Practice Law?

I just completed reading a couple of novels written by John Grisham. Last one that I read was "The Partner", kept me glued to it until I reached the last page. I love reading books and this is the first of its kind - "Law". I never had a vast knowledge or bright view over that field, but Mr. Grisham, threw me into lime light after reading his collection. He kept me turning page after page, extremely fabulous and completely suspense packed.
After reading good volumes of Law, Firm, Court, Notice, Bills, Jury, etc etc... I happened to come across this piece of information which I found very interesting.

These are from a book called "Disorder in the American Courts", and are things people actually said in court, word for word, taken down and now published by court reporters who had the torment of staying calm while these exchanges were actually taking place. Enjoy reading it!

ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reebok.
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ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
WITNESS: I forget.
ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?
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ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning?
WITNESS: He said, 'Where am I, Cathy?'
ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?
WITNESS: My name is Susan!
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ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the twenty-one-year-old, how old is he?
WITNESS: Uh, he's twenty-one.
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ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: You're kidding me, right!?
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ATTORNEY: She had three children, is that correct?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?
WITNESS: Are you shitt'in me? Your Honor, I think I need a different attorney. Can I get a new attorney?
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ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death.
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
WITNESS: Now whose death do you suppose terminated it?
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ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice, which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
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ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies(Post-mortam) have you performed on dead people?
WITNESS: All my autopsies are performed on dead people. Would you like to rephrase that question?
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ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Huh....are you qualified to ask that question?
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ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral.
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ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m..
ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: No, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was doing an autopsy on him!
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ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?
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The Best of all

ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, he could have been alive and practicing law.

I couldn't stop myself reading it over and over again.

Night Study - Climax

To be very clear, I would suggest you to read Night Study Part I first.

Heart pounding, without wasting another second I shouted at the peak of my voice - RUN!

I clearly knew that I am in real danger of being smacked by the people in the bus. My legs were swift enough to carry me away as fast as it can. Though it being a uphill road, I managed to run with my school bag on my shoulder. I was already 100 mts away from the bus. I didn't scramble the cards, as I still had hopes of continuing the game. I turned back to see my friends, there were not to be seen. I thought the commuters in the bus should have caught them, I was scared. The road was twisted and dense with trees, I know they were searching me. Out of curiosity to know about my friends, I stopped. turned back powered ON my torch light pointing towards the direction where the bus is. Right at the next moment, I heard the people yelling "there he is". Oops, did I let them know where I am? I didn't waste another second and started running as far as my legs could take me without a break. After reaching a particular point and when I felt that I was safe from the commuters sight, I sat down behind the road side block. I prepared myself as how to escape even if they are going to come here. There were tea bushes on the side of the road where I was sitting and I know it can provide me good cover in the dark and even in moon light.

I was gasping for breath, but managed to keep myself silent lest, letting them know my hide. I waited for my friends to come. When they reached, I interfered them. They didn't wanna speak with me and were very serious. After a dozen of sorry, they agreed to tell me what happened. Before my friends realized that something had gone wrong, I was already 40 mts away from them running at my top speed, the commuters caught them. After a long slew of scoldings, the commuters finally agreed to listen. As my friends didn't have a powerful torch and as the commuters had seen me running, they agreed to leave my friends. They also planned in such a way that from the next day when the bus comes, the driver will run the bus over me and my friends should hide when this happens. I was almost about to wet my pants. But being a gentle man, I tried my best to keep up my stature. My friends were so good that they agreed to save me from the bus.
That night I didn't have a good sleep. No, I didn't wet my bed.

Next day came, I was all prepared to face whatever is about to happen. After the night study we started our ususal walk and the wrestling card game. As we knew the time when the bus usually crosses that place, we started taking cover behind a tree and let the bus go. This started becoming our daily routine.

One day, while we were taking cover, we waited and waited but the bus never showed up. We were already running late. We finally decided to move, we thought the bus should have left much earlier than the usual time. We walked as fast as we can. My legs were trembling already. If ever the bus should come, I thought this will be my last day on earth. We were in no mood to play the game anymore, we just concenterated on all the head lights that were flashing on the road though they were just one or two.

When we still had 15 to 20 more minutes of walk, suddenly we heard the engine sound of the bus. Dhanu was the first to see the head light. As it is downhill for the bus, it was pacing at greater speed. We all knew that within 5 - 8 seconds the bus will find us. We didn't know what to do and had very little time to react. My legs gave up. I looked to the left, there were tea plantations. I shouted again, JUMP!

All three were down one above the other struggling between the tea bushes. Did we know that it was 10 ft. deep before we jumped? Still, lying flat, we saw the lights passing by, it wasn't the bus, but a local Jeep. Uh.... with a heavy sigh, I managed to get to my feet. We struggled again to climb up the road. We all had bruises all over the body. My arm hurted a lot. Both my friends gave me a staring look. This time I very well knew that dozens of sorry will not help. I kept my mouth shut and we walked home.

We never saw the bus after that. Later we came to know the timings have been changed. We also stopped our game as we lost most of the cards in that deadly jump and we started concenterating on our studies.

Night Study

January-March, 2001.
I was doing my 10th grade then. Crucial days of my education "they say", but did I ever care? It so happened during this season, as we had to face the public examination by end of March, our school has started something called "night study" (evening study *these days*) which lasted from 5:30PM to 7:30PM. It was complete fun, I say! We were allowed to play from 4:30PM - 5:30PM and do you think we stopped after that? Staying back in school and pretending to study under the supervision of our most beloved teachers was really a wonderful experience. Well, the truth is, it really helped our final exams to a very great extent

We were given a perfect study plan. It had selected portions from each subject stretching for two days respectively. We had evaluation tests too at regular intervals. Our Principal always stayed back with us supervising, helping, mentoring, and yes, big time scolding. Mervin Earnest, my best pal right from KG used to share the bench with me. The other guy who joined us was Albert Ravish. If ever our principal happened to see all three of us sitting in the same bench, she'll throw us to different corners of the classroom. I always had the gift of acting on perfection, pretending to be completely immersed into my book all the time when my Principal walks over. Sometimes this works out well as she'll think not to disturb us by changing places. Whew! OSCARS.

Our class ends at 7:30PM sharp. Girls were to evacuate the classrooms (and the campus) first, then followed by boys. But it never worked. :-D We did have our school bus arranged to drop us in our respective places, but were charged heavily. We always had an option to choose our own means. Nataraja Transport was mine - this is by which I commute to and from school, covering almost 5.5Km one way. Mervin opted for government bus. We both stayed almost at different poles. Albert joined with me, there were two other guys Dhanu and Jithu who joined us later. Did I mention that Nataraja Transport is nothing but walking?

Everyday, I brought my yellow torchlight as I had to walk through tea bushes on my way back home. Mervin on the other hand had manufactured a tiny rechargeable torch by himself using some rare kind of cells, common wires and bulbs. We almost spent most of our time in the study experimenting different combination of cells, bulbs and wires to make it burn as bright as ever possible. We were always successful to a great extent at every step. Dhanu and Jittu both had one torch to share.

It would always be 5 - 10 minutes past 7:30PM by the time we gathered for our journey back home. I would bid goodbye to Mervin at the bus stop and join the crew - Albert, Dhanu, Jithu and I. We discussed on various topics - science, technology, politics, astronomy, global peace, global warming, ecnomic crisis. Good that we didn't have a nuclear deal then.We argued over these all the while we walked and found it started becoming boring as days passed. One fine evening when we were walking half the way, Dhanu came with a brilliant idea of playing wrestling cards through out our journey. Wow! He's the man, I am GAME. He also promised to bring 3 brand new sets of cards that he had.

From the next day it turned to be an interesting journey. Knowing this, the number of members in our crew increased to grow in number. There were two more additions - Sunil and Kapil. Albert, Sunil and Kapil will take a diversion half the way; Dhanu, Jithu and I used to continue till the end. It really became interesting day by day, we started enjoyng our night study. The usual 40 minute journey started stretching up to 1 hour. Now that my parents might know the truth :-D

Almost a month passed like this. I was always waiting with eagerness for all of us to gather down in the road and begin our journey along with the game. Here starts the best part. We didn't have street lights those days, there were very few in our way. The torchlight I used was a powerful one and I had a way of fixing it in my monkey cap making it resemble like a searchlight, this helped our game of wrestling cards.

At one particular stretch of the road, we always came across a mini-bus. I, being so mischievous started developing a habit of throwing light from my torch directly into the face of the mini-bus driver. We started having a bit of fun. Everyday, I made it a point to shine my torch at the drivers face. My friends warned me about this, but the mischievous guy within me didn't give up. He wanted to take a risk. At times the driver would enact like driving the bus over us and we would get scared. Days passed by.

One fine day, the game was going at good pace. I had the good choice of cards, Undertaker, Kane, and all were mine. Just then, there came the bus! Mr. Mischievous in me woke up and got ready for the mission. Its time, I said to myself. I turned my face towards the bus and raised my head. Hope you remember the torch is seated in my head. Looking at the driver and giving him a broad smile, dramatically I let my torch shine in its glory, very bright right into the eyes of the driver. Wow, I enjoyed the moment when he struggled to hide his face from my burning light. I felt like a champion.

All of a sudden something struck my brain, the screeching sound of wheels brought me back to my senses and I realized something has gone bad. I could smell it. I turned back only to see the driver bringing the bus to complete halt with the screech of brakes. I could also see people gushing out of the bus with a loud commotion yelling at me. Thanks to my brain as it acted fast, my legs were already set on fleet. Heart pounding, without wasting another second I shouted at the peak of my voice - RUN!

To be Continued...