A Law Student's Contention

For Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) ‘superhero’ has a standard definition. They are intelligent, sedulous, good looking, sacrificing, male, white and the hope of humanity. The conception is so immutable that even though recently there have been number of female characters portraying such characters, we still don’t have a word for female super'hero'? Merriam Webster says it is ‘superheroine’, as it logically should be. But it hasn’t really caught up and also it does not have that ‘superhero waali feeling’ as is also the case with ‘superhuman’, which misses the concept of ‘protagonist’ altogether. Even the storyline of these superhero movies is quite standard. A city in the US is in danger. It falls in the hands of a superhero, as defined above, to save millions of lives because it is his destiny to do so. A fight ensues between the superhero and the villain amongst the high-rise buildings of a metropolitan American city. It is the fantasy story of an ordinary westerner which is...

                                   Economics is not a science. Economists and textbooks of economics will die trying to convince you that it is indeed a science but let me tell you, it is not. Economics is more of an  ex post facto  kind of science, even if it is any. It is a rarity when it is able to predict correctly the outcome or repercussions of any measure, which is the touchstone of any scientific discipline, the capacity to foresee. It does explain, with great precision, the rationale behind the events that have already taken place. In those aspects, it does work on logic and has theories and principles of its own. But for ensuing events, it relies more on sentiments than on any logic or equation. Sentiments of the market I mean. With the world market nose-diving, courtesy trade war, rising oil prices, trade protectionism, geopolitical tensions, and numerous other reasons, ...

Most probably, the revelation of the full title of the book will be sufficient for some to grab a copy of it straightaway. Jostein Gaarder’s Sophie’s World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy is a Norwegian classic published in 1991. For those who do not find the idea of narrating the ‘history of philosophy’ in a ‘fiction novel’ compelling in itself and are still reading this blog; the book has a lot more to offer. Sophie’s World , as the name suggests, revolves around the events that take place in the life of 14 years old Sophie Amundsen as her 15 th birthday approaches. The book opens with the perplexed thoughts of Sophie when her friend suggests that the human mind is like an advanced computer; she wonders ‘surely a person is more than a piece of hardware?’ And then Gaarder knits a whole new world around her; I mean, he literally weaves a ‘new world’. In Sophie’s World, two threads run simultaneously. First, there is the story of Sophie & the mysterious Alberto Knox, fr...

The book Crime and Punishment,  written by Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky is based on a random murder of an old moneylender by a former student of law. But the book is not a crime thriller, for the murder takes place in the first part in a seven-part long storyline. Regarded as Dostoevsky’s magnum opus and one of the best literary works of Russian literature, Crime and Punishment  offers a view into Raskolnikov’s mind (the murderer and the protagonist). The novel can be best characterized as a psychological thriller. In his book, Dostoevsky grapples with questions like- what pushes a man into committing a hideous crime as murder in cold blood?   Unlike the ideal state of the human mind and soul, as is often depicted, Crime and Punishment shows the turbulent state of the mind of Raskolnikov and the contradictions within his soul- completely naked. In the plot, Raskolnikov, a bright young student, has to drop out of university because of the lack of money to supp...

Image source: rajyasabha.nic.in On the pivotal day of April 3 rd in 1952, Rajya Sabha was constituted for the first time and ever since the day has been commemorated as Rajya Sabha Day. This year has bee n no different with politicians and constitutional functionaries reminding the nation of the importance of Council of States. What is different this year was that the Attorney General, a day before, was arguing before the Supreme Court that  Finance Act, 2017 has been rightly passed as a Money Bill.  The manner of passage of the Bill in 2017 led to sharp criticism against the government. Commentators went on to accuse the government of turning the constitution on its head to evade Rajya Sabha's scrutiny. To understand the scenario wholly, the position of Money Bill vis-à-vis Rajya Sabha has to be understood first. Under the conventional setup, for any Bill to become an Act, it has to pass through both the Houses of Parliament. In our parliamentary setup, Raj...

Image Courtesy- TeePublic If a close analysis is undertaken of all superhero movies, then a common denominator underlying all plots will be discovered. Every superhero tale has a moral dimension, but it is quintessentially limited to the protagonist. That is to say, the superhero alone has the might of the right with him. Invariably accompanying him is the badness of the villain. Badness in the sense, the values that he stands for and things he fights for. This element is indispensable because goodness is relative. You need to give something worse to the viewer, to which he can compare the alleged good part and arrive at the conclusion which storyteller wants to sell; the superhero was indeed good! This is the cliché tale of every superhero movie and Marvel Entertainment has been no different about it. Start watching Marvel Universe movies starting from Iron Man (2008), Captain America, Thor, Avengers, and all their sequels and you will possibly get my point. But in Avenger...