Justice Seema Aunty
Patch-making, Supreme Court style
The mandap too often turns into a fractious mandi. Unsavoury, but not unexpected because in Indian terminology, 'market' usually comes after 'marriage'. The Big Fat Desi Shaadi is often followed by Big Fat Messy Sequel, which is why both are the staple of big and small screens. This may or may not be the 'Kyunki' behind feisty Smriti Irani returning to the avatar that made her role model of saas and bahu alike. Not that her later stomping ground was really different. Politics makes as strange bedfellows as do faulty horoscopes, and many netas go in for divorce, and stick with their new party provided it keeps them in the bungalows to which they want to be accustomed.
So it was only a matter of time before lofty Supreme Court began functioning like lowly family court. It happened thrice last Friday, the judges sounding more like life-honed Chandrika chachi, or standard-issue Agony Aunt. In one, they ticked off an Indian ambassador who carelessly acquired two wives. The second involved a decorated IAF pilot — veteran of Balakot bombing — and his wife who were strafing each other ; the Bench soothingly told them to reconcile, saying, 'You are not enemies.' The third hit a target more obdurate than cross-border terrorism.
It dealt with the major cause of joint-family fracture: monster-in-law. In my Mumbai Mirror 'Giving Gyan' column, I constantly had to mollify desperate wives for whom 'The Other Woman' was not some sassy siren but scheming saas. Most Indian men being Mama's boys – and mamas using every ploy to keep them so – the son chooses to maintain the peace by siding with her. He says: 'After all, so much Ma has suffered for me. Besides, she won't be among us for long, no?' The first reasoning is so unmindful of the bahu's suffering that — finally fed up — she's the one who fulfils the second. Justices BV Nagarathna and KV Viswanathan admirably counselled this 'dutiful son' to hear out his wife's POV, and respect her feelings as well.
Honourable SC judges won't have to return home to face the hellish fury of a mother-in-law scorned. But Justice Nagarathna repeated the sensitivity she advised last February while reinstating two callously dismissed women judicial officers in MP. Such a desirable change from patriarchal bilge spewed from more backward benches.
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