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Soli and I passed out from the same law college, the Government Law College, Bombay, and were also fortunate to find a place in the same chambers, those of the most notable, but also the most humble giant amongst High Court advocates, Sir Jamshedji Kanga. So revered was he that he was the only advocate on whose death at the ripe old age of 94 the Bombay High Court remained closed as a mark of respect to his memory.
I was two years senior to Soli at the bar but he was two years my senior in matrimony! He married Zena before I married Bapsi! Each of us has long since celebrated not only 60 years at the bar, but our 60th wedding anniversary as well!
I was appointed the third law officer of the Union of India in May 1972, additional solicitor general of India, but resigned immediately after the June 1975 internal emergency. Soli has to his credit not only a stint as solicitor general of India; he went on to become attorney general of India not once, but on two separate occasions, first in 1989 for a year, and then in 1998 for five years. He is the only advocate from the chambers of Sir Jamshedji to have been appointed attorney general of India. He had an early start in the profession of practicing lawyers, topped by an early triumph as well. In 1967 he argued and won the case challenging the old Passport Act (of 1920) before a constitution bench presided over by one of India’s great judges, L. K. Subba Rao, then Chief Justice of India.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Soli has his own idiosyn­crasies and I have mine, but it is in the memory of old times — and they were happy times — that we often regale one another. Nowadays I often hear a constant refrain, soft but clear, from some colleagues at the bar: "When will these old fellows retire?” Well, truthfully, the answer is never. In fact, some years ago senior advocate Krishna Mani (an old friend who unfortunately is no more), when elected president of the Supreme Court Bar Association had written a letter of complaint to the then Chief Justice of India stating that "old members of the bar” (and he named them "like Jethmalani, Nariman and Sorabjee”) required to be protected in the corridors of the Supreme Court against the hordes of young advocates racing from court to court, adding that "something should be done about this.” Fortunately, the then Chief Justice, in his magnanimity, did not respond to Krishna Mani by writing back: "Well, ask the old dodderers to sit at home!”
Despite all our grunting and our grumbling about the increasing number of members that join the bar each year — jostling us, with their hustling and bustling, in the corridors of the court — we continue to look forward to the now-very-occasional argument in court — but more frequently regale ourselves with conversation and gossip in the law library and the lounge where the unwritten rule is that the laws of slander and defamation do not apply to whatever is said!
This book, a welcome initiative of the oldest publication of court judgments, the All India Reporter of Nagpur, containing Soli’s articles and speeches will help young members of the bar to understand and appreciate the thoughts and opinions of a man who in his prime had been at the pinnacle of the legal profession of practicing lawyers.