SUNDAY MUSINGS

"In Societies that have more memories than dreams, too many people are spending too much time looking backward" Tom Friedman in his book "The World is Flat". 

Dreams are hopes and they hold the promises to a better future. Many a times, the journey towards achieving serious life goals begin with a casual dream which has the potential to turn into a lifetime's passion.

Dreams offer motivation towards realising life goals through well thought out strategies & plans to battle against day-to-day challenges, adversities and failures. This is quite conspicuous in the life of a litigating lawyer as in no other profession one sees such a constant, persistent and perennial sea-saw battle between dreams and failures.

 While studying Law, one dreams of walking in the hallowed corridors of Courts with detailed briefs and crisp arguments. As a junior lawyer or as an assisting counsel one watches intently the senior’s trajectory and hopes to similarly make it big one day. One dreams of becoming Salves and Rohtagis and get orders from Courts by weaving the magic of words and phrases. One dreams of becoming the Parasharans, or Desais and holding forte in the Courts for days arguing the fine prints of the statute books. One dreams of becoming Jaisinghs and assisting Court's in passing historical judgements expanding and espousing human rights. Imbued with passion we toil without money, grind without rest, even work without briefs, read and research in hope that someday will offer an opportunity to put them to use before the Ld. Judge. That's what dreams do. They help you survive the long and dry gestational period that this profession invariably demands. 

In the life of a lawyer, on an average, for every one good order there are a dozens that she/he would pretend did not happen. While a lawyer is not in the business of judging, she/he is being constantly judged- by courts, clients, peers, seniors, juniors- from who you represent, to what you say everything is subject to scrutiny and judgement. We prepare a case thoroughly, reading our brief from cover to cover, researching for hours, carefully noting judgements to support our arguments, only to be told by the court that 'you have no case'. Convinced by the merit we push our case further only to be threatened with cost or some other unkind comments. At such moments, a skill that comes in handy is a quick anticipation of the order and realignment of submissions.. Some days we succeed but on many we do not. And thus we embark upon a journey of re-learning- We look at the case afresh, redraw the strategy, think through various options, do more research and build upon other arguments. Defeats or failures remain lessons only. In this curve of learning our lives are made a little easy or more difficult depending upon the vicissitudes of the client. It’s a relentless journey and one never stops perusing, trying, thinking out of the box and over-the-top.

No one faces failures as a lawyer does on a daily basis and yet no failure can daunt the spirit of a lawyer because s/he knows- THERE IS ALWAYS A NEXT DATE & THERE IS ALWAYS A HIGHER COURT. 

As I write this, my heart is heavy and saddened for we have bid farewell to two of our young and respected members of Bar- Kewal Singh Ahuja & Suwarna Rajan Chauhan who tragically decided to end their lives. 

Perhaps on the fateful day, when the dreadful thought came into their minds there was no one around to say "Rehne de Bhai, Agli date par dekh lenge".

#Litigation #MentalHealth #DelhiHighCourtBarAssociation #Covid19

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