A Fine Balance (89 page)

The man on the broken bench smiled and nodded, relishing memories evoked by the children. His shirt pocket bulged with pens clipped inside a special plastic case. At his feet was a cardboard rectangle, about fifteen inches by ten, propped up with a brick.

Curious, Dina went closer and read the inscription on the board: Vasantrao Valmik – B.A., LL.B. Strange, she thought, that he should be content to sit here passively if he was a lawyer. And without so much as a black jacket, making no effort to obtain business.

“Madam, on behalf of my profession, I would like to apologize for that disgraceful display near the entrance,” said Mr. Valmik.

“Thank you,” said Dina.

“No, please, I must thank you for accepting the apology. It was shameful, the way they mobbed you. I saw it all from here.” He uncrossed his legs, and his toe nudged the cardboard sign, making it collapse. He straightened it and adjusted the supporting brick.

“From my seat here on the bench, there is much that I observe every day. And most of it makes me despair. But what else to expect, when judgement has fled to brutish beasts, and the country’s leaders have exchanged wisdom and good governance for cowardice and self-aggrandizement? Our society is decaying from the top downwards.”

He shifted to the edge of the ramshackle bench, making room for her on the less broken part of it. “Please, do sit down.”

Dina accepted, impressed by his speech and manners. She felt he was out of place in these surroundings. A tastefully appointed office with a mahogany desk, leather-upholstered chair, and well-stocked bookcases would have better suited him. “On this side of the courthouse everything is so calm,” she said.

“Yes, isn’t it nice? Families relaxing peacefully, passing the time till the Wheels of Justice grind out their cases. Who would believe that this beautiful locale is really the shabby theatre for rancour and revenge, the splintered stage where tragedies and farces are played out? Out here it looks more like a picnic ground than a battlefield. A few months ago I even witnessed a woman going into labour and giving birth right here, most happily. She didn’t want to go to hospital, didn’t want any more postponements of her case. She was my client. We won.”

“So you are also a practising lawyer?”

“Yes, indeed,” he pointed to the sign. “Fully qualified. But once upon a time, many years ago, when I was in college, in First Year Arts, my friends used to say I didn’t need to study, that I was already an LL.B.”

“How was that?”

“Lord of the Last Bench,” said Mr. Valmik, smiling. “They gave me this honorary degree because I always took the rearmost seat in the classroom – it gave me a good view of things. And I must confess, the location taught me more about human nature and justice than could be learned from the professors’ lectures.”

He touched the sheaf of pens in his shirt pocket as though to make sure they were all present and accounted for. They bristled formidably in their plastic protector, like a quiverful of arrows. “Now here I am, with a new degree: L.BB. – Lord of the Broken Bench. And my education continues.” He laughed, and Dina joined him politely. Their rickety seat shook.

“But why is it, Mr. Valmik, that you are not out in front like the other lawyers, trying to get clients?”

He directed his gaze into the mango tree and said, “I find that kind of behaviour utterly uncouth, quite
infra dig.”
Quickly he added, “It’s below my dignity,” worried that she might construe the Latinism as a form of snobbery.

“But if you just sit here, how can you make a living?”

“My living makes itself. A little at a time. Eventually people discover me. People like you, who are disgusted with those legal louts and tawdry touts. Of course, they are not all bad characters – just desperate for work.” He waved genially at a passing court clerk and touched his pens again. “Even if I had the temperament for vulgar conduct, my vocal disability would not let me compete in that loud contest. You see, I have a serious throat impediment. If I raise my voice, I lose it altogether.”

“Oh, how unfortunate.”

“No, not really,” Mr. Valmik reassured her. He considered genuine sympathy a precious commodity, and hated to see it squandered. “No, it matters not a jot to me. There is not much call these days for lawyers who can make their voices ring out sonorously through the courtroom, holding judge and jury spellbound in webs of brilliant oratory.” He chuckled. “No demand here for a Clarence Darrow – there are no more Scopes Monkey Trials taking place. Although monkeys there are in plenty, in every courtroom, willing to perform for bananas and peanuts.”

He sighed heavily, and his sarcasm was displaced by grief. “What are we to say, madam, what are we to think about the state of this nation? When the highest court in the land turns the Prime Minister’s guilt into innocence, then all this” – he indicated the imposing stone edifice – “this becomes a museum of cheap tricks, rather than the living, breathing law that strengthens the sinews of society.”

Touched by the weight of his anguish, Dina asked, “Why did the Supreme Court do that?”

“Who knows why, madam. Why is there disease and starvation and suffering? We can only answer the how and the where and the when of it. The Prime Minister cheats in the election, and the relevant law is promptly modified.
Ergo
, she is not guilty. We poor mortals have to accept that bygone events are beyond our clutch, while the Prime Minister performs juggling acts with time past.”

Mr. Valmik stopped suddenly, realizing that he was rambling while a potential client sat beside him. “But what about your case, madam? You seem like a veteran of this institution.”

“No, I’ve never been to court before.”

“Ah, then you have led a blessed life,” he murmured. “I don’t want to be inquisitive, but is there need for a lawyer?”

“Yes, it’s concerning my flat. The trouble started nineteen years ago, after my husband passed away.” She told him everything, starting with the landlord’s first notice a few months after Rustom’s death on their third wedding anniversary, and about the tailors, the paying guest, the rent-collector’s continuing harassment, the goondas’ threats, Beggarmaster’s protection, and Beggarmaster’s death.

Mr. Valmik steepled his fingertips and listened. He did not move once, not even to caress his beloved pens. She marvelled at how carefully he attended – almost as carefully as he spoke.

She finished, and he put his hands down. Then he said in his soft voice, which was beginning to turn hoarse, “It’s a very difficult situation. You know, madam, sometimes it may appear expeditious to act
ex curiar
Seeing her quizzical, he added, “That is, out of court. But in the end it leads to more problems. True, there are goondas galore in the wilderness of our time. After all, this is a Goonda Raj. So who can blame you for taking that route? Who would want to enter the soiled Temple of Justice, wherein lies the corpse of Justice, slain by her very guardians? And now her killers make mock of the sacred process, selling replicas of her blind virtue to the highest bidder.”

Dina began to wish Mr. Valmik would stop talking in this high-flown manner. It had been entertaining for a while but was rapidly becoming wearisome. How people loved to make speeches, she thought. Bombast and rhetoric infected the nation, from ministers to lawyers, rent-collectors to hair-collectors.

“So are you saying there is no hope?” she interrupted him.

“There is always hope – hope enough to balance our despair. Or we would be lost.”

Now he took out a writing pad from his briefcase, lovingly selected a pen from the well-stocked pocket, and began making notes. “Perhaps the ghost of Justice is still wandering around, willing to help us. If a decent judge hears our petition and grants the injunction, you will be safe till the case is tried. Your name, madam?”

“Mrs. Dalai. Dina Dalai. But how much do you charge?”

“Whatever you can afford to pay. We’ll worry later about that.” He jotted the landlord’s name and office address, and relevant details about the case history. “My advice to you is, don’t leave the flat unoccupied. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. And goondas are basically cowards. Is it possible to have someone, relatives or friends, stay with you?”

“There is no one.”

“Yes, never is, is there? Forgive my question.” He paused, then broke into a fearful coughing fit. “Excuse me,” he croaked, “I think I have exceeded my throat’s quota of conversation.”

“My goodness,” said Dina, “it sounds really bad.”

“And this is after treatment,” he said, in a tone that sounded like bragging. “You should have heard me a year ago. All I could do was squeak like a mouse.”

“But what was it that damaged your throat so badly? Were you in an accident or something?”

“In a manner of speaking,” he sighed. “After all, our lives are but a sequence of accidents – a clanking chain of chance events. A string of choices, casual or deliberate, which add up to that one big calamity we call life.”

Here he goes again, she thought. But his words did ring true. She tested them against her own experience. Random events controlled everything: her father’s death, when she was twelve. And the tailors’ entire lives. And Maneck – one minute coming back, next minute off to Dubai. She would probably never see him again, or Ishvar and Om. They came from nowhere into her life, and had vanished into nowhere.

Mr. Valmik, meanwhile, to answer her question, stroked his precious pens and began his story. Dina felt there was something slightly obscene about this habit of his. Still, touching pens was preferable to touching crotches, the way some men did, to push their things to left or right, or for no reason at all.

His voice was guttural as he told of the enthusiastic young student at law college whose promise was recognized early by his teachers, but who, after being called to the bar, craved peace and solitude, and found it in proofreading. “For twenty-five years I enjoyed the civilized companionship of words. Till one day, when my eyes turned allergic, and my world turned upside down.”

The rasping noises from his throat were so distorted that Dina was having trouble understanding him. But her ears became attuned to the rare timbres and bizarre frequencies. She realized that although Mr. Valmik depicted life as a sequence of accidents, there was nothing accidental about his expert narration. His sentences poured out like perfect seams, holding the garment of his story together without calling attention to the stitches. Was he aware of ordering the events for her? Perhaps not – perhaps the very act of telling created a natural design. Perhaps it was a knack that humans had, for cleaning up their untidy existences – a hidden survival weapon, like antibodies in the bloodstream.

As he spoke, he absently pulled out a fountain pen, unscrewed the cap, and put the nib to his nose. She watched, perplexed, as each nostril in turn was pressed shut and the ink fragrance inhaled deeply.

Fortified by his fix of Royal Blue, he continued, “Now I had to contend with the noisy world of morcha productions and protest marches, in order to put food in the tummy-tum-tum. Slogan-making and slogan-shouting became my new profession. And thus began the devastation of my vocal cords.”

The lawyer’s tale reminded her of her languishing patchwork quilt. Om’s wedding gift. And Mr. Valmik had his own fragments to fashion his oral quilt, which he was now reciting for her benefit. Like a conjuror pulling an endless chain of silk scarves from his mouth.

“Ultimately, it was just another chance event – my finding the sergeant-major when I did. Shouting was second nature to him. He shouted even when there was no need. His rawhide throat thrived on it, and I was finally able to give mine a rest.”

He stopped to offer her a cough lozenge; she declined. He popped one in his own mouth. “Such plans I had, to expand, to open branch offices in every big city. I envisioned buying a helicopter and training a unit of Flying Sloganeers. Wherever there was a strike or unrest, whenever a protest march was required, one phone call and my men would descend from the sky, banners at the ready.”

The entrepreneurial gleam in his eye faded with reluctance. “Unfortunately, during this Emergency, morchas and demonstrations are banned by the government. So for the past year I have sat on this broken bench, armed with my law degree. The circle is completed.”

He crunched up the half-sucked lozenge, having run out of patience with shifting it from cheek to cheek. “How much I have lost, in describing the circle. Ambition, solitude, words, eyesight, vocal cords. In fact, that is the central theme of my life story – loss. But isn’t it the same with all life stories? Loss is essential. Loss is part and parcel of that necessary calamity called life.”

She nodded, not quite convinced.

“Mind you, I’m not complaining. Thanks to some inexplicable universal guiding force, it is always the worthless things we lose – slough off, like a moulting snake. Losing, and losing again, is the very basis of the life process, till all we are left with is the bare essence of human existence.”

Now Dina grew extremely impatient with Mr. Valmik. This last bit sounded like a lot of tiresome nonsense. “The snake has a brand-new skin underneath,” she cut him off. “I would prefer not to lose my flat, unless a new one will rise in its place.”

Mr. Valmik looked as though he had been struck in his diaphragm. But he recovered quickly and smiled, appreciating her argument. “Very good. Very good indeed, Mrs. Dalai. That was a poor example I gave. And you caught me. Very good. And a good sense of humour too. One of the drawbacks of my profession is the total lack of humour. The Law is a grim, unsmiling thing. Not Justice, though. Justice is witty and whimsical and kind and caring.”

He picked up his signboard and packed it away, stowing the brick under the bench till he should need it again. He dusted its red powder off his hands and declaimed, “I will arise and go now, and go to write this plea, and a convincing petition build, of words and passion made.”

The strange diction made her regard Mr. Valmik curiously. She wondered if she had chosen the right lawyer after all.