There was this lawyer who loved to teach law. He had not only obtained a master’s degree in law but later on he also got a doctorate in law.
Had he taken to teaching as his profession he may have become a dean. This lawyer, however, wanted to practise litigation and make his mark in the Bombay High Court.
Even after he started to practise, he did not forsake his first love and continued to teach law part-time.
As the years went by, he not only established a good practice but became reputed as a professor of law at the Bombay University.
To give this lawyer a name for this story let us call him ‘Adv. Satyavan’.
Satyavan was spiritually inclined. He tried his best to walk the straight path.
As he rose in seniority as a law professor, the university saddled him with more and more responsibilities such as being a paper-setter, moderator and paper-examiner.
One evening, returning home from a chanting session in the temple he routinely frequented, Satyavan discovered that a visitor had been patiently waiting outside his house, apparently for a couple of hours.
It was no ordinary visitor.
The visitor was a highly respected senior advocate who had been an additional judge of the high court before resigning and re-establishing a lucrative practice.
Satyavan unlocked his flat door and invited the visitor inside.
After some casual conversation, the visitor came to the point: “Aren’t you correcting the constitutional law paper of the final year LLB students this time?”
Satyavan answered in the affirmative.
The visitor then smiled and said: “Here, take these two seat numbers. These two must get first class marks in the final LLB.”
Satyavan was shocked at the brazenness of this approach.
He insisted on knowing the identity of these two candidates but the visitor would not disclose their names.
Satyavan politely told him: “Much as I respect you sir, I won’t do such a thing!”
But the visitor wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Finally, the visitor agreed to disclose the identities of those two candidates if Satyavan promised to keep them a secret and agreed to “help”.
The two candidates were children of senior high court judges who were in the collegium at that time.
Both these judges were heading division Benches and in public perception were known for their ethical values and integrity.
The visitor had been their colleague during his short stint on the Bench.
But now, he had come to Satyavan as their “pleader”.
The visitor told Adv. Satyavan that he had already spoken to the examiners of the other subject papers and they had all agreed to “cooperate” and award first-class marks to these two candidates.
He told Satyavan that he too should oblige as far as the constitutional law paper was concerned.
Adv. Satyavan politely replied: “I can only promise you that I shall examine these two answer books with extra care and shall not give them less marks than what they merit.”
The visitor smiled. He took Satyavan’s answer to mean acquiescence in his ‘first-class project’.
He also assured Satyavan that henceforth he could rest assured that he would get favourable Orders from both these milords in all matters whenever he appeared before them.
That was the ‘incentive’ on offer.
As things turned out, much as Adv. Satyavan tried, he could not rate the mediocre answer books of those two candidates as anything more than average.
He marked them at 50 percent only.
All other examiners had kept their word and given first class marks to the two candidates.
But thanks to Satyavan’s ‘non-co-operation’, the privileged scions of the two judicial ‘giants’ missed the overall first-class in their final LLB exam aggregate.
While their results were awaited, the father of one of them had been elevated to the Supreme Court and could not directly affect Adv. Satyavan’s career in any manner.
But the second milord lost no opportunity in creating trouble for Satyavan.
Even in his good, arguable cases he would get unfavourable Orders from the jilted milord.
Satyavan started losing briefs as news spread that he had rubbed a senior milord the wrong way! But Satyavan believed that it was just his karma. He had done his duty honestly and if suffering was to be the result, so be it.
Postscript
The senior milord retired as a Supreme Court judge. His second-class son became a much sought-after senior advocate in the Bombay High Court.
The junior milord retired from the Bombay High Court as its most senior judge. He continued to preach morality and ethics to anyone who would care to listen.
His second-class son plodded on at the Bar till caste and pedigree ensured his inevitable elevation to the high court Bench.
Adv. Satyavan too was elevated in due course on merit and became a much-respected high court judge.
When his warrant of appointment arrived, some tongues wagged at the Bar: “Looks like they have found an Alibaba to sit with chaalis chors!”
That was, of course, an exaggeration but such were those times.
I could not suppress a chuckle when the junior milord’s ‘second-class’ son also got elevated and sat as a junior milord on a division Bench headed by Justice Satyavan who had corrected his constitutional law paper!
During his many years on the Bench, Justice Satyavan’s first-class mind had the esteemed company of this certified second-class colleague on the writ Bench on numerous occasions.
The two milords who wished to help their sons are long dead and gone.
The visitor who acted as a facilitator to create a ‘first class’ curriculum vitae for his former colleagues’ sons has also joined them in judicial heaven, hell or purgatory (as the case may be).
Justice Satyavan lives a peaceful retired life enjoying single malt and the Bhagwad Geeta in equal measure.
It is a potent combination.
But I doubt he would now tell anyone this tale… unless he has had one too many.
