Judges are great authors, handle 60-100 stories a day: Delhi HC justice Anish Dayal

Judges are great authors, handle 60-100 stories a day: Delhi HC justice Anish Dayal

Nainital, What happens when a Delhi High Court judge walks into a literature festival? He makes a case for judges being writers too, pointing to the 60-100 cases they handle every day, each with its own characters, conflict and resolution.

Trading the courtroom and his hot seat for the crisp mountain air of the Deopatta ranges at Abbotsford Estate, Justice Anish Dayal during his keynote address on Friday at the 11th edition of "Himalayan Echoes Festival" drew parallels between law, literature and the mountains to explain why he belonged among a gathering of authors and storytellers.

"Judges are great authors. In our case files, we have real stories, real characters, plots, sometimes real, sometimes fictitious. We have problems and, in our judgments, we have resolutions," he told the gathering, even though pleading guilty to being "verbose" and "over-articulate" at times.

"The classic core of a good story is character, problem and resolution. So, we do it every day, 60-100 cases a day. I guess I am qualified to be here in the literary festival," said the judge, who also authored a poetry book for children, "Can it get verse?".

Reflecting on the three worlds he inhabits the courtroom, literature and the mountains Dayal, who has an abode in a village in Bhimtal, said they may appear unrelated, with one governed by "rules", another by "imagination" and the third by the "uncluttered" force of nature, but each had something to teach him.

Describing the courtroom as a "remarkable theatre", he urged people to experience court proceedings beyond the sensational cases often highlighted in the media.

"Mostly, it is what we call Ram versus Shyam cases of normal people. Normal people, the last person standing," he said, adding that nearly 80 per cent of the matters heard in court concerned ordinary people.

Behind the seemingly "antiseptic language" of case files, he said, lay the textures of human existence emotion, conflict, distress, fragility, persecution, oppression, matrimonial discord and family disruptions.

"Every single day we read real stories," he said, describing the emotional demands of dealing with criminal cases, including having to read multiple accounts of victims' experiences.

Seeking to demystify the image of judges as distant figures who are often elevated through accolades and public recognition, Dayal said their daily work involved navigating a complex mix of allegations, facts and law.

"In this miasma, what do we apply? Cold, objective reasoning and fairness," he said.

The judge also offered a lighter glimpse into the linguistic surprises that emerge from legal proceedings, recalling how a Hindi expression such as "mooh boli behan" was translated in a case file as "mouth spoken sister".

Similarly, the word "somersault" had once been rendered as "the salt that you have in the summer", he said, drawing laughter from the audience.

On another occasion, he came across the expression "clientess" in a legal document, an apparent attempt to compensate for gender disparity in language.

"We deal with language in all its corrupted forms and archaic forms also," he said, jokingly inviting writers to read court files for their linguistic curiosities.

Dayal also recalled the literary prowess of legendary judges, citing Justice V R Krishna Iyer, known for his humanism and advocacy of civil liberties, and his distinctive use of language in judgments.

Quoting a passage from a judgment concerning a two-day ban on liquor sales, he shared its memorable opening: "A raging rain of writ petitions by hundreds of merchants of intoxicants hit by a recently amended rule declaring a break of two dry days in a very wet week..."

The two-day boutique literature festival, which focuses on both literature and nature, featured an eclectic list of speakers including best-selling author Amish, Bhutanese novelist Chador Wangmo, Swiss author Benjamin Viatte, environmentalist and author Mridula Ramesh, and mythologist Sunita Pant Bansal.

The festival comes to a close on Saturday.

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