by Anuj Agrawal.“Why are there so many women here?” I ask myself. I am sitting on one of the benches outside Court No.4 in the Bandra Family Court in Bombay. A friend of mine is about to put an amicable end to his marriage (such “amicable ends” are legal fiction mind you) and I am here to provide moral support. I am sitting outside the courtroom, watching the policeman shush people who dare pull out their mobile phones. I am watching the closely held children stare at the ceiling and I can smell the fear, the anger and the excitement which all courts have. And I am asking myself the same question over and over again: “Why are there so many women lawyers? here?”.Before you castigate me as being sexist, or worse, a gentleman, let me explain the reasons behind the question. In the field of litigation, women lawyers are grossly outnumbered. Step into any court of this fine nation and you will be struck by how few women there are. And it is not as if things improve the higher you climb up the judicial ladder. For instance, a brief glance at the list of Senior Advocates in the Supreme Court throws some interesting results. This short note on the number of women in the higher judiciary does not throw any surprises..But the Bandra court seems to be an exception to this rule. “Do women have some characteristics which make them better at family law? More empathy perhaps? Are there some traits that make women inherently good family lawyers?” I posed this question to three of the city’s lawyers and this is what they had to say..x-x-x.“What a silly question”, she mutters under her breath, loud enough so that I can hear it quite clearly. There is no scorn in her voice and there is no sense of indulgence either. She is not stating an opinion; rather she is stating a fact. I quite like that. I also get the impression that she has the ability to see through bullshit in seconds. In other words, her juniors must need to be extremely sharp..Veena Gowda is, by all means, a very interesting person. When I stole thirty minutes of her time at her Bandra office, she told me a bit about her journey from law school (NLS Class of ’95) to handling domestic violence matters in Bombay. Veena is a “feminist lawyer” (“I do not represent male clients”) and worked with renowned NGO Majlis for close to a decade before branching out on her own..I ask her about the perception that family law is a relatively straightforward branch of law and she nods her head in disapproval. “The problem is that family law is often approached as a ‘soft’ law. I have friends who ask me, ‘How complicated can it get?’ ….There is a very condescending way of looking at family law”. In fact, when she first came to the Family Court, she was disappointed by the fact that a disproportionate number of lawyers were women..Veena told me that matrimonial disputes often raise tremendously complicated questions of law and, more importantly, practical implementation. For instance it is often extremely difficult to trace the husband’s actual income; property is often in the names of the in-laws etc. These problems, says Veena, are compounded by the fact that the concept of “matrimonial property” has no legal recognition..-x-x-x.I am sitting on the bench outside the courtroom and I am looking at tiny four-year old as he clutches at his mother’s dupatta. And I am reminded of my first “real” internship of watching a tiny kid in brightly coloured clothes sit on a giant sofa and draw with crayons. Even as his mother shivered in fright and told her lawyer about the abusive husband. And the husband pacing up and down on the road outside, glaring at the lawyer every now and then but too cowardly to do much else..-x-x-x-.“I actually wanted to do criminal law, but my friends advised me against it, saying it won’t be safe for women. Then I found a good senior in Mrs. Mrunalini Deshmukh, a good team to work with and so I stayed. I certainly don’t regret the decision”. Every once in a while, she will break into a slightly impish smile..I am having a cup of tea with Seema Gajakos in the relatively swanky canteen (it has an AC section) of the Family Court. Seema has been practicing in the Family Court since 2000 and says that a good family court lawyer is one who can identify the factors in a matrimonial dispute which need to be addressed..She tells me that when the Family Courts were first established, they were definitely pro-women. “It was one of the few forums” says Seema, “where women felt that they could open up and have someone address their problems.” I am reminded of Richard Sorabjee’s book on his grand-aunt Cornelia Sorabjee, who was quite literally one of the earliest women lawyers in the country. He writes of how Cornelia’s gender allowed her access to queens and princesses, access which had been denied to men by the practice of purdah..I ask her if it she ever finds herself identifying with the client, placing her own self in the client’s shoes. Her answer is quite simple: “You can’t identify with the client. You should not”.-x-x-x-.My friend is standing in court and the judge is asking the same questions that all judges do in such matters. Do you know that this is the final stage? Are you sure you know what you are doing? My friend looks down for a brief moment and nods his head, the words dying a quick death in his throat..-x-x-x.Archita Jani, like more than a few lawyers, works from home. This means that client discussions take place in the family living room, and garrulous clients must be juggled with the same skill required to ensure that the day’s dinner is to everyone’s liking..Even though Archita got her LLB in 1980, it was only a dozen years after her marriage that she actually began to practice in 1995. She comes from a family of lawyers, quite literally. Her husband, her sons and her daughters-in law are all lawyers..Archita says that juggling both family and work can be quite a task at times “When someone in family falls sick, then things get difficult….When my husband had to undergo a heart operation, I could not work for nearly a month”..I find it odd that while all three lawyers talk about maintaining a distance with their clients, all three admit that sometimes even their battle hardened hearts tend to melt at times. “There was a client who had a four and a half month child, whose father-in-law was molesting her.” Archita recounts. The client eventually left her home and started working at a hair salon, earning just enough to feed her child. And now the same woman is running her own beauty parlour. “Whenever I am feeling down,” says Archita, “I think of her”..-x-x-x-.I am standing in another court far, far away and the two parents are standing before the Judge. The Judge is asking them how long they plan on fighting each other and whether they have spared even a moment’s thought towards the fate of their children. “Don’t you want them to lead a life of happiness”, he asks them and there is absolute silence in the court. .-x-x-x.The family courts are where some of the most emotional battles are fought in public view, where the most hurtful accusations are laid out for the world to see and where lovers and friends stoop to the lowest lows to get what they want. Doesn’t such emotionally volatile scenes affect them?.“Custody cases are the worst”, Seema tells me, “they disturb me even now.” She says that the most she can do, as a lawyer, is to make the parents understand that they need to act in the best interest of the child. Veena offers a similar solution: she tells her client that there is no need to be unreasonable. “After all, it is the child’s interest which ought to be taken into consideration.”.Archita also says that custody disputes continue to bother her, even after nearly two decades in the profession. “You become tough as time passes” she says but there are certain cases which continue to disturb her..But coming back to the question: Why are there so many women lawyers practicing here?.Seema offers a fairly practical answer to this question: there is only one family court in all of Bombay. “A family court lawyer does not have to run from one court complex to another”, she says and this is factor which must be attractive for women who also have to manage a household. Veena admits that there are certain aspects of matrimonial life which are better understood by women. Furthermore, women are far more willing to open up to other women. Archita agrees. “They are more comfortable talking to me than a man. It is easier for them to share details of their personal lives” she tells me..There are certain challenges though. As Seema says, a lot of issues cannot be proved by documentary evidence alone (such as mental abuse or infidelity) and hence “the skills of trial are very necessary”, says Seema. Supporting what Veena had told me earlier, Seema says that recovery of streedhan can be an extremely difficult process. “Once the wife is driven out of the house”, she says, “such things can become very hard.”.-x-x-x-.The last of the formalities have been completed and I am walking down the steps of the Family Court with my friend and I can’t help but admire the people who come here every day and battle it out. I admire those who can manage both work and home. And I admire those who are back here, day after day, making a living. As Veena puts it, “A lot of women work from within the court or from their homes…but then that is Bombay for you, a real survivor’s city.”.-x-x-x-
by Anuj Agrawal.“Why are there so many women here?” I ask myself. I am sitting on one of the benches outside Court No.4 in the Bandra Family Court in Bombay. A friend of mine is about to put an amicable end to his marriage (such “amicable ends” are legal fiction mind you) and I am here to provide moral support. I am sitting outside the courtroom, watching the policeman shush people who dare pull out their mobile phones. I am watching the closely held children stare at the ceiling and I can smell the fear, the anger and the excitement which all courts have. And I am asking myself the same question over and over again: “Why are there so many women lawyers? here?”.Before you castigate me as being sexist, or worse, a gentleman, let me explain the reasons behind the question. In the field of litigation, women lawyers are grossly outnumbered. Step into any court of this fine nation and you will be struck by how few women there are. And it is not as if things improve the higher you climb up the judicial ladder. For instance, a brief glance at the list of Senior Advocates in the Supreme Court throws some interesting results. This short note on the number of women in the higher judiciary does not throw any surprises..But the Bandra court seems to be an exception to this rule. “Do women have some characteristics which make them better at family law? More empathy perhaps? Are there some traits that make women inherently good family lawyers?” I posed this question to three of the city’s lawyers and this is what they had to say..x-x-x.“What a silly question”, she mutters under her breath, loud enough so that I can hear it quite clearly. There is no scorn in her voice and there is no sense of indulgence either. She is not stating an opinion; rather she is stating a fact. I quite like that. I also get the impression that she has the ability to see through bullshit in seconds. In other words, her juniors must need to be extremely sharp..Veena Gowda is, by all means, a very interesting person. When I stole thirty minutes of her time at her Bandra office, she told me a bit about her journey from law school (NLS Class of ’95) to handling domestic violence matters in Bombay. Veena is a “feminist lawyer” (“I do not represent male clients”) and worked with renowned NGO Majlis for close to a decade before branching out on her own..I ask her about the perception that family law is a relatively straightforward branch of law and she nods her head in disapproval. “The problem is that family law is often approached as a ‘soft’ law. I have friends who ask me, ‘How complicated can it get?’ ….There is a very condescending way of looking at family law”. In fact, when she first came to the Family Court, she was disappointed by the fact that a disproportionate number of lawyers were women..Veena told me that matrimonial disputes often raise tremendously complicated questions of law and, more importantly, practical implementation. For instance it is often extremely difficult to trace the husband’s actual income; property is often in the names of the in-laws etc. These problems, says Veena, are compounded by the fact that the concept of “matrimonial property” has no legal recognition..-x-x-x.I am sitting on the bench outside the courtroom and I am looking at tiny four-year old as he clutches at his mother’s dupatta. And I am reminded of my first “real” internship of watching a tiny kid in brightly coloured clothes sit on a giant sofa and draw with crayons. Even as his mother shivered in fright and told her lawyer about the abusive husband. And the husband pacing up and down on the road outside, glaring at the lawyer every now and then but too cowardly to do much else..-x-x-x-.“I actually wanted to do criminal law, but my friends advised me against it, saying it won’t be safe for women. Then I found a good senior in Mrs. Mrunalini Deshmukh, a good team to work with and so I stayed. I certainly don’t regret the decision”. Every once in a while, she will break into a slightly impish smile..I am having a cup of tea with Seema Gajakos in the relatively swanky canteen (it has an AC section) of the Family Court. Seema has been practicing in the Family Court since 2000 and says that a good family court lawyer is one who can identify the factors in a matrimonial dispute which need to be addressed..She tells me that when the Family Courts were first established, they were definitely pro-women. “It was one of the few forums” says Seema, “where women felt that they could open up and have someone address their problems.” I am reminded of Richard Sorabjee’s book on his grand-aunt Cornelia Sorabjee, who was quite literally one of the earliest women lawyers in the country. He writes of how Cornelia’s gender allowed her access to queens and princesses, access which had been denied to men by the practice of purdah..I ask her if it she ever finds herself identifying with the client, placing her own self in the client’s shoes. Her answer is quite simple: “You can’t identify with the client. You should not”.-x-x-x-.My friend is standing in court and the judge is asking the same questions that all judges do in such matters. Do you know that this is the final stage? Are you sure you know what you are doing? My friend looks down for a brief moment and nods his head, the words dying a quick death in his throat..-x-x-x.Archita Jani, like more than a few lawyers, works from home. This means that client discussions take place in the family living room, and garrulous clients must be juggled with the same skill required to ensure that the day’s dinner is to everyone’s liking..Even though Archita got her LLB in 1980, it was only a dozen years after her marriage that she actually began to practice in 1995. She comes from a family of lawyers, quite literally. Her husband, her sons and her daughters-in law are all lawyers..Archita says that juggling both family and work can be quite a task at times “When someone in family falls sick, then things get difficult….When my husband had to undergo a heart operation, I could not work for nearly a month”..I find it odd that while all three lawyers talk about maintaining a distance with their clients, all three admit that sometimes even their battle hardened hearts tend to melt at times. “There was a client who had a four and a half month child, whose father-in-law was molesting her.” Archita recounts. The client eventually left her home and started working at a hair salon, earning just enough to feed her child. And now the same woman is running her own beauty parlour. “Whenever I am feeling down,” says Archita, “I think of her”..-x-x-x-.I am standing in another court far, far away and the two parents are standing before the Judge. The Judge is asking them how long they plan on fighting each other and whether they have spared even a moment’s thought towards the fate of their children. “Don’t you want them to lead a life of happiness”, he asks them and there is absolute silence in the court. .-x-x-x.The family courts are where some of the most emotional battles are fought in public view, where the most hurtful accusations are laid out for the world to see and where lovers and friends stoop to the lowest lows to get what they want. Doesn’t such emotionally volatile scenes affect them?.“Custody cases are the worst”, Seema tells me, “they disturb me even now.” She says that the most she can do, as a lawyer, is to make the parents understand that they need to act in the best interest of the child. Veena offers a similar solution: she tells her client that there is no need to be unreasonable. “After all, it is the child’s interest which ought to be taken into consideration.”.Archita also says that custody disputes continue to bother her, even after nearly two decades in the profession. “You become tough as time passes” she says but there are certain cases which continue to disturb her..But coming back to the question: Why are there so many women lawyers practicing here?.Seema offers a fairly practical answer to this question: there is only one family court in all of Bombay. “A family court lawyer does not have to run from one court complex to another”, she says and this is factor which must be attractive for women who also have to manage a household. Veena admits that there are certain aspects of matrimonial life which are better understood by women. Furthermore, women are far more willing to open up to other women. Archita agrees. “They are more comfortable talking to me than a man. It is easier for them to share details of their personal lives” she tells me..There are certain challenges though. As Seema says, a lot of issues cannot be proved by documentary evidence alone (such as mental abuse or infidelity) and hence “the skills of trial are very necessary”, says Seema. Supporting what Veena had told me earlier, Seema says that recovery of streedhan can be an extremely difficult process. “Once the wife is driven out of the house”, she says, “such things can become very hard.”.-x-x-x-.The last of the formalities have been completed and I am walking down the steps of the Family Court with my friend and I can’t help but admire the people who come here every day and battle it out. I admire those who can manage both work and home. And I admire those who are back here, day after day, making a living. As Veena puts it, “A lot of women work from within the court or from their homes…but then that is Bombay for you, a real survivor’s city.”.-x-x-x-
