Another Mooter’s Perspective

We mooted against Adarsh in our semi-finals (from HNLU, India and Best Oralist of the preliminary rounds). He left a comment below, so I visited his blog and he has an account of his mooting experience in Sydney. I found this particular “cultural observation” amusing:

I found a comment on Neil’s Blog asking for the ‘dirty details’ of our Australian odyssey. Well I being a very honorable and scrupulous youngster (as you all know) , I certainly wouldn’t have indulged in anything dishonorable! But then, there were two other youngsters with me qho were responsible for introducing me to all viles and vices!

Well first thing I (rather my teammates) noticed if that, there is new dressing trend among the ladies in Aus. They have these tops which leave one of your shoulders bare and then expose the strap of the innerwear! It was the first time I had seen so many real straps in my life. I was under the belief that these things usually came in sober colours like black or white, but here it was blue, yellow, magenta and what not!

Another thing which I guess is common in all western cultures is the display of cleavages! Boy! It takes a real great amount of self control to keep yourself from not staring!

Then there was this smooching and necking and kissing and what not in every street, every public place. (I caught a few in my camera!) Cannot even imagine that in India.

Adarsh has also written a lengthy and engrossing article about the preparation that went into the moot. We are very lucky being a Sydney university. Our mooting program is fully funded, we have a photocopy card for free photocopying and 24 hour access to the law library (although we spent hardly any time in there, thanks to the Internet and Westlaw). Many other teams however, had to raise the funds themselves to get over to Australia.

Adarsh also writes about the dramas that went into compiling their memorials and couriering them off. We thought we had dramas, but in comparison with Hidayatullah, our compilation task was easy – sure, when we were making our 10 copies of the memorials the photocopier ran out of paper, toner and jammed, but free help was nearby; sure we had trouble finding staples, but there was a commercial printery on campus which handled the job for us; sure we were pressured to get the thing done on time, but at least the DHL courier came to us to pick it up. We certainly didn’t have to take an overnight bus to the next town to prepare anything, and didn’t have lengthy power outages.

Well we all reached the friendly man’s printing shop at around 12:30 PM and then we spent another 2 hours on re-editing the memorial again. And then behold, the printing of the applicant memorial started. And now these Manfred Lachs people require 10 copies each of the applicant and respondent memorial. And we had to send another 5 copies of both to Bangalore. Anyways, the printing started and the applicant side was completed by around 4:50 PM. Now in Amravati there was to be loadshedding from 5:00 to 8:00 PM everyday! But then, our friendly man had arranged a house which got its power supply through an executive line which would not be cut. So at 5:00 we packed our bags and went to this house. And yeah, again the printing of the respondent memorial started and then at around 8:40 when the final copy is being printed the power goes in this executive line supplied house!! So we again pack our bags, thinking that power would be there in the printing shop, but as u guys would have guessed when we reached there, it was pitch dark with no supply!

Well hope is everything and we waited and hoped in front of the shop. And yeah went it was around 10 PM we felt that there is not much point in hoping further and so the friendly man lighted up a candle and we started binding the applicant memorials. We finished binding at around 1:00 AM and still the power had not come. Well the frinedly man had done all he could for us on a powerless Sunday night and we just could not impose oursleves on him any further.

Neil, another member of the Hidayatullah team also has a blog.

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