Sodomy at the Court…

The walk home from Churchgate, past the deftly fenced figures of Sir Dinshaw Edulji Wacha, Mahadev Govind Ranade and Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy, round the bend at oval ground nearer the Bombay High Court, where the bus stands stood, with the eerie stridulation of crickets and croaking of frogs in the backdrop, always sent tingles of fear through his mind. With traffic - otherwise at day-time consistently regular and heavy - lessened to a few whizzing cars and even a stray pedestrian hard to come by, the air around was heavy with desolation, making it harder to hold back fearful thoughts that almost instantly appeared whenever he’d crossed this stretch after midnight. It seemed as if the night shadow of the High Court together with the vacuous

expanse of the oval ground, stirred a ghastly mixture. He’d take it upon himself to confront his fears, and walk instead of cabbing it home, for it also saved him money.

The croaks and stridulations which had grown to a loud creepy monotone and forced him to cross over to the footpath alongside the High Court, was replaced with a faint staccato noise like that of a boring drill. Alone and inching near the front gate of the High Court, the noise became a distinct snore. The gates at the front of the High Court were restricted to judges and was possibly the few courts in the world where Advocates and litigants were designedly consigned to enter from the rear.

The only way to distract himself from self-consuming thoughts was to soliloquize, and he instantly exclaimed loudly “No!”. “No”, he repeated louder. “This could not be. This was after all the sacrosanct quarter where justice lay. Neither ghost nor crime, nothing

sinister or nether worldly would dare seek sanctum here, even at night”, he said. No sooner did he utter out loud those comforting thoughts, the kind he was grown to consider truths, and which were imbued in him consciously by his mother, than there was an abrupt pause in the snoring. The sudden unexpected silence was eerier than croaks, stridulations or snores. Noises at daytime as revving of approaching cars or footsteps of a fellow pedestrian could not be picked by his ears strained to the wind, for consolation. It was as if the truth he uttered out of sheer fright than belief, stung the conscience of the snorer, and the consequent silence felt ridden with guilt. If silence is deafening, silence at night at that moment, was ear splitting. And then, again, the snoring began. He dared not spook himself further and quelled the thought to ascribe it to Sir Lawrence Hugh Jenkins, whose statue carved in marble stood askance as always, positioned to salute the extant judges who’d pass by every morning. Each time he tried to consciously stave off curiosity to make out the source of the snore, lest his incredulity in ghosts was put to end, the harder it became. The only other possible snorer, the statue of Sir Dinshah Fardunji Mulla, which guarded the exit, was too distant to make believe, and safely ruled out. Just as he set at solving the conundrum: who, if not the Justices in static state or himself, to attribute the snore, from above the snoring came a shuffle of feet over leaves and twigs, which had him frozen in tracks. He was surely not alone. Not that that cushioned the scare. It was easier to locate the shuffle, likely from and nearer to the alcove between the two gates along the boundary wall by the side of the footpath that enclosed a small municipal well. His pace already slow was a soft tread when he reached the well and saw an unclear silhouette of a figure which appeared of alien form. His widened pupils quickly dismissed the ethereal for real - the unsightly spectacle of two humans with their pants down to their knees, one man and the other less-man, spooning each other standing. “Oooh, aaahhhh, jaldiii” said the one with a coarse voice to the other. “Jaldiii”, it uttered in a pacy rough tone. Perhaps his short monologue, a while but not so distant away wasn’t loud or incisive enough to impede unnatural intercourse that was undoubtedly what was happening. The foyer of the court was better in view, where on rickety chair was spotted seated in discomfiture the snorer – a constable asleep on guard. The snore was less significant now, and the squelching, slapping of tummy on butt cheeks pronounced. The two were too involved or perhaps emboldened to notice him sneak a peek up-close.

The voyeur in him could never resist such opportunities, and sought support from the Justices whose eyes it somehow appeared were in fact open and directed at the live sex show, well resisting a blink and glinting in tacit approval, bordering on complicity. He sought to justify his perverse yet natural obsession with sneakily watching others in enjoyment, in the situational argument, “If judges could take refuge in rigidity of their position and structure, hold back from warranted striking of gavel upon sounding block, by weight of solidity of hands, as the act of voluntary carnal intercourse against the order of nature with man, woman or animal was committed within sight, then perhaps it wasn’t criminal after all.” That was reason for him to continue watching.

And as they stood mute witness to man and transvestite, in flagrante delicto, as money was swapped for public indulgence in the raw act of anal copulation under the deliberately unmindful eyes of a watchful constable, most likely feigning sleep for fee, as their copious bodily juices overflowed down the mosquito resistant well, the symbolism was justice as it’s become. He thought, could the maxim “innocent until proven guilty”, integral to English jurisprudence, have been the sticking point between the Justices of the improvised Division Bench, restraining them from taking suo motto cognizance, holding summary trail and acting as prosecution, jury and executioner or maybe the Statuettes of Lady Justice and the Lady of Mercy atop two central steeples of the Court were simply perched too high.

The supposed decriminalization of homosexuality in India years thereafter was perhaps a consequence of the incident.

Jacob Kadantot

Advocate