Everyday I get to hear young lawyers saying ‘Sir, I belong to a middle class family.’
Then I ask them ‘every family has one father, one mother and some children. What is a middle class family ?’/1 Trust me, there is nothing like middle class. It is always the thinking. If you think middle class, you are middle class. It has nothing to do with your richness or poverty. It has nothing to do with your bank balance. If you don’t think middle class, you are not middle class./2

Shanti Bhushan, Ram Jethmalani, FS Nariman, Anil Divan and Rajinder Sachar have been great lawyers. One thing common amongst them was that they were perpetual dissidents - always unhappy with the system. Secularism was always a basic feature of their body Constitution./1 Shanti Bhushan was critical of the BJP for a good part of his life. But when Bhartiya Janata Party was founded in 1980, Shanti Bhushan was Vice President of the BJP. I think Ram Jethmalani was also the Vice President. /2

Some two years back, a retired High Court Judge came to our office.She was our respected colleague at the Bar. She told me that her son was suffering from Cancer. Her husband was 87 years old and they had exhausted all their savings on the sons’s treatment. /1 The family had deposited Rs.15 lacs with a builder for a project in Greater Noida. The builder did not complete the project. He was not refunding the money. She sought my help for refund of money so that they could pay for the treatment of the son./2

I remember an instance. Justice E.S.Venkataramiah was sitting with Justice D.A.Desai. Justice Desai was always pro landlord. Desai would even roughshod in Court. He did not know the mettle of Justice Venkataramiah. /1 Justice Desai started dictating the order without consulting Justice Venkataramiah. J.Venkataramiah told in open Court ‘This is not a Court of Landlord or a Court of Tenant. It’s a Court of law’. With this, J.Venkataramiah stood up and left the Court. J.Desai too had to leave./2