In relationships, the most important thing is to give people space. Love is finding a person who helps you become the best person you can be

NANDINI LAL meets chief justice-turned writer, Leila Seth, whose autobiography, On Balance, is a summing up of a life lived well

SCALES OF BALANCE

The first woman chief justice of a high court in India and the first woman judge of the Delhi High Court had elected to be something vastly different: a nun! Her panic-stricken mother wailed and hit her head against the wall. But her daughter stood firm. When she was taken away from Mother Joseph Loreto, she responded by standing first from Bengal in the Senior Cambridge exams in 1946.

Leila Seth shrugs, "I was a stenographer, really." It was only while Seth’s husband was posted abroad that she picked out law as, "I hardly needed to attend lectures." She became the first woman to top the Bar exams in London. "Mother in law", proclaims the ’57 Star caption to a photo of her holding baby Gugluram (Shantum) — not to be confused with Guthlipum (Vikram).

If Seth strayed into law by chance, she penned her memoir literally by accident: she tripped over the wire at R K Laxman’s book launch and was laid up for months with multiple fractures. She thought of suing, realised she wouldn’t live that long, and decided to write instead. "It’s like a summing up," she says of On Balance. "I thought we may not be around to tell my granddaughter the story of what life was like when we were young." Little Nandini, to whom her book is dedicated, clings to her. Seth shows me the plant, Nandina Domestica, whose leaves turn bright red in winter.

Her husband, Premo, on whose 80th birthday her book was released, is a shoe maker. "I tease him and call him a mochi. In his enthusiasm, he’d put new shoes he’d designed on the dining table. I’d be quite horrified!" She would never have come this far in life without his support. "After we married, he gave me a book, Ideal Marriage. It tells you all about sex. I didn’t learn my lessons correctly. Within six months, I was pregnant!"

Balancing between career and family has been tough. "In relationships, the most important thing is to give people space. Love is finding a person who helps you become the best person you can be." She remembers the time when son, Vikram, came to live with them so he could work on A Suitable Boy. It took seven years to complete. She had visions of ‘a penniless poet’, called him, ‘Mr Notebook’ and said it would never sell. It made him famous. This most suitable son read at a crowded launch from her memoir, which covers everything from her examination of the Rajan Pillai case to her views on corruption.

The challenges of stepping into male terrain (‘my lady or my lord?’) came early to her. In a girl’s school where everyone wanted to play Draupadi or Manthara, she played the brave Hanuman. But she laments, "I think women always have to be equal plus before they can get anything. Even now, out of 600 judges, there are only 10 female judges." Her book ends with an ode to the neglected girl child.

"There have been bad times and good, but on balance it’s been a good life. I have no regrets, though I was unhappy when I didn’t make it to the Supreme Court, or when my fourth child died," she says, referring to beautiful, sad Ira, who leapt from a balcony in Mumbai at 16. She speaks of her father’s early death, their downward spiral from luxury to homelessness. She is cheerful about the inherent irony of being a judge whose peacenik son, Shantum, went to jail in Norwich. But the unwarranted CBI enquiry into her husband’s role in machine purchases in the public sector hangs heavy on her. "It was as if the sky had fallen on us. For us, reputation meant everything."

Close ones have passed on. She retired from the 15th Law Commission in 2000. Arbitrations, human rights work, seminars, reading and gardening take up her time now. "Aradhana’s now busy with a film in Goa," she says proudly of her married US-based art director daughter who won acclaim for Deepa Mehta’s Fire and Earth.

For a woman who almost went into a convent instead of a court and has been vocal against communal tensions, she isn’t overly philosophical. "When I was young I used to think there is a god, then I thought there’s no god, now I don’t know. I’m 73. I’m not fearful of death. This is the life. I’ve got to live it well. I believe religion is to love my family, to do justice, to have a conscience, to fight for what is right."