[This article was originally written to Justice.V. R. Krishna Iyer
(former Supreme Court Judge) on the eve of his 91st Birthday in the
year 2005]
I
heard about Justice.V.R. Krishna Iyer – the ideal, intellectual and the incarnation
of god breathing on earth for the maiden time when I was in my 1st
semester – the time when I commenced the jurisprudential scholarly odyssey in
the Law College located in the heart of cultural capital of Gods Own Country.
The more I heard about this phenomenal personality, the more was my insatiable
desire for me: to know him, to get acquaintance with his works and wisdom, in
the midst of a bit of awesomeness and amazedness contained in my heart. To
discover this human deity, his divinely dedication to the society; his
indelible donation to humanity; his enshrined life for the lowest, love for the
littlest and the law for the social justice portraying ever remembered history,
I searched the dusty books in the cobwebbed cupboards of our college library.
That was the dawn of my life in its erudite dynamic direction and the duck of
my lazy times of yore in its honesty dissection.
On
the way to write this article, I experienced that to discover a man is much
Herculean than discovering a no-mans-land. Notwithstanding that, I never turned
back, marching forward and endeavored to be ahead in the discovery of my god
in-depth.
The
first book I read authored by Justice.V. R. Krishna Iyer was Religion and Politics, where I
comprehended that “truth is the same though it may have various versions and
viewpoints”. Truth is tough, it’s finding tougher and if laboriously found will
make us free. Its from there, I tried hard to find myself; to find my finer
inner being; to realize my potential inferno so as to blaze it into life for
the future hope. It is from there, the ovule of passion for books and pleasure
for prolific writing started germinating deep-rooted me to the boundless al fresco. It is from there, the
extensive realization, the enlightened revelation and the enigmatic renaissance
within me took an outline, and the chase clasping the chain of my dreams
progressed profusely day-to-day overlooking my yesteryears flippancy and bygone
languid past.
The
flavor towards Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer’s singular collocation of dictions,
the oral rhyming alliterations, quoting of plural quotations and profound
insight to the history and posterity fascinated me, anchoring myself in it
forever, and never could I dodge from its cerebral gravity. What a charisma in
his mysterious words and marvelous deeds? I fell in love with his style of
semantics and novel neologisms, be it in his judgment or in his judicious
write-ups, enriching the horizon of my thinking, writing, and speaking. By
falling in love with these ‘would be legacy to humanity’ of Krishna Iyer’s,
actually I was rising, rising and rising to reach higher and wider skies of my
ambitious tomorrow reckoning with my aspirations, where his role is in
countless and cosmic calculate. Saying ‘Thanks’ to him would be an act
deserving neglect; only payback would be my accomplishment for the better cause
of this mankind or at least a petite contribution to this illustrious India.
Within
seven semesters in LLB, I covered all the books there in our college athenaeum
penned by Justice.V. R. Krishna Iyer. Numerically, its twelve books and out of
it one was his biography written by P. Ramaswamy titled, V. R. Krishna Iyer – The Living Legend. Some of my favorite prose
and passage from the read, I used to scribble in my scrapbook in order to quote
it whenever time necessitate for intellectualization. I was very fond of his
beauteous writing spat from his pen having a poetic and philosophical texture,
with extensive search and research transcendence, touching my naked fragile heart
stopping, and some acidic note boiling the spirit in my blood for the cause of
humankind and breathtaking prose positively haunting me to sleepless nights.
Really, no will believe it.
My
favorite book of his is Human Rights –
Its Dialectics and Dynamics, composed with the quill filled in historical,
political, emotional, theological, logical and legal ink. It is crammed with
the narration of gory annals of denying and defying the human rights to the
common, from the compassionate times of Christ to colonization by Columbus; and condensed
with the cruelty and animosity during World War period to the capitalistic
hegemony of the new millennium by the elitist class over the weak and meek in
diverse realm. It was an eye-opening attempt to bring the truth to reality and
reality to this extremity. In totality, it is the best read and heart felt book
for me until today. Just like that, the memories of all his books remain a
thunderbolt in the welkin of my wide little brain. All his rhythmic and
syllabic sentences were enlightening in lightening velocity and were
frightening, if I orate to the hearers, and brightening the readers if write in
that manner. Yes, the same is what I am doing now making the eyes of my readers
protrudes out.
On
the itinerary of these actions and exertions, the expectation of meeting the
living legend struck me as I had drunk sufficiently the nectar of his verbal
creations. My parents compelled me more than my conscience to meet him and seek
his blessings. This pressure for meeting him from within and without was there,
if I am right, since the summer of 2004 onwards. Nevertheless, how to get to
him was the question, which I did not know. Later, I contacted some of my
comrade friends who were having communist political reach in order to zero in
to his quarter. Even so, nothing came as helpful. In the interim, fortunately,
the Editor of our Law
College, one of my
friends, told me to take an interview of Justice. V. R. Krishna Iyer for
publishing it in the College Magazine. By knowing that, I started building
castles in air; preparing and framing questions; collecting materials needed
and told about this good news to my dear and near. Nearly, one month eluded by
that time. One day we ringed up to the residence of Krishna Iyer, requested to
his Personal Secretary and fixed a day for interview on 13th of
September 2005. in opposition, later on, time was too cruel to me as the Editor
dropped the plan due to some other technical rationale within his union,
bulldozing my erected castles in air, abandoning me in the Atlantic of orphaned
melancholy, feeling me rejected myself and was on the verge of fatal submerging
due to undue dejection. However, I never loosed my gargantuan hope keeping
these sanguine and sublime poetic expressions of Oliver Goldsmith as my
inspiration:
Hope, like the gleaming taper’s
light,
Adorns and cheers our
way;
And still, as darker
grows the night,
Emits a lighter ray.
Recovering and
reacting more optimistically, I planned to fix an appointment for the interview
with my personal interest, for which I ringed the heavens number – 0484-2370088
and pleaded with the Personal Secretary my wish and will. The date went on
procrastinated from September 13 to 18 and from September 18 to sine dine to
many reasons explicitly, Onam celebrations, state election and above all, with
tears in my eyes, Krishna Iyer’s ailing health as a part of his senescence.
My phone calls in bakers dozen were
all an attempt futile. Out of those many calls – in just two calls – I got to
converse with Krishna Iyer. When I heard my god’s divine voice for the first
time, it seemed like a beckon of a celestial vocalization in my heart of hearts
bordered in wonder; like a soothing sonata healing the wounded waiting of my
penchant, and raptures my rigorously echoing poignant soul unheard by everyone.
A day never to forget and a voice remembered forever in this lifetime – what
more I could portray?
Days passed by; scores of
engagements done; but the reason of ‘why’ I was engaged for two months did not
happen by. On the day when Indians all over the planet were in a festive mood
of Diwali, which fell on November 1, with my mother’s insistence, I simply
dialed the residence number of Justice. V. R. Krishna Iyer with sky-scraping
hopes. I do not know what to do, how to say or from where to say either at 11
a.m. or at 3 p.m. for only meeting Krishna Iyer, not more than 10 minutes, and
not for interviewing him. I was convinced without any further arguments; felt
absolutely on cloud nine by that call. With that ecstatic and euphoric mood,
from the next second onwards, I set and started for the next day’s great and
grand episode. A long waiting ended with a symptom and symphony of little
relief. I was looking forward with eagerness as never before persuading my
inner Lilliputian fear to end; patterning what to speak before him in
introspection, and was behind the next holy cockcrow to happen having an
insomniac night. When the neighborhood was bursting the crackers, the
neighborhood of my heart was too bursting with joy. When the world scintillated
for Diwali, my world too was scintillating for my own reasons.
In this context, since it is ideally
proper, let me excavate the mythological mantle, and decipher diverse legend
behind the Diwali festival evolved with plural regional customs and religious
credence being assimilating with it. At the very mention of Diwali, images,
crowd the mind with bursting firecrackers, coruscating diyas, offering gifts, toothsome confectionaries, new apparels etc.
These entailing images contain a rational and mythical tale at the rear. The
tale goes like this – the son of king Hima was doomed to die on the fourth day
of his nuptial tie by snakebite. To thwart this prediction, his wife lit lamps
all over the palazzo and laid oodles of ornaments at the portal. When the god
of death arrived there in the guise of a serpent, the dazzle of those brilliant
lights blinds his eyes, and he could not invade the prince’s chamber. Hence,
Diwali is a remembrance of this victory over prophesied bereavement. Moreover,
in North India, Diwali marks the return of
Rama to Ayodhya. On that stygian amavasya
night, the people of Ayodhya light up the route with rows of oil lamps to
welcome the princes. In remembrance of this wonderful event, lamps are lit, and
the festival bears today’s incandescent impact all over the world wherever
Indians inhabit, even an official declaration of a public holiday in the United States.
There is also a reference in the Jain custom that the day scripts the passing
into Nirvana of Mahavira. The lighting of the lamps is a symbolic material
succedaneum for the light that was extinguished with Mahavira’s demise. By
crossing various versions of the symbolic lightened lamps and revision of the
sensitive enlightened, my date with my god came on the amavasya of November
2, 2005 hoping finer befalling days in enlightenment from
thereafter.
On that auspicious day, I planned to
go by Sabari Express and meet Justice. V. R. Krishna Iyer in the afternoon at 3 p.m. since Kerala Express supposed
to reach at Palakkad in the morning was directed via Konkan route due to the Hyderabad deluge. In this
backdrop, how could I ignore to mention the pathetic fettle of the victimized
and the terrorized by such natural catastrophes? We witnessed the cicatrized
images and heard the helpless yelling recently in the conurbations of Bombay,
Bangalore and Chennai inundated under rain, cities of Pakistan lying under the
debris attributable to Mother Earths quavering, washed off countless hamlets in
America due to hurricane Katherine, Rita and Wilma, mounting the mourn and the
damage. Aside to all these, it is needless to mention the man-made apocalypses
like the horrendous atomic wars, terror-striking bomb blasts, environmental
hazards, vituperation of expanding scientific enlightenment etc. Are these the
testimony of the ongoing kaliyug
calling for a warning? Quo Vadis the
misguided humanity? Who will be our savior salvaging from the looming
Armageddon? Or is anyone drawing closer as the Messiah? Though keeping all
these haunting questions to a side, with the sacred blessings of my maternally
omnipotent mother, I embarked on the Sabari Express heading to Trivandrum, which was rolling behind time by
ninety minutes. Tenseness in a trivial scale was in me mainly due to the delayed
train, but by ignoring it, I gave more importance on the nearing of my dream on
the way. While all are aware of Indian Railways as a public sector known for
its common phenomenon of late arrival trains, it would be a convincing excuse
no matter what was my consoling signal from my exasperated brain. Along with
all these swooping thoughts, I contemplated in the hastening train also about
my numerous victimized brothers bewailing for their lost ones, for their broken
hopes and their traumatized dreams owing to hurricanes, havoc of seismic
tremors and horrifying heavy downpours. After all, it is in our lonesomeness,
our innovative and imaginative calisthenics take us beyond all creative
horizons, may be by the side of enlightened greenery or via the emotional
valley or all the way through the streets of past memory.
It was sharp 3 p.m., when I reached the gate of my Gods
abode named ‘Satgamaya’, which for me
was my ‘Destination Heaven’. At my first glance, it seemed a spot in complete
serenity though besides the vibrant M.G. Road; an old tile house in a pale
yellow, forlornly secluded, nonetheless located amidst the populated commercial
metropolis; and appeared as a place glistening with philosophic purity and
dainty divinity although in between the dirty and desecrated Ernakulam with its
tainted Arabian seashore.
When I entered directly into the
guest lounge, I could witness none in his Personal Secretaries chair rather
than with a number of cased photos of Krishna Iyer with great personalities who
had carved a niche in the history, few framed titles and honors, not many
gold-plated mementos, and lots of intellectual eerie silence. ‘Knock and the
door will be opened to you’ stroke a not in my mind at that time. As I knocked
the door, soon Krishna Iyer’s Personal Secretary came out eagerly from an
inside room. Thereafter, I told my purpose of being there and familiarized
myself to him. He said me to wait, and went inside Krishna Iyer’s chamber to
ask his leave. Meanwhile, I peeped in through the door since it was open and
saw for the first time – My God – who was writing something in his chamber; his
eyes fully plunged into the in-depth of the page with scribbled words,
surrounded by bulky books kept open over his spacious table. Within few
seconds, Personal Secretary came out and informed me to hang around, as Krishna
Iyer was busy preparing an article of great interest to be circulated on the
eve of Presidents arrival. With complete obedience, I waited observing
carefully my surroundings; got ready with the camera and requested the Personal
Secretary to take the snap, which he wholeheartedly agreed.
After a while, Personal Secretary
and I treaded in to my God’s sanctum
sanctorum. The walls of which, compactly clung with framed antique ‘black
and white’ photographs; the corner and fringes of the sanctum crammed in
bookshelves full of books and cabinets with vital documents; and floors of the
room floored in geriatric gray terrazzo, generating in total, a nostalgic
feeling as of a galleried museum. Within few minutes, the God got distracted
but not disturbed by the low decibel conversation between the Personal
Secretary and me. With a pleasant smile, I wished a namasthe and he too responded in the same way. I felt blessed by
that cosmic tone wishing me. Subsequently, I introduced myself and uttered my
long fervent yearning of seeing him face to face; how much I struggled to reach
there, and recounted briefly that I consider him as my god despite I being an
atheist. When he asked what my aspiration is, I replied to him that I wanted to
be a civil servant. By hearing that, he got elated and gave me a complimentary
cum startling smile: my toil rewarded, my heart bewitched and soul silently
pleased. My God presented me a book titled, Legal
Service Authorities Act – a Critique, authored by him. He wrote these words
inside the book before giving it to me:
“Rule of law must serve and
defend the rule of life.
Wish you a finer future”.
V. R.
Krishna Iyer
2 Nov 2005
The moment of
bestowing the book to me by Justice. V. R. Krishna Iyer was captured in the
camera by his Personal Secretary. I appealed to take one more photo with
Krishna Iyer holding his hand and hugging him, which too was clicked. With
taking permission of my God, I also osculated his divine feet by genuflecting
before him, and him blessing me: purifying my impurities, consoling my inner
core of my core, and wishing me a conquering great future. I doubted for a
jiffy that I was in a delusory verity or somewhat in a fictional terrain and
not in factual reality. Yet, I consciously felt, it was my best moment in my
entire life blissfully to hark back, for empathetically cherishing and at times
haughtily articulating to others. I thought such seconds come rare: for only
rarest of rare person get such blessings. That flashing time entered my
history, ineradicably imprinting in my memory and exquisitely blessing my
futurity. After everything was done, while coming out of the room, my eyes were
filled with indescribable tears: a usual miracle when our dreams come true. Is
it not?
Justice. V. R. Krishna Iyer is my
alpha and omega in all phases of my life. He is the beginning and the end of my
intellection, creation and creativity. His words are my lamp unto my feet and
his deeds my light unto my path. Devoid of his images in my imagination, I am
nothing and a void breathing aimlessly. His theory will be a paradigm to turn
over whenever my futurity requisites for. He is greater than the greatest gods
living in this world. Beyond doubt, Justice. V. R. Krishna Iyer is a living
legal luminary and more over a rarest of rare legendary species who had stepped
out of the legal lattices exploring truth and lifting the pennant of justice,
ever the world has come across. For me, words seem too small in order for encomium
about my God. Why to praise him? Because I pray him constantly, perceive him
reverentially and pursue him eternally. Yearning on the way to my God, I
comprehended how true this biblical message is:
“Ask and it shall be given to you; seek and
you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you”.
–
Bible, Mathew 7:7
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