Our justice machinery has kept pace with the legislative and bureaucratic legs of the democratic tripodal set up that has since 1950, when we, the people of India, gave ourselves the Republican horoscope that among other prognoses, silver lined equality before Law. Millions of cases later, doubts arise in the minds of the cognoscenti whether the broad spectrum curative balm has at every tier from the lowest to the Supreme one, made the ‘justice–hunt’ an honest joy for gliding over the creases that beset human relationships, be it individual or between the States.
Unlike other disciplines or educational grooves, legal education is a stream that leads to the uncharted ocean of law made in the law factories mostly by the laity and administered by mere statutory agencies whose brush with laws is what their subordinates tell them… These file keepers are, except a countable few, putty in the hands of crooks, who number several million. Law colleges have no moral teaching classes where Non-detailed texts are to be digested of stories of honesty and integrity that would touch a chord in their minds to dissuade them from opting for the deviant road to instant riches wearing blinkers. The result is docket mountains all the way to the judicial Everest, for everybody wants to WIN and the backers are not loath in chasing their own private schemes through the legal labyrinths, hoping that one of the justice tiers would make a mistake in his favour.
Looking at what is happening in these hallowed halls of justice, into which march Toms, Dickens and Harry without a semblance of right, except the right to pay a measly court fee and plenty to the lawyer and the disposal jam it creates, all the way to the Supreme Court, it is a wonder that there are so many judgments the law journals wade though to fill our libraries with heavy tomes.
Legal eagles in the Supreme Court fight tooth and claw for days before judges, at least one of whom, they discover is the cousin, tenth removed, of one of the parties, in whose business his grandmother has one share. This intelligence is wafted to him in a dream in which his granny asks him what is its value on Sensex! That yorks the judge who seeks recusal after two weeks of hammer and tongs in the court. The whole process has to run a second innings before a there is a new member on the bench. It is a wonder that there are only 3 crore cases pending in the courts!
The Supreme Court of USA, has only 9 judges since its inception over a 100 years ago, and the full court hears the appeals before it unlike the fractured benches in our Supreme Court, where on identical questions of law, different fractured benches pronounce different opinions flummoxing the lawyer and the laity alike. After the water war between Tamil Nadu and Kerala had gone on for weeks of word-cataract, a constitution bench of 5 judges will have the pleasure, as the Super curer, of the malignant disease that has riven the two states, provided a rowdy monsoon does not in the waiting period wash away the leaky dam to drown a couple of million people in four or five districts downstream. This is an eye-opener to the need for mandating inter-state Suits to be heard by a Constitution Bench of at least 75% of the Judges, so that none can complain about the totality of wisdom in similar battles on Constitutional matters, affecting States and hundreds of thousands of people, except lawyers, who, taking the flood to fortune, can be heard to say, “damn the dam…”
“Grandpa, yesterday I heard you telling someone on the phone that you are going to hang up your black coat and gown on 4/4/2010. Are you going to order a new set?” asked grandson Dhruva.
“No son, I am not ordering a new set, but planning to dump the set along with my profession after completing 50 years as a lawyer.”
“I thought that lawyers and medical doctors never retire because they have to earn their daily wags like the odd job doing labourers. “
“Son, I didn’t want to be employed by anyone. When I joined the Madras Christian College School in Linghi Chetty street 1n 1946, the mighty High court buildings attracted me and a classmate Sankaranarayanan’s father P. Govinda Menon was the Public Prosecutor. He later became a judge of the High Court and later, the Supreme Court. There can’t be a more independent position in life than that of a judge or so I thought. Well, when there was no other opening, I took to law as a duck to water and half a century later I am ready to stretch my legs and enjoy a holiday that will never end voluntarily.“
“Grandpa why didn’t you take the four armed gown?”
“You mean the Senior Advocate gown. In the good old days before High Court judges, including the Chief justices were not transferred like Police constables from one corrupt station to another, the judges get a chance to assess the character and integrity and the professional acumen of the lawyers appearing before them and it as easier for them to form an opinion that so-and-so should belong to a higher class than the money-minded lesser fry of the common clay and the Advocates Act gave then special treatment by calling them ‘Senior Advocate’, so that the small fry could engage them for the battles. Now transfer of judges being the rule, the two-way assessment is almost nil, and all and sundry by “Applying” for senior-ship are waved in as Seniors by the full conglomerate of the judges and chaps who will be light years away from the fictional seniority, lead the ignorant coffle, which entails arrears running to several crore. Sorry son, I never appreciated this dichotomy and if some chief had called me for my bio data I would have said, “No thanks Chief”. Now son, if you had joined the Law course, instead of the Architecture course, you could have inherited my law library, which, even if you don’t use it, would impress the unwary client into loosening his purse strings making you Senior material.“
“Grandpa, what gave you the greatest satisfaction in your profession in the nearly 50 years in it?”
“The feeling that I am fortunate to be in the machinery of justice. When I was government pleader, a Writ Appeal came up for admission before Chief Justice Nainarsundaram and Justice Somasundaram, the appellant’s lawyer - a lady - was finding it difficult. I found a point in her favour and uninvited by the Bench, I got up and told the Bench that there is a precedent in her favour. The Chief asked me ‘Sadanand, for whom are you appearing?’ I told him, “When I stand up, I forget for whom I am appearing. Justice takes no sides’. The lady lawyer got the appeal admitted.”
“The government was persuaded by crooks, to get rid of a non-liar as its G. P. You know the rest of the story son. I didn’t mortgage my soul to
make a living. 76 plus, is a good innings in any profession except politics, where the ceiling is 100. What’s your choice son?”
Saw on TV the author of a 900-page Commission report that climaxed a 17-year Marathon drudgery endured by Liberan, retired Chief Justice of Madras High Court, who was welcomed into the lawless world to finger the demolishers of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, then ruled by Kalyan Singh.
(chronology of events)
Some snake in the grass, divined (another word for purloining,) the report and NDTV went to town, causing a stampede by sane and insane people alike, for litres of tar and bundles of brushes to blacken the face of BJP, RSS, VHP and what have you, as the demolition cabal that lost out to the perfect artistry of Al Qaeda’s World Trade Centre effacement in 2001.
The Commissioner is livid with anger that some one ratted on him before he could send the report to Parliament which had appointed him to lose sleep for 17 years to write finally 900 pages, perhaps the longest indictment document by any judge since man came out of the cave and called himself civilized.
From Barkha’s hints, we are in for a hectic construction activity, involving the best architects who could replicate the Cellular jail of Andaman fame for accommodating the villains of demolition. My grandson Dhruva is thrilled at the prospect of building a real 5-star hospice for all those old fellows who will be convicted, but too old to be parked in the grim Tihar jail, by the time he finishes the course in 5 years.
He is not waiting for his professor to command every chap to produce a project work. He wants to be original and has started the sketch work to be followed by several rolls or kilos of Thermocole, Fevicol etc.
A touch of reality would brighten even dross. I appreciate his enthusiasm, for I remember that as a boy of 10, on hearing that the vast timber yards of Valapattanam, in Kannur Distict were on fire, I ran 3 miles to the scene of the conflagration from my home in Pallikunnu, and saw hundreds of people rendered homeless and the timber charred, the fire fighting crew, outwitted by the raging fire. I can recall vividly, the wild, all consuming fire and hear the wail from the frail human throats 66 years later! What Dhruva wants to create is not tragedy, but the prevention of it, if all those old chaps are sent to Tihar. He is blessed… The three vicious old men indicted by Liberhan can spend the balance of their sojourn in this Babriless world in the impregnable security and loving care rung in by super cop Kiren Bedi, when she was the queen of Tihar.
Dhruva says that by the time he gets his B. Arch. degree, if these guys are alive, he would design their cells in such a way as to detoxify their sick minds. He expects a ream of orders from Pakistan. Liberhan took 17 years for his whiplash, just so that Dhruva gets a booster thrust in his chosen line. There will be splendid buildings all over India blessed by Liberhan and designed by Dhruva. Ladies and gentlemen, it is good to be alive.
Whether or not Kapil Sibal’s reformist brainwave dispensing with the trauma of examinations every other month, and making the tenth mile steeple chase optional, so that schooling becomes an experience that would invite the teenagers to take a pleasant walk down memory lane, is a point that should be decided by experienced and humanistic educationists. I had this beautiful vista during my School days that did not require me to do any homework and the evenings were for play, not a continuation of the school drudgery to torment my mother, whose only contribution to my education was her teaching me to count 1,2,3. etc. and I thought about the examinations as a necessary evil to be endured until deliverance from the education factory. If the voting age is brought down from 18 to 12, I am sure Kapil would be immovable from his big ministerial chair…
However, Kapil wasn’t told by his lower tieral officers that the notebook industry in India is the largest in the world of which the consumers are the school children who lug on an average, 20 Kilos of notebooks in their backpacks, to schools rain or shine 6 days a week except Second Saturdays (of the month). Since lateral expansion would entail financial suicide, the school buildings go vertical making the tiny tots heavy duty porters of their own books. This is in addition to the water bottles and lunch packets so lovingly included by parents as the day’s victual armoury. To this daily fare the teachers, with malice towards none and love for the children, add pleasant architectural training by ordering them to do a project in miniature of, say, the Trombay Atomic Power station. or the Omandurar Secretariat model or some such small projects. which any child of 10 can do in a jiffy for less than 5000 rupees. Educational props are so cheap these days!
“One good thing about this ‘Heavy’ education is that, it prepares the young things for a rough life in case they don’t get into Medical, Engineering or other technical colleges. They can, if their spine hasn’t already been wrecked by the ten-year weight lifting training in schools, enrich weighty professions like loading goods, or transporting heavy house-hold goods as specialists in packing and moving. Besides, these muscle-hardened chaps have only to get a basic touch of Karate to protect themselves and their family from this hooligan filled country… Think positively, friend.”
“You are right. I wonder why Kapil did not pioneer the criminalisation of corporal punishment in schools, a rampant pastime all over India. If being kind to the tiny tots, some of them don’t beat them, they only make them kneel on the floor for two hours and compel them to copy the trash written by them on the board. May be it is good for the knees that has to carry one for years, but a young relative told me that he would rather have new knees at Miot hospital than undergo this torture by the teacher… That should be Kapil’s next agenda or Miot will have to build a new block soon.”
All it takes a person with a modicum of intelligence and a little experience in what is called LIFE, to preserve a sliver of it for posterity as well his own private pleasure, while the activities that brought him rice and sambaar, are behind him, and the balance of his tenancy of the planet is to be spent in reliving his past full of joys and foibles, by chronicling his journey until he opened his Computer to punch the keyboard to release his genie that he had bottled within him.
Karunkar T. Nair, whom I last saw about 50 years ago in my home village Pallikunnu, Kannur, would be a cousin, if researchers could find the connection through my father’s larger family. He wrote an autobiographic novel “Sunrise Hill” weaving together the story of his life linking three continents, Asia of which India is a sub–continent, East Africa, where he emigrated to for his education under the tutelage of his father who had pitched his business tent there, and Europe particularly England, where he, a total slave of His Majesty, found freedom in spite of racism, to grow into manhood, and start life afresh as a citizen of UK. He however did not marry an English girl, but chose one from his original country, for but for his occidental orientation that like magnet, attracted most young men those days, he remained at heart, a villager of Pallikunnu, on the slopes of Sunrise Hill, and devoted to the presiding deity of the temple. To the locals he was known as Kuttan. He draws the autobiographical curtain close thus.
“With eyes closed in prayer, Kuttan stood with folded hands. In the tranquillity of the evening, the serene images of his amma and Pallikunnamma coalesced silently to bless him.”
That spark of divinity is the foil against which Kuttan’s story is to be read…
How he overcomes the harsh realities of the dark continent where he spent most of his formative years, and escaped to the White continent which embraced him but kept the little light of nostalgia alive, is the story that strummed the nostalgia string in me. Though I left Pallikunnu in 1946 seeking ’better education’, which, according to my mother, was available only in Madras at the M. C. C. School, and I think that she was right, I still remain a villager of Pallikunnu, though not a devout temple goer, for a ray of wisdom tells me “Aham Brahmasmi”. Let me stew in my own foolishness, but if Kuttan needed that trans before the deity, that is his choice in a free world to reach his destination, through what is now increasingly called, the “roadmap”… The book by a debutant Malayalee-Englishman, priced at Rs. 250 (at my local bookstore in Chennai), is a good read.
Rahul’s three day Chennai-prowl to seduce young voters to the old congress could not possibly be a point on which pollsters would hazard a bet, for no other promising party had ever kept the promises so generously made, than Mu Ka’s Kazagam.
The young woman who helps Lakshmi in washing clothes and kitchenware, was ecstatic the other day to report “Amma, we got our colour TV yesterday… The One-Rupee [per kilogram] (about US $0.02) rice is very good. I shall bring some for your iddlies. The ration shop pulses are fine and we get them for less than one fourth the price you have to pay. Free cycles are also given now for our school going children. How can the Delhi chap try to convert us, unless he promises a Nano car to all the voting families?”
“Very good question, Rosalin. He may wangle a scheme with good man Ratan Tata to establish a Nano factory in a thousand acres of central government land given free for an exclusive factory for those identified as receivers of the free TV and the other gifts. Noble Ratan would probably supply it free and add a stepney… Mamata may cancel all trains running to TN, but we can cope… If you don’t know how to operate a computer, join an institute and be ready to receive a computer as gift from a party bent on toppling the present rulers.“
“Thank you amma, for this beautiful thought. We can browse the Net and perhaps become bloggers.”
“You are the darling of the vote catchers. People like us get nothing but demands for payment of increased taxes. All the thousands of houses in this city were charged by the Metrowater a flat rate of Rs. 50 per month payable half-yearly. Suddenly some bureaucrat planning a stick up of the citizen, contrived an order from the government, like Indira’s midnight order, making the installation of water meters mandatory, with perhaps instructions to the meter maker to make it defective like the Auto rickshaw meters. And so it was that households paying Rs. 300 half yearly, found that though the trickle from the pipelines did not increase, the meters were running amuck. People who had palaces and acres of land for gardens, perhaps revolted and the order was withdrawn, but those who were foolish to buy cubby holes or rabbit warrens called Apartments, are paying ten to fifteen times the original bill every month even though there is only one sump! Our bill for May was Rs. 6000/- It is nothing short of robbery. So if Rahul promises reversion to the old consumption charges for man’s most essential food: water, if his young brigade sweeps the polls, I promise him my vote in advance. Even in the Gulf countries, where the only water is sea water after desalination, charges are minimal…”
“I shall be careful amma, in spending water like money. I shall speak to somebody who knows Kalainger and ask him to bring to his notice this injustice. In fact water and air should be free. Somebody has promised us free solar lamps costing Rs. 1500 each… let’s see what Rahul can offer…”
YSR Reddy’s official website at http://ysr.in/ looks like it has been hacked.
The strident ring of friend Poosinikka’s mobile phone while he was driving his car was an ear jerker but having read in the papers about a case that has curbed button-happy-phoney people’s instant response to the summons by the instrument in their pockets, and a freezing look by me, Poosi ignored the call. But for Justice N. Kirubakaran’s edict to the police to be awake and pounce on motorists whose crooked arm nurses this fell instrument to distraction when more than two ears and eyes are necessary in our chaotic traffic culture, Poosi an inveterate caller would have started one of his mobile talkathons enroute to, perhaps, hell…
There have been libraries containing immortal judicial prose as conveyer belt to convictions for the rash and negligent driving, under Section 304-A and other sections of the I.P.C and The Motor Vehicles Act, but the biggest potential killer on roads, the distracted motorist through drink and mobile phone seduction, had a sort of immunity from Law’s reach, until Justice Kirubakaran divined the possibility of this danger pandemic, worse than the blown out-of-proportion, ‘Swine Flu’, which has at the most, killed about 35 people in India, which holds the world record of about a million deaths on its rotten roads mostly caused by the new disease called ‘TALKOBILE”.
Buying a mobile phone is as easy as buying a gun in USA which sells that instrument of death to anyone. India has, reportedly 30 million mobile phones, a majority of them being used by minors, who, when they graduate as majors, can get driving licences too… If these chaps can vote, so can they drive and talk sweet nothings while at the wheel and to make the trip more spirited, a halt at the TASMAK kiosk would be an additive!
If the person at the wheel has to talk or bust, he/she may pull out of traffic, stop at the kerb and until foulmouthed by the traffic cop, can drain the battery of his phone. That’s his funeral, not others’. “This judgment has come at the right time. Already most of the schools have banned the use of mobile phones. Colleges too should ban it. not only because it poses traffic hazards but to stop jaw motion. When I see these phonies the picture of the cricketers comes to mind, for they are always chewing gum.”
“Yes, yes. They chew so intensely that like our distracted motorists, they forget their immediate mission. That is when they lose wickets or drop the silly point catch just as the driver goes blind to the red light and cruise past into a green lighted path, to kill maim or worse and give judges cerebral flashes to throw light on the dark recesses of unexplored judicial activism.”
The most creepy vehicle invented by the successors of the Wright brothers is the Helicopter. It defied nature, for unless it follows the super yogic practice of levitation, except the dragonfly, nothing can lift off perpendicularly. For go getters like YSR Reddy, and Sylvester Stallone, the one man army, nothing is impossible, which is why Reddy scoffed the idea that inclement weather could put off his jaunt to a stupid meeting. The meteorological experts at the airport who were doing their work honestly, lost to a punctual man who had a tryst with destiny.
“The rulers must obey the laws before they enforce them. Reddy forgot that he was just another feeble human being before the force of nature and that even Rambo the indestructible warrior wouldn’t have hazarded a flight in such a funny machine when the weather was beastly.” opined Jugallu Rao.
“Not necessarily Juggalu; he must have read the astrological forecast for that week in some stupid Telugu magazine that told him to take a calculated risk that would boost his family’s climb to stardom. Who wouldn’t be lured by such a prospect? His son is M.P. and this trip could probably lead on to something big that would boost his chance to be in the Central ministry. Why not neighbour? Chief’s son Azhagiri, is a minister there. These familial thoughts must have caused his defiance of the weather man’s guess, which more often than not, is far off the mark.“
“But he had no business to risk the lives of the four chaps who accompanied him. Those four probably don’t read what the stars foretell. The two pilots should have refused to lift the dragonfly up. Reddy may be an expert with the scalpel, but a non-entity in flying a helicopter in terrible weather over hilly terrain and thick forest allegedly crawling with Naxalites, deadlier than any animal.”
“The jaded and trite expression that Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion, slightly modified to suit democratic norms would read ‘rulers must obey the rules’. Howzzat cricketily!”
“That’s why when the Supreme Court thought that it is above The RTI Act, and questioned it before the Delhi High Court, people thought that judges have something to hide. Shylendra of Karnataka High Court and Kannan of Haryana High Court bared everything. Judges are interpreters of law in order to do justice, and not play hide and seek. So is the rest of the human network that manages the affairs of the billion plus of this country. If only the weatherman had refused clearance and the pilots had refused to risk their necks, Jaggu wouldn’t be losing sleep over his ascension to the CM’s throne as the youngest CM in the history of the country. Defiance of rules is sometimes like the tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood leads on to fortune…”
Super terrorist Kasab who is entertaining the Mumbai court with his antics, is now put in the shade by dear old Jinnah who, through bluff and cigar smoke created Pakistan just to spite the enemies of Advani and Jaswant Singh in the BJP into tarring and feathering them, just stopping short of stripping them and giving them a donkey ride facing the donkey’s ass. Some Fool (SF) thought that since Jinnah and I have the same Initials - M. A. - I may be a close relative to whom
Jinnah would have disclosed his real motive for the partition of India.
So, to be one up. he phoned me.
“Sir, I read your stuff, and I have heard that you are a lawyer who suffered injustice because of actions of knaves. Are you by the way, related to M. A. Jinnah? He has risen from the grave to wipe out writers who, bored with politics, tap the keyboard of their computers and send the stuff to publishers, to make a fast buck in their dotage.”
“Dear SF my family-tree, which was recently drawn or compiled by my nephews S. R. A. Das, a painter, and his brother, S. R. Prasad, a Kalaripayat Guru, traces my ancestry to a Kshatriya king of a small principality called ‘Aduthala Kovilagam’, in Pazhayangadi, near Kannur. My maternal grandmother had gone to a temple festival there, where the king fell head over heels in love with the ravishing beauty, and I am carrying the torch in the second generation having
inherited Kerala Varma’s deep tan.
“So SF, go ahead and denigrate Jinnah to your heart’s content. It may please BJP, which may be hoping for a sweep in the elections 30 years from now, after the Gandhi-line calls it a day. Good luck. Don’t worry about age… Mu Ka, Achuthanandan, Karunakaran who is now 92, Advani, and other nonagenarians will be at the starting blocks. The lure of power is the best medicine not yet discovered by the medical profession.”
“If you don’t mind sir, one more aspect of the present imbroglio, namely Arun Shourie’s untimely entry into the brawl room was avoidable. Don’t you think so?”
“He is an intellectual. Such people cannot curb the steam that has necessarily to propel some action forward lest it should back track on himself and damage his sanity. I have read many of his books and felt exhilarated, for he suffers no fools. Look at the Parliament now! Do I have to tell you so that you could. use it as a scoop?”
“No sir. I know. Everybody knows. The only thing that has gone up in 62 years of self rule is the price line. You can’t order ten rotten eggs to throw at the police or non-striking lawyers, without pledging your wife’s ornaments or the Colour TV so lovingly gifted by the Makkal’s government.”
“SF, Jaswant and Arun have had a long innings and authored books that have raised Cain. Arun’s English is gripping, but I haven’t read any prose from Jaswant. Why does he wear epaulets? Is it symbolic of his militancy?”
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