I wrote this article in 1999.
The Criminal Lawyer of Allahabad
This encounter took place somewhere in the early 1990’s on a train in India. I was traveling from my native place Ranchi (then in Bihar, now the capital of Jharkhand) to Delhi with some of my friends. I was then a student caught up in a dis-functional education system. Hopes of a good job were a distant dream.
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This train usually enters UP (Uttar Pradesh) in the morning. A lot of people in towns on the way board the train and forcibly sit on reserved berths. They travel daily and can get really nasty. We had experienced this before and were determined not to let it happen again. At this time an elderly, distinguished looking man boarded the train with a small boy. Since most of the berths in our bogie were already occupied he came to us and requested us to let him sit. We refused to budge. He explained that he couldn’t get a berth because the TTE (Train Ticket Examiner) he knew was nowhere to be seen and that he would get down in Allahabad in another 4 hours time. He was a criminal lawyer practicing in Allahabad and the boy traveling with him was his grandson. We still held our ground. He said very good naturedly “Main to ye soch kar train par chadta hun ki agar berth nahin mila to ‘earth’ to zaroor milega”. मैं तो ये सोच कर ट्रैन पर चढ़ता हूँ की अगर बर्थ नहीं मिला तो earth तो ज़रूर मिलेगा............
We realized that he was different from others and relented in the end.
From the moment he settled down he tried to strike a conversation which in the beginning was largely one sided. He bought something from every hawker that passed us for his grandson & also for us. We were reluctant to take but he insisted saying that train journeys were as much about traveling as about what you had on the way. He said that in his childhood he would explain in great detail all that he ate on the way apart from the scenery.
He had an extremely engaging personality and a very interesting way of talking. He would put even the most mundane things in a fascinating way. No wonder he was a successful lawyer. Though he said he was in a ‘dirty’ profession. He even quoted a ‘sher’ (urdu couplet) to support this –
“Paida hua wakeel to shaitaan ne kaha,
Lo aaj main sahib-e-aulaad ho gaya”
पैदा हुआ वकील तो शैतान ने कहा
लो आज मैं साहेब ए औलाद हो गया
(When the lawyer was born the Satan exclaimed with joy, “Today I have become a father!”).
He had the latest edition of the magazine ‘India Today’ with him whose cover story was about the criminalization of politics in India. That was the time when Phoolan Devi was entering politics. One of us expressed the opinion that the country is going to the dogs now that the likes of Phoolan Devi will rule us. Another person said that after nearly fifty years of independence we have very little to show for by way of development. This was a hot topic then (as it is now!) and most people were disillusioned with the state of affairs.
This man’s response was completely different. He said that these are the growth pangs of a fledgling nation. According to him India was coming out of adolescence and entering youth. He drew an analogy to explain this. A child is innocent and pure, respects elders without questioning, and has hope & idealism in his heart. That was India under Jawaharlal Nehru. As the child grows and enters the teens he becomes more and more moody, irrational and difficult to understand though the urge for action is still there. That was India at the time of Indira Gandhi. As he comes out of the teens he becomes more of a rebel, questions authority, resents being confined by laws and has the tendency to turn towards cynicism & violence. That is India now. He concluded that all these stages have to be gone through if a man aspires to become a mature adult and so would India in 30-40 years time.
We were stuck by the simple and obvious logic of this man. At once it seemed that there is a lot of hope for the future. I am a keen student of history but till then I had never looked at it this way. He had put the whole thing in the proper perspective. Everything just fell into place.
When he got down in Allahabad I realized that I didn’t even ask his name. I may not know his name but I will never forget this lawyer of Allahabad with boundless optimism in his heart. The message he gave in this fleeting encounter still gives me hope in times of despair & gloom. He taught me that nothing is as bad as it seems and one should always try to look at the positive perspective of any situation.
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