A Suitable Boy, Page 66

  She was there in his life, and had been there for thirty years. He would doubtless miss her if she wasn’t. But he spent more time thinking about his children—especially Amit and Kakoli, both of whom worried him—than about her. And this was probably true of her as well. Their conversations, including the recent one that had resulted in his ultimatum to Amit and Dipankar, were largely child-bound: ‘Kuku’s on the phone the whole time, and I never know who she’s speaking with. And now she’s taken to going out at odd hours, and evading my questions.’ ‘Oh, let her be. She knows what she’s doing.’ ‘Well, you know what happened to the Lahiri girl.’ And so it would start. His wife was on the committee of a school for the poor and was involved in other social causes dear to women, but most of her aspirations centred on her children’s welfare. That they should be married and well settled was what, above all, she desired.

  She had been greatly upset at first by Meenakshi’s marriage to Arun Mehra. Predictably enough, once Aparna was born she had come around. But Mr Justice Chatterji himself, though he had behaved with grace and decency in the matter, had felt increasingly rather than decreasingly uneasy about the marriage. For a start, there was Arun’s mother, who was, in his mind, a peculiar woman—overly sentimental and liable to make much of nothing. (He had thought that she was not a worrier, but Meenakshi had filled him in with her version of the matter of the medals.) And there was Meenakshi, who sometimes displayed glints of a cold selfishness that even as a father he could not completely blind himself to; he missed her, but their breakfast parliaments, when she lived at home, had been more seriously acrimonious than they now were.

  Finally, there was Arun himself. Mr Justice Chatterji respected his drive and his intelligence, but not much else. He seemed to him to be a needlessly aggressive man and a rank snob. They met at the Calcutta Club from time to time, but never found anything much to say. Each moved in his separate cluster at the club, clusters suited to their difference of age and profession. Arun’s crowd struck him as gratuitously boisterous, slightly unbefitting the palms and the panelling. But perhaps this was just the intolerance of age, thought Mr Justice Chatterji. The times were changing beneath him, and he was reacting exactly as everyone—king, princess, maidservant—had reacted to the same situation.

  But who would have thought that things would have changed as much and as swiftly as they had. Less than ten years ago Hitler had England by the throat, Japan had bombed Pearl Harbour, Gandhi was fasting in jail while Churchill was inquiring impatiently why he was not yet dead, and Tagore had just died. Amit was involved in student politics and in danger of being jailed by the British. Tapan was three and had almost died of nephritis. But in the High Court things were going well. His work as a barrister became increasingly interesting as he grappled with cases based on the War Profits Act and the Excess Income Act. His acuity was undiminished and Biswas Babu’s excellent filing system kept his absent-mindedness in check.

  In the first year after Independence he had been offered judgeship, something that had delighted his father and his clerk even more than himself. Though Biswas Babu knew that he himself would have to find a new position, his pride in the family and his sense of the lineal fitness of things had made him relish the fact that his employer would now be followed around, as his father before him had been, by a turbaned servitor in red, white and gold livery. What he had regretted was that Amit Babu was not immediately ready to step into his father’s practice; but surely, he had thought, that would not be more than a couple of years away.

  7.37

  The bench that Mr Justice Chatterji had joined, however, was very different from the one he had imagined—even a few years earlier—that he might be appointed to. He got up from his large mahogany desk and went to the shelf that held the more recent volumes of the All India Reporter in their bindings of buff, red, black and gold. He took down two volumes—Calcutta 1947 and Calcutta 1948—and began comparing the first pages of each. As he compared them he felt a great sadness for what had happened to the country he had known since childhood, and indeed to his own circle of friends, especially those who were English and those who were Muslim.

  For no apparent reason he suddenly thought of an extremely unsociable English doctor, a friend of his, who (like him) would escape from parties given in his own house. He would claim a sudden emergency—perhaps a dying patient—and disappear. He would then go to the Bengal Club, where he would sit on a high chair and drink as many whiskies as he could. The doctor’s wife, who threw these huge parties, was fairly eccentric herself. She would go around on a bicycle with a large hat, from under which she could see everything that went on in the world without—or so she imagined—being recognized. It was said of her that she once arrived for dinner at Firpo’s with some black lace underwear thrown around her shoulders. Apparently, vague as she was, she had thought it was a stole.

  Mr Justice Chatterji could not help smiling, but the smile disappeared as he looked at the two pages he had opened for comparison. In microcosm those two pages reflected the passage of an empire and the birth of two countries from the idea—tragic and ignorant—that people of different religions could not live peaceably together in one.

  With the red pencil that he used for notations in his law-books, Mr Justice Chatterji marked a small ‘x’ against those names in the 1947 volume that did not appear in 1948, just one year later. This is what the list looked like when he had done:

  There were a few more names at the bottom of the 1948 list, his own included. But half the English judges and all the Muslim judges had gone. There was not a single Muslim judge in the Calcutta High Court in 1948.

  For a man who in his friendships and acquaintance looked upon religion and nationality as both significant and irrelevant, the changing composition of the High Court was a cause for sadness. Soon, of course, the British ranks were further depleted. Now only Trevor Harries (still the Chief Justice) and Roxburgh remained.

  The appointment of judges had always been a matter of the greatest importance for the British, and indeed (except for a few scandals such as in the Lahore High Court in the forties) the administration of justice under the British had been honest and fairly swift. (Needless to say, there were plenty of repressive laws, but that was a different, if related, matter.) The Chief Justice would sound a man out directly or indirectly if he felt that he was a fit candidate for the bench, and if he indicated that he was interested, would propose his name to the government.

  Occasionally, political objections were raised by the government, but in general a political man would not be sounded out in the first place, nor—if he were sounded out by the Chief Justice—would he be keen to accept. He would not want to be stifled in the expression of his views. Besides, if another Quit India agitation came along, he might have to pass a number of judgements that to his own mind would be unconscionable. Sarat Bose, for instance, would not have been offered judgeship by the British, nor would he have accepted if he had been.

  After the British left, matters did not greatly change, particularly in Calcutta, which continued to have an Englishman as Chief Justice. Mr Justice Chatterji considered Sir Arthur Trevor Harries to be a good man and a good Chief Justice. He now recalled his own ‘interview’ with him when, as one of the leading barristers of Calcutta, he had been asked to visit him in his chambers.

  As soon as they were both seated, Trevor Harries had said: ‘If I may, Mr Chatterji, I’ll come straight to the point. I would like to recommend your name for judgeship to the government. Would this be acceptable to you?’

  Mr Chatterji had said: ‘Chief Justice, this is an honour, but I am afraid I must decline.’

  Trevor Harries had been rather taken aback. ‘Might I ask why?’

  ‘I hope you do not mind if I am equally direct,’ had been Mr Chatterji’s reply. ‘A junior man was appointed before me some years ago, and his comparative competence could not have been the reason.’

  ‘An Englishman?’

  ‘As it happens. I am not s
peculating about the reason.’

  Trevor Harries had nodded. ‘I believe I know whom you are referring to. But that was done by another Chief Justice—and I thought the man was your friend.’

  ‘Friend he is, and I’m not talking about the friendship. But the question is one of principle.’

  After a pause, Trevor Harries had continued: ‘Well, I, like you, will not speculate about the correctness of that decision. But he was a sick man, and his time was running out.’

  ‘Nevertheless.’

  Trevor Harries had smiled. ‘Your father made an excellent judge, Mr Chatterji. Just the other day I had occasion to quote a 1933 judgement of his on the question of estoppel.’

  ‘I shall tell him so. He will be most pleased.’

  There had been a pause. Mr Chatterji had been about to get up when the Chief Justice, with the slightest suspicion of a sigh, had said:

  ‘Mr Chatterji, I respect you too much to wish to, well, tilt the scales of your judgement in this matter. But I don’t mind confessing my disappointment that you wish to decline. I dare say you realize that it is difficult for me to make up the loss of so many good judges at such short notice. Pakistan and England have each claimed several judges of this court. Our workload is increasing steadily, and what with the constitutional work that will be upon us soon, we will need the best new judges we can get. It is in this light that I have asked you to join, and it is in this light that I would like to ask you to reconsider your decision.’ He had paused before continuing. ‘May I take the liberty of asking you at the end of this coming week if your mind is still unchanged? If so, my regard will remain unchanged, but I will not trouble you further on this point.’

  Mr Chatterji had gone home with no intention of changing his mind or of consulting anyone else on the matter. But while talking to his father, he had happened to mention what the Chief Justice had said about the 1933 judgement. ‘What did the Chief Justice want to see you about?’ his father had asked. And the story had come out.

  His father had quoted a line of Sanskrit to him, to the effect that the best ornament for knowledge was humility. He had said nothing at all about duty.

  Mrs Chatterji came to know about it because her husband carelessly left a little slip of paper near his bed before he went to sleep, which read: ‘CJ Fri 4:45 (?) re J’ship.’ When he woke up the next morning he found her quite cross. Again the facts came out. His wife said: ‘It’ll be much better for your health. No late-night conferences with juniors. A much more balanced life.’

  ‘My health’s fine, dear. I thrive on the work. And Orr, Dignam have a pretty good sense of how many cases they should brief me in.’

  ‘Well, I like the thought of your wearing a wig and scarlet robes.’

  ‘I’m afraid we only wear scarlet robes when trying criminal cases on the original side. And no wig. No, there’s much less sartorial splendour in it these days.’

  ‘Mr Justice Chatterji. It sounds just the thing.’

  ‘I’m afraid I shall turn into my father.’

  ‘You could do worse.’

  How Biswas Babu came to know of it was a complete mystery. But he did. One evening in his chambers Mr Chatterji was dictating an opinion to him when Biswas Babu addressed him unconsciously as ‘My Lord’. Mr Chatterji sat up. ‘He must have slipped back into the past for a bit,’ he thought, ‘and have imagined that I’m my father.’ But Biswas Babu looked so startled and guilty at his slip that he gave himself away. And, having given himself away, he hastily added, shaking his knees swiftly: ‘I am so pleased, although prematurely, Sir, to administer my felici—’

  ‘I’m not taking it, Biswas Babu,’ said Mr Chatterji, very sharply, and in Bengali.

  So shocked was his clerk that he quite forgot himself. ‘Why not, Sir?’ he replied, also in Bengali: ‘Don’t you want to do justice?’

  Mr Chatterji, displeased, collected himself and continued to dictate his opinion. But Biswas Babu’s words had a slow but profound effect on him. He had not said, ‘Don’t you want to be a judge?’

  What a lawyer did was to fight for his client—his client, right or wrong—with all the intelligence and experience he could summon. What a judge could do was to weigh matters with equity, to decide what was right. He had the power to do justice, and it was a noble power. When he met the Chief Justice at the end of the week, Mr Chatterji told him he would be honoured if his name was submitted to the government. A few months later he was sworn in.

  He enjoyed his work, though he did not mix a great deal with his brethren. He had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances, and he did not, as some judges did, distance himself from them. He had no ambition to become Chief Justice or to go to the Supreme Court in Delhi. (The Federal Court and appeal to the Privy Council had ceased to exist.)

  Apart from everything else, he liked Calcutta too much to uproot himself. He found his uniformed and turbaned servitor irksome and slightly ridiculous, unlike one of his brother judges, who insisted on being trailed by him even when he went to buy fish in the market. But he did not mind being addressed as My Lord or even, by certain barristers, as M’Lud.

  Most of all he enjoyed what Biswas Babu, for all his own love of pomp and display, had known would be at the core of his satisfaction: the dispensation of justice within the law. Two cases that he had recently tried illustrated this. One was a case under the Preventive Detention Act of 1950 by which a labour organizer who was Muslim had been detained without being informed of the grounds of his detention except in the broadest terms. One of several such allegations was that he was an agent for Pakistan, although no proof of this was adduced. Another bald and sweeping statement, impossible to rebut, was that he was fomenting public strife. The vagueness and uncertainty of the allegations induced Mr Justice Chatterji and his colleague on the division bench to set aside the order on the basis of Article 22 Clause 5 of the Constitution.

  In another recent case, when the appeal against conviction for conspiracy of one accused had been successful, but his single co-accused had not—possibly because of poverty—filed an appeal against his own conviction, Mr Justice Chatterji and a fellow-judge had themselves issued a Rule on the State to show cause why the conviction and sentence on the co-accused should not also be set aside. This suo motu ruling had led to a great deal of complex jurisdictional wrangling, but finally the court had decided that it was within its inherent jurisdiction to pass a proper order when a manifest injustice was being perpetrated.

  Even in the case at present before him, though it gave Mr Justice Chatterji no pleasure to confirm sentences of death, he felt that he was doing what was just. His judgement was clearly thought out and robustly expressed. But he was considerably worried by the fact that in the first draft of his judgement he had named five of the dacoits and missed out the sixth. This was just the kind of potential disaster that the careful housekeeping of Biswas Babu was always saving him from in his lawyering days.

  For a moment his mind turned to Biswas Babu. He wondered how he was and what he was doing. The sound of Kuku at the piano wafted through the open door of his study. He remembered what she had said at lunch about shallybhery juishes. Then he had been annoyed, now he was amused. Biswas Babu’s written legal English may have been sharp and economical (except for the occasional misplaced article), but his spoken English was a thing of tortuous beauty. And one could hardly expect the high-spirited Kuku not to be alive to its expressive possibilities.

  7.38

  Biswas Babu, as it happened, was at that very moment with his friend and fellow-clerk, the burra babu of the insurance department of Bentsen Pryce. They had been friends for over twenty years now, and Biswas Babu’s adda or den had slowly cemented this relationship. (When Arun had married Meenakshi it was almost as if their families had suddenly found themselves allied.) The burra babu would visit Biswas Babu’s house most evenings; here a number of old companions would gather to talk about the world or simply to sit around, drinking tea and reading the newspapers with an occasi
onal comment. Today some of them were thinking of going to a play.

  ‘So it seems that your High Court building has been struck by lightning,’ ventured one man.

  ‘No damage, no damage,’ said Biswas Babu. ‘The main problem is the refugees from East Bengal who have begun to camp in the corridors.’ No one here referred to it as East Pakistan.

  ‘The Hindus there are being terrified and driven out. Every day one reads in the Hindustan Standard of Hindu girls being kidnapped—’

  ‘Ay, Ma’—this was addressed to Biswas Babu’s youngest granddaughter, a girl of six—‘tell your mother to send some more tea.’

  ‘One quick war, and Bengal will be united once again.’

  This was considered so stupid that no one responded.

  For a few minutes there was contented silence.

  ‘Did you read that article where Netaji’s air-crash death was contradicted? It appeared two days ago—’

  ‘Well, if he’s alive, he’s not doing much to prove it.’

  ‘Naturally he has to lie low.’

  ‘Why? The British have gone.’

  ‘Ah—but he has worse enemies among those left behind.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Nehru—and all the others,’ ended the proponent darkly if lamely.

  ‘I suppose you think Hitler is alive as well?’ This elicited a chuckle all around.

  ‘When is your Amit Babu getting married?’ asked someone of Biswas Babu after a pause. ‘All Calcutta is waiting.’