Court Rendezvous.

          Just because most things in India ‘take time’, especially in government offices, we assume nothing can or will happen on time. Or correctly. We’re pleasantly surprised when they do.

          I accompanied an advocate to Court one very rainy afternoon last month. I was as curious about the architecture of the building as the activities that went on within it, under its tile-clad partial-pyramid roof. Cataracts of rain-water veiled the open internal courtyard from us. Silent and unsmiling people glided to and fro, or stood against the walls or morosely shared sitting spaces on old wooden benches in the corridors. The penguin-inspired uniform of the legal fraternity was charmingly modified with frills, laces and embroidered stoles peeping out from underneath staid collars/well-cut jackets; expensive branded shoes gave away the likely incomes of the wearers. Everybody was carrying files. Frayed ones, plastic ones, some tied with red threads, others fastened with Velcro, nearly all bursting at the seams, even when housed in briefcases. Staplers and punches did the rounds, ignoring the dictum ‘never a lender or borrower be’. No different from the Railways reservation counters anywhere in India before which a million people per day, during working hours, repeat these two words endlessly: “Pen hai?”

          On my next trip, I had to co-ordinate with five persons whose signatures were required on a document, on the same date and time. Not sure whether the process would take two minutes or hours, I prepared them for four of the latter. “Between 1:30 and 5:30, be there,” I advised. Court matters are far easier to tackle than getting five busy people together on the same day, same time, from various places.

The first ‘witness’ was held up on the Pune-Mumbai highway because of the rolling-stones incident. She missed her flight to Goa. Worse, the repaired hip that she had very severely injured in last year’s accident couldn’t take any more travel, so she couldn’t come. Two years of co-ordination and Providence threw a lousy card, I thought. She had to be de-listed and replaced asap with someone else, with hours to spare. An application had to be typed and presented to the judge before a fresh oath was typed. So much running around; no one’s fault. The second had combined this official trip with a pleasure do with her friends. The third was suffering from temporary but severe digestion and was distressed to discover yet again that tax-payers’ money didn’t go into building clean toilets in public office buildings in spite of NaMo’s assurances of a Swatchha Bharat. The fourth was an elderly gent who had driven down from Kolhapur (seven hours of driving for three seconds of signing, then seven hours of driving back). The fifth was a kindly, respectable local who had taken off from his busy schedule. The replacement of the first ‘witness’ was a doctor who, proving the idiom if things can go wrong they will, had to tackle an emergency in the Operation Theatre at the very time we should have been wheeling towards the Court.

I sang a parody, “Get me to the Court on time”, as we ate cling-wrapped lunch and drank tetra-packed juices in the car.

As we approached the Court, we faced a nightmare: parking. Goans in Goa aren’t like Goans in Canada/the UK/Mumbai. We’re angles-challenged. The word ‘parallel’ is restricted to our maths’ classes and dictation tests. A person with OCD would get a nervous breakdown if s/he were to see vehicles placed hither, thither, a bit crooked, and sometimes jutting out so passing traffic curves to avoid hitting its bumper. The level of how civilized we are can be gauged by the fact that no one quarrels or honks over such untidiness. Maybe we’re conditioned to accept untidiness. We aimlessly cruised along, lane by narrow lane, until someone vacated a slot. We were worried we were late.

Our advocate assured us that it was good that we were late by over an hour, else we’d be waiting in Court instead of at home. Turned out all we had to walk to the clerk’s office and one at a time the witnesses who had taken so much trouble to come all the way had to sign on the document and in minutes the job was done. We’d barely introduced ourselves to the witnesses and the witnesses to each other, standing in the passage outside the clerk’s door, when we were told: ok, we could go.

It was all over in less than fifteen minutes. The years of finding out what had to be done, the months of getting convenient dates and times, the days of anticipation, the hours leading to the Court were over. Felt like the last final-exam paper or a formal music program or sports’ match had ended. Each went his/her own way. I felt bad for the Kolhapuri gentleman who did a family-duty, came a long, long way for a very brief Court rendezvous.

My only such experience, but am told there are people who spend a lifetime making trips like these. Phew, some stamina they must have.

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