Loud doubts

How shall I proceed
With loud doubts
Tingling my head?
Brains bursting into pain,
Undecided about tomorrow,
Clueless about the future.
So blurred gets my vision
That I stand helpless, hapless,
Miserable, pitiful, poor, blind.

Two arrows I shot,
And they both moved away
Against the other.
What's destiny, what's life?
I hear nothing but noise.
Blunders, absurdities have crept in.
My own actions of thought deceived,
Ready to fall, halfway down,
I lack a laugh, I lack a cry.
Crossed all that was a good time.

Round and round they revolve,
Entangled wires of brain.
Push them out, for now they constipate,
Vex and perplex, puzzles they create,
And I merely breathe heavily in haze.
As my thoughts wander
From plane to plane,
Reality ceases to exist.

-- Praveen Kumar Singhmar
(03/02/2016)

Two splits

Portion of me

Is left behind,
Under the seed of rot,
Around the corrupt self,
That gives up for lust,
That can't expand,
That's still at unrest.

A piece of me
Tries and drags,
But the evil half-soul rejects
To move,
And such a decline
Brings forth to it
The elements
Of dirt.

 

And this part of me
Still seeks to
Revisit
The long forgotten
Ghettos of waste,
Of unnatural thirst.
This insane inmate just
Doesn't make an exit.

A greater lot of me
Rebels and revolts for
This half madman,
Splitting him into two
Reluctantly refusing to abide by
His whims and
His crooked fancies.

Crippled together,
Both splits of me,
Barely move forward,
And so remain shut
Indoors of gloom.

-- Praveen Kumar Singhmar.
(01/02/2016)

gray

Hardly an inch
Of gap
Between white
And black,
And yet I managed
To stay
In that tiny
Space of gray.

Hardly a flower
Blossomed
In my heart,
Before its fragrance
Was taken away.
Yes, I too have lived
In that shiny
Place of gray.

Out of those
Colored glasses,
Though in bits
And pieces did
They lay,
I could merely
Pick the one
With the lightest
Shade of gray.

And of all
The souls on earth,
Those
That wander
Rampantly worried,
And in wonder,
Night and day,
I did myself find out
That my own
Was made of gray.

-- Praveen Kumar Singhmar.

On Evidence Law

Why is it that a Judge is always required to follow a set of rules in order to ascertain facts of a case and administer justice? Why can he not simply follow his logical reasoning, thereby determining right or liability of parties? The answer is not very far to seek.

 

There is a very fundamental difference between general reasoning and the law. One should not misunderstand law as mere common sense, which requires logic only and which can be applied generally to ascertain any form of question. Law formulates conditions that constrain this freedom of logical operation. In general practice, a Judge is often misled by lawyers through arguing artificial points of logic. Limitations on free use of logic are, therefore, important in order to discourage this practice. These very limitations and conditions have been drafted, by eminent jurists like Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, into the codified law of evidence. As Judges are supposed to administer justice in a very short time frame, free use of logic on a vast collection of facts cannot be allowed to sustain.

 

Law of evidence may be considered as the most significant law for Judges because of its capacity in helping them deliver quick and speedy decisions. The rules of evidence law assist Judges by filtering less relevant or more time-consuming facts from being admitted for evidence. Therefore, a strong understanding of the law of evidence and its application becomes core necessity for aspiring judges.

 

Role of Judges and of Evidence Law

 

What fundamental role do the Judges play in our legal system? -- To ascertain the truth and administer justice. When a plaintiff approaches the court, he brings with himself a number of facts that constitute an alleged legal right in him and a parallel liability in the defendant, who would also affirm or deny plaintiff’s pleadings with an almost equal quantity of facts. Thus, all of a sudden, the Judge is bombarded with a long list of facts out of which he has to choose a few that matter and that are material to the case. It is at this stage that the role of evidence law comes into play.

 

Facts, which the parties come up with, have been sufficiently dealt with in the substantive law. For a case to stand, the plaintiff has to prove the alleged facts as per the definitions given under substantive law. If he fails to prove any one of the set of facts that according to law constitutes a right in him, his suit is liable to be dismissed. Similar would be the consequence if the defendant succeeds in disproving any one of the requisite facts.

 

To prove or disprove a fact, proper weight-age is calculated and awarded to each relevant fact, thereby making terms such as “admissibility”, “presumption”, “impeachment”, “confirmation”, etc., very common during the examination of witnesses and evidences. All these terms have been influenced by the theory and usage of the Judge & his “twelve men” appointed without bias to deliver natural justice as per the codified rules of law. Hence, in every legal proceeding, the rules that hold supreme importance are those of the law of evidence.

 

PRAVEEN KUMAR SINGHMAR