them are magical, as food orders get lost here, never to be found again. Gate 0 is the one which is the closest to the juice shop; however, that’s not the only thing to which the gate provides faster access, you could also have tea/coffee and ‘other stuff’ too. Gate 1 is the main gate, where for security reasons, the guards are more efficient in managing our parcels than the security of campus (as the chances of parcels getting lost are more than that of security breaches). [Refer Annexure 1] Gate 2 is enigmatic. It never opens for students except at the starting and the ending of the term for the reasons mentioned in... There are no reasons: the NLS Chapter. [Refer Annexure 2] Gate 3 is pretty ordinary apart from the fact that it leads to MHOR. Gate 4, the forbidden gate, opens at SF; though SF does open the gate to lots of forbidden stuff, that story is for a later time.
The pathways (the uphill and downhill broken roads, just like our GPAs) inside the campus connect all these gates. As you enter from Gate 1, you find the Old Academic Block (OAB) on your right. This is the place where some of our classes are conducted. The classrooms here are pretty good, in their own ways. There are multiple rooms on the ground floor used as classrooms, with not much room. All the classrooms have very few charging ports, for reasons mentioned in... There are no reasons: The NLS chapter, so that students learn the value of not just teamwork, cooperation and pre-planning, but also negotiation and conflict management. There is a most sought-after place in some of these classrooms (OAB Room No. 102 and 103) – the front seat that is eclipsed by the podium. One can peacefully sleep here, as this place is out of the professors’ sight. The first-floor classrooms are larger than the ground-floor ones. However, they are no better. Without using the mic, the voice of a professor does not reach the last bench. However, we never complained about it since it allows one to sleep undisturbed and undetected. Moreover, it gives you an excuse to dodge a question by saying that the professor's voice wasn't clear. Don't feel sad if this brings nostalgia for the good(?) old zoom days. [Read: Lessons (rather, blessings) from the pandemic].
The OAB also houses various research centres. Unfortunately, we don’t seem to have much information about them, you are free to visit them and find out the wonders they store for you. The OAB also has a quad with lush green grass. This place used to be quite eventful and hosted a lot of parties earlier. Nowadays, it is used for meeting and chatting with friends during class breaks. However, the student body did use the quad to its reduced potential during the univ week (if you are as curious and want to know about its full potential, please ask your 5th years :)).
On the other side of the OAB, you can find a road leading down (or rather up) to Gate 0. On the way, you will find the basketball court which multifunctions as a cricket ground, primarily used for GCL (Gully Cricket League – a league only for Tier I and pro-players, if flex is an acceptable norm of law school. For those who don’t know, we even have auctions for them!). If you are of the opinion that winning is immaterial and it’s the intent to play that counts, we urge you to witness GCL #TheHypeIsReal (The death stares from your teammates and the disappointment on your manager’s face when you couldn’t score 1 run off the last ball, is terrifying, to say the least). However, the full potential of the basketball court was only realised a few days ago when it was used as an ad-hoc mess. We must say, the creativity shown here is unparalleled.
On your way, you will find the training centre which houses two conference rooms and a gym. The gym is actually, contrary to expectations, fully equipped with standard equipment and good trainers. The training centre is also the place where students who have tested positive were being quarantined. The quarantine rooms were quite spacious with two beds, attached bathrooms, a TV and a mini fridge and some couches - the only ‘residence’ which feels luxurious. Now that the students are being quarantined in Gangotri, it's a downgrade from thpse luxurious rooms. However, one must appreciate the tremendous Wifi Speed in Gangotri. But mind you, the wifi speed is no reason to get yourself COVID positive .We also have the LSC (legal services clinic) office adjoining Gate 0.
Now, coming to the NAB. To overcome all the difficulties posed by the OAB, a new academic block (NAB) has forever been under construction. However, we have never complained to expedite its completion since the new classrooms are based on the semi-circular model and the Socratic model (all things in Law School seem to conform to the Socratic model for reasons mentioned — in we hope you already know by now — There are no reasons: The NLS chapter), that make it almost impossible for students to sleep without being detected and to escape cold calls (we pray for your safety from cold-calls). Hence, the student body, which involves a majority of pro-sleep activists, is not very keen on its completion.
However, as most of the things you don’t want end up happening, the NAB too is partially complete, and even being used for conducting classes for some batches (if your batch is lucky enough). Since the classes for our batch are not being conducted there (we didn’t have any idea as to how it’s different from OAB), we inspected it to write this piece (a kind of project research, you know). We found out that the student body has been presented with an unfinished acad block, just like we present our unfinished projects at 11:59 pm(or sometimes 11:59:59 pm).
While all problems of the OAB have been addressed by the NAB, now having no problem with NAB has become another problem (unfortunately, we are so accustomed to problems that we find peace disturbing nowadays). We have so many charging ports now that initially many students got really emotional in the memory of OAB that they did not connect their chargers to those ports. Some other students regretted their fate since now they had no excuse not to make notes or do the readings, since their laptops were on full charge.
Moreover, the mics here are so good that even people sitting in the library can hear that you are being cold-called (though you might yourself not know it, since these world-class comfortable chairs really make you imagine the real Harvard – the comfort induces sleep and you begin dreaming). NAB also has luxurious couches and a way to the library is under construction (much like our future). The conclusion of our inspection report is: this building is definitely an upgrade from the OAB. NAB also has the scope of having an outside quad facing MHOR (or perhaps a canteen) and given the luxurious standards it has set, it might soon have one. However, the basement in NAB is as messy as our sleep schedule.
Enough about the acad blocks; let’s now move on to life at law school.
We were taught that life is full of struggles. However, we didn’t experience it until recently, when we had to get the ACs of our classrooms turned on. The need for ACs is something that we don’t need to explain. Apart from ACs making sure that our learning process is not hindered, the ACs also make sure that we sleep well in class. In fact, the attendance starkly increased once the ACs were started. Some people even started bringing pillows and blankets to the class. That’s how ACs incentivized our learning by ensuring the holistic well-being of students. Surprisingly, with the ACs being turned on, a campus dog named Coco also started visiting our classrooms, staying there for a considerably good amount of time, apparently trying to reach the bare minimum 75% attendance benchmark. Evidently, she seemed more interested in academics than all of us taken together. Or maybe, she too, like the rest of us, was there for the ACs. However, our happiness because of the ACs was short-lived. Due to another outbreak of COVID, the ACs were shut down. At one end was the Bangalore heat killing more people than Eco I and II combined and at the other, we started losing out on our well-deserved sleep. Like many other things, we did manage with whatever we had. However, some people couldn’t handle the heat and the lack of sleep and had to go to the Training Centre to use the ACs and also experience the luxury that only some parts of the NLS campus provide.
The lush-green campus has a well-equipped health center. It is the place you visit with an expectation to get better. Walking down a bit further, there is a pathway connecting gate 1 to gate 2, which has a bridge midway, where you can find snakes, scorpions and friends, who are sometimes also snakes . Not to worry much, usually all the three tend to mind their own business and don’t bite. However, be a little wary of the campus dogs even though SNHP might tell you otherwise. The pathway leads to Chetta and Bistro, which are, or rather were, eateries where you would be treated by friends and seniors alike. Now, it’s just a common space (don’t find much of those at NLS) where people meet up and gossip. Walking a bit further you get to see the library, where some great minds get lost in the books. Apart from great minds, umbrellas also do get lost there, so kindly take care, or mail threads beware.
Adjoining the library, we have the Navalgund Park, which has four sitting areas. With the NLS Expansion Plan increasing the student intake that would result in overcrowding, we firmly believe in the need to set up a Navalgund Management Committee (NMC). It would be the coordinating committee for us to book sitting areas in Navalgund on an hourly basis. Whatever you do, please don’t broadcast this idea, or the next thing you know, we might start to get charged to sit there too. We also have a Nescafe stall, a recent addition. It’s the only eatery inside the campus right now and gives a lot of relief by providing tea, coffee, maggi and sandwiches (at monopolistic prices - clearly economics is their forte, though not ours).
Moving on a long long way further down the line, we have a field (it’s best to ignore the MHOR now for reasons that will obviously not be provided), which closes early at night to contribute to the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. It’s a huge ground which is used for running, football and cricket. It hosts various matches played by the university teams and also The Strawberry Fields. It was also used to party during the night, but that’s a past which we should rather forget about.
We almost missed talking about the most important and most discussed matter in law school – the food and the mess. We won’t comment on whether the food is good or bad, since “it depends” (the coveted law school dialogue). Before we get to taste the food, we must essentially wait in line for half an hour only to realise that the chappatis haven’t arrived yet. Magically, at the very moment they arrive, the vegetables get over. Somehow after some struggle when you finally manage to get some food on your plate, you must make efforts to find and secure a chair and some space at the table (apparently, securing a seat in the mess is more difficult than securing a seat in NLS through CLAT/NLAT/NLSAT). It’s much like Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. For the uninitiated, here’s what it essentially means: at no point in time can you be certain of getting both food and a place to eat. If you are certain that you will find a place to eat, you cannot be certain that you will get any food. If you are certain of getting food, there’s no longer any place to eat. But there’s no reason to fret about it, these problems will be magically solved as soon as the batch size increases again next year 😊.
Well, that’s all the magic the campus has to offer for you now. There are a lot of things that remain unexplored in this piece which we think you should best explore by yourself, for reasons mentioned in There are no reasons: the NLS Chapter.
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Annexure (Feel free to plagiarise)
Annexure 1
Annexure 2
There are no reasons: the NLS Chapter
Clause 1 – there are no valid reasons for us to give you any reason that is valid as well as reasonable.
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