Aarushi

by Avirook Sen

  5 Dec: I should be able to start the dental clinic in a day or two but still nothing for Nupur to do. How will she pass the time?

  7 Dec: Went off to the hospital to arrange for a few things there. Got X-ray installed and meanwhile got a call for meeting Nupur. Waited for at least one hour before she came.

  Met Mantriji and saw the place where table tennis is played. Maybe I’ll play tomorrow. Could not play anywhere, now playing in jail.

  After I came back, everyone got a rude shock. Two new inmates were unceremoniously thrown out of the barracks. That’s to remind us that we are in jail and nothing can be taken for granted. Your ego should be thrown out of the window.

  8 Dec: Will try and meet Nupur. Wonder what happened with the appeal. The complete lack of information and knowing that this can be endless leaves one with a very bad feeling.

  6.10 pm [the same day] Seems as if the lawyers are not doing anything. Tanveer also seems busy with himself and so does Rebecca. Don’t know what to do.

  9 Dec: It’s been two weeks in jail. Tanveer has still not worked out the appeal. Not even started. He’s obviously in no hurry to get us out or he thinks that it is now not possible.

  Miss Aaru so much and that time and our life. People talk about their children and what they are doing. They come and meet them in jail. But for us, nothing.

  10 Dec: Met Nupur in the afternoon. It’s really strange what life has dealt us. But this is what it is. Just thank God for what he is giving us in this situation.

  12 Dec: Went to the hospital and checked out all the stuff. Met with the law mantri since deputy jailer had called me there. Felt like some sort of an animal in a zoo whom people want to see.

  13 Dec: Did the composite fillings of the deputy jailer.

  Sapna, bhaiya and Vibha didi had come. Sat with them for a while. They were encouraging and said that by April we should be out.

  Came back to the barracks at about 5.30 and sat with the docs, Yadav and Verma. Dr Yadav was wearing a langot and we had a laugh about that. Laughed after quite a while. It’s so strange, I’m laughing even in jail.

  16 Dec: Very cold today. Lot of fog. It will be difficult to have a bath again, but have to. Hope someone comes to meet.

  18 Dec: This is the 25th year of our marriage and we will celebrate 25 years on the 19th of January. Could anybody imagine where we would be on our 25th anniversary? No Aaru, no house, no clinic, no money, and sitting in jail for something we haven’t done.

  Nupur said they were getting food from the bhandara and food from the canteen had been stopped because of some fighting. She looked hungry and it’s really a shame what God is making us go through. Even looking forward to some food now.

  19 Dec: Just kept daydreaming of what would happen if the incident had not happened. Miss Aaru so much. Wonder where she is, and what she would feel if she saw us like this. Just no way to prove innocence. No one has proved anything in this case. Just that they are not satisfied by our reply.

  21 Dec: When I look at the paper there are so many things that Aaru would have liked, so much that she would have done. She left even without saying goodbye.

  24 Dec: Last night there was some issue regarding Sudhir and Jagdish. Never imagined we would be in such surroundings. Completely unbelievable.

  Met Nupur after about 12 pm for a while in the garden and then met the two lawyers Sisodia and Satyaketu. Now they talk about not doing it in front of Shyam Lal, when everything is done. They never put their foot down earlier. That’s the problem with lawyers. They put all decisions on the client and then say, we told you so.

  25 Dec: Nupur was supposed to come in the afternoon but it was not allowed. Hope she manages to eat.

  Today there is a special dinner of aloo mattar, zeera rice, methi aloo, kaddu and puri, and after that sweet dish (kheer). Trying to make the jail clinic into a good clinic.

  26 Dec: Everyone has just disappeared, enjoying the New Year. Not one has the time to see us.

  28 Dec: Nupur was looking okay today. It’s really strange how she bears Aaru’s loss. She used to constantly be with her.

  30 Dec: Met Nupur’s dad and mom today after meeting Nupur. Both were looking quite down. Dad was looking old, and didn’t look like he was comprehending much. What this has done to our family. We are destroyed. We were destroyed by Aaru’s loss and he has completely destroyed us by this kind of verdict.

  31 Dec: Shashikantji and Guptaji are still relaxing in bed. Birbal is doing exercise, while Mantriji is walking vigorously. The day, as usual, has started.

  1 Jan 2014: I got up to 2014. Aaru never even saw 2009.

  Today is Papa’s birthday. Also wonder what he would say to what we are going through. I am thankful that he’s not there to see this, but I miss his presence.

  3 Jan: Sapna came and saw how Nupur stayed, and was shocked. She came to arrange for a satsang.

  I hope the lawyers work on the appeal with unity. No one is affected by this except us.

  4 Jan: Everybody is spending time in this barrack, but they will all go free before me. But doesn’t matter, have the strength of mind to face any situation, and must give the same to Nupur also.

  Dinesh is expected tomorrow, so I hope for some information. At least we know that there is someone outside to take care of our interests and who cares.

  5 Jan: Some people and Parminder Awana, the cricketer [of the IPL’s Kings XI Punjab], came. They were made to meet me, really don’t know why. How am I supposed to react? Obviously some of them think I’m a criminal. This is such a strange situation.

  10 Jan: Very cold, fog entering barracks.

  By the time I get up Dr Verma is up and Mr Gupta is taking a walk, he’s diabetic so it is essential to do that. Mantriji is sleeping.

  (Evening)

  Miss Aaru so much. Can’t imagine she’s no more. She braved a lot. And she had to suffer so much. I can feel the pain that she must have felt, and it leaves me helpless. I couldn’t help her at all.

  ***

  Shyam Lal, Advocate

  I met Shyam Lal three and a half months after the verdict, in his chamber in the Allahabad High Court. In Ghaziabad, Lal would be dwarfed by his chair, and hidden by the large desk in front of him. Here in the Allahabad High Court, he just sat across an ordinary table, the kind that could be found in every chamber down the crowded corridor, its legs stained with betel juice, with a man in a black coat sitting behind it.

  Shyam Lal smiled. What did I want with him? ‘The bail hearing is tomorrow,’ he said, ‘why don’t you just attend that? That will be enough.’ I explained to him that I was writing a book and that it was vital that I interviewed him. In the end, he agreed to meet me and be interviewed that evening, in his house in Jhalwa, a poorly lit part of Allahabad that is being rapidly taken over by new housing with charmingly descriptive names. Shyam Lal lived with his family in a part designated ‘mini HIG’ (high income group), as though galloping real estate prices had cut ‘high’ income down to size.

  A smog of suspended concrete dust from half-constructed homes hung in the air, lighting up only bits of the streets. Addresses were difficult to find.

  The house was new, and close to a street light. Shyam Lal stepped out on to the small porch to welcome me. We sat in the first room: the lawyers’ chambers he shared with his son Ashutosh, whose mainstay was also criminal law. Its shelves were lined with bound Supreme Court case records, but weren’t full. Many of the volumes were still sealed in plastic covers—the classic signs of a practice that was yet to take off.

  ***

  In the days after the verdict on 25 November 2013, Judge Shyam Lal exiled himself from the media. He turned down every request to appear on television or be interviewed for print. Having met him on some occasions in his office, and observed him in the courtroom he presided over, I had formed some opinions about the man. He was someone who worked very hard, took pride in what he did.

  Lal was born in a village 18 kilometres from Chitrakoot. ‘This is the place where
Lord Rama was in exile. This is also the place of Tulsidas. My village name is Sarayna.’

  He attended the primary school there. It was like any other subdivisional primary school. The medium of instruction was, of course, Hindi. ‘But I have command in both the languages, English, Hindi.’ He would keep reminding me of this through the conversation, but now he reached for a paper on his desk and pushed it towards me.

  It was a court order. He had just secured bail for a client in an attempt-to-murder case; he appeared pleased with his day’s work.

  I was just beginning to ask him how different it was for him to start practising post-retirement when his phone rang. It was a client, but one with whom Shyam Lal shared a familiarity. I could hear only one side of the conversation, and it sounded like a man boasting of his connections.

  ‘Aisa hai, brother, isi Holi mein jaoonga Justice S.K. Singh ke paas jaoonga . . .’

  There was concern at the other end. Holi was a week away: it would be too late to approach Chief Justice Singh, as the ‘matter’ would already have been decided upon.

  Shyam Lal, who had been in the system long enough, wasn’t convinced: ‘Tab tak kanhaan taye ho jayega?’

  ‘Brother’ informed him that an order would come in a day or two—the meeting would have to be sooner.

  ‘Theek hai, kal main lunch mein milta hoon, Justice S.K. Singh se . . . He will be seized of every fact. I will convey him. Mil ke shyam ko aap ko batata . . . theek hai, brother?’ (Okay, I’ll meet Justice S.K. Singh for lunch tomorrow and then tell you . . . okay, brother?)

  Chief Justice S.K. Singh was in fact a Patna judge. He had been transferred to Allahabad, before being elevated to the Supreme Court.

  We returned to the topic of our conversation: him. His elder brother was already in Allahabad when he arrived in 1971. Their father was a ‘simple farmer, 8th pass’ but always inspired his sons, said Shyam Lal, instilling in them the importance of hard work. He read English literature, Hindi literature and Hindi for his bachelor’s degree, continuing on to a master’s in English literature. By 1975, this was done, and he began studying law.

  Law was his thing; he became animated as he spoke about completing his degree: ‘Mean-the-while, mean-the-while I started my practice in Allahabad, but fortunately I got the government job, as upper division assistant in the civil secretariat. I continued there for six years.’

  And through these years, he repeatedly applied for competitive government jobs of higher station. In 1978, he got through the written exam, but stumbled at the interview stage. This would happen again.

  ‘In 1983 I topped in the written exam, but in the interview, not very good marks were given. So I did not get the post of deputy collector. Rather I was given job like inspector of jails, district inspector of schools, etc. I wanted deputy collector.

  ‘In the same year I also got my selection in the munsib . . . you know munsib? Munsib means one who does justice. Then my guru was Mr R.K. Agarwal, since deceased . . . he advised me to join judicial service. Because of my temperament. He was knowing it very well. That I cannot succumb to any person, whosoever he may be.

  ‘Even if the God will say me . . . ki you do this, if my conscience does not permit I will never do, whatever the consequences may be.

  ‘Nineteen eighty-five, 5th August, I joined up judicial service having secured 4th position. I was sent for training to administrative training institute, Nainital . . . you see the photograph there . . . this one, it has got faded now . . .’

  The photograph was indeed faded, and scabs on it obliterated some of Shyam Lal’s coursemates. It was placed above a high bookshelf behind him. I looked at it blankly, my mind summing up this man’s entry into the judicial services: the clerk burning the proverbial midnight oil to rise above his station. The repeated failures at the interview stage where, to a discerning selection panel, a single ‘mean-the-while’ would mean the end of prospects, specially if it was preceded, as I suspected it was, by the pathological need to say he had command over English. After three months’ training, he entered the judiciary, where his ‘temperament’ found its vessel.

  The Aarushi case gave Shyam Lal the opportunity to write a judgement which would be widely read, one that he would be remembered for. And one that, most crucially, would be in English. The opening lines of the most awaited murder trial judgement in modern India were:

  The cynosure of judicial determination is the fluctuating fortunes of the dentist couple Dr. Rajesh Talwar and Dr. Nupur Talwar, who have been arraigned for committing and secreting as also deracinating the evidence of commission of the murder of their own adolescent daughter—a beaut damsel and sole heiress Ms. Aarushi and hapless domestic aide Hemraj, who had migrated to India from neighbouring Nepal to eke out living and attended routinely to the chores of domestic drudgery at the house of their masters.

  The high colour style continued through the text. The victims were ‘jugulated’. (At one time, jugulated did indeed mean killing by cutting the throat, but this was about 400 years ago.) The crime was ‘fiendish and flagitious’. On the morning of the discovery of Aarushi’s body, neighbours heard ‘ululation’ and ‘boohoo’. And though Rajesh Talwar was wearing a T-shirt and ‘half pant’, Nupur Talwar wasn’t merely in a nightdress, she ‘was wearing peignoir’, as the ‘bucolic’ maid Bharti arrived on the scene that morning.

  An entire document seemed to have been written with Shyam Lal’s favourite refrain playing in the background: ‘I have command in English.’ At times this became ridiculous: there were phrases like ‘warp and whoof’; Aarushi’s bag was filled with ‘whim wams’. And, believe it or not: ‘to repeat at the cost of repetition’.

  Then there were my favourites: synonyms for penis.

  Hemraj’s ‘willy was turgid’; his ‘pecker was swollen’.

  ‘What were you thinking when you used words like willy and pecker in your judgement?’

  Lal betrayed a little discomfort, and then smiled and had a question of his own: ‘Do you think it was not proper?’

  ‘I just want to understand why you would use these words in a judgement . . .’

  ‘There was no special reason.’

  ‘But you once told me that you think about every word you write, for appropriateness . . . so you must have thought about this.’

  ‘Yes, yes, certainly.’

  ‘So why did you use those words?’

  ‘Was it not proper?’

  ‘I found it odd . . .’

  ‘This is your perception . . .’

  ‘Yes, it is. You didn’t find it odd to be using these words?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you seen it used in any other judgements?’

  ‘Look, this is very difficult . . . how can I say, where I might have seen this . . . kahin na kahin to padha . . . dekha isko . . .’

  ‘But synonyms for penis aren’t exactly common in judgements . . . do you use these words in your daily dealings?’

  ‘Why not! Dekhiye . . . I told you that I have done my MA in English literature . . . I know many words like this . . .’

  I realized, talking to him that night, that this wasn’t about semantics, or about the correct use or otherwise of the language. Profound as the consequences of that can be (we have only to look at the Supreme Court’s poorly drafted Hindutva judgements of 1994), there was something deeper at play. And ‘command in English’ was a big part of it.

  Shyam Lal was excluded from the ‘privilege’ of English early on in life. But he believed he had overcome this handicap. This was reflected in his repeated assertions that he had command over English.

  To those, like the Talwars, who he felt were more equal than he would like them to be, he had ‘English’ reactions. These were expressed in scathing (if often incomprehensible) attacks in orders he passed through the trial.

  Beneath all this, there were two things about Shyam Lal which became clear in interactions outside his court. The first was his celebration of his eccentricities—some of which
have been mentioned earlier—and his belief that all of them were virtues, that they made him, somehow, ‘better’ than everyone else. That night in Allahabad, he reeled off a few:

  ‘I have hardly seen four or five films in my whole life . . . My entertainment, my joy is in law journals . . . I have never been on an aircraft . . . I have not been to any metro except Delhi. I have never gone to Kolkata, Mumbai, Madras. Abroad, no question, I don’t even have a passport.

  ‘I have taken no holidays . . . my father had said “work is worship”. I have not taken medical leave in entire service life.’

  But there were underlying aspirations. As Shyam Lal repeated his biodata to me, telling me about postings in Farrukhabad, Kanauj, Bareilly, Ghaziabad and so on, he made a special mention of his shortest posting. It was in Mohammedabad, Ghazipur district. ‘I stayed only one and half months.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I applied for transfer on ground that there was no English medium school, for my children.’ Shyam Lal’s request was granted.

  Lal’s obsession with English remained the theme of our conversation.

  ‘High court ka judgements nahin padhta hoon . . . dekhiye . . . saare Supreme Court ke cases hain . . . Mere paas Hindi ke kitaabein shayad hi koi mile . . . saare English ke honge . . .’ (I don’t read high court judgements . . . see . . . there are so many Supreme Court cases . . . you might not find books in Hindi here . . . all are in English).

  ‘What are you reading now?’ I asked.

  ‘Time kahan hai?’ He pointed to a small pile of papers. ‘Jab time milta sirf law hi padhta hoon.’

  ‘But your vocabulary . . .’

  ‘I have read Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, Tale of Two Cities, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Milton, Dryden, Shelley, Keats.’

  ‘So you liked the Romantic poets? Who was your favourite?’

  ‘I am giving the reply what you want to elicit from me . . . I have studied Rape of the Lock . . . that is a mock epic, written by Dryden, it is a very good novel . . . He had said “coffee makes a politician wiser”.’