The Fali I can never forget

I joined the Bar in the mid 1980s at a time that was, simply put, the age of Fali Nariman at the Supreme Court. 

A few years before that, whilst I was interning at a law firm, I used to steal off from work on some pretext or the other, to hear Fali Nariman in full flight arguing the Escorts case before the Bombay High Court. For someone who was still undecided as to whether to become a lawyer, it was an exhilarating and life changing experience. I anchor my decision to practice law to that argument and to my later days at the Harvard Law School – for which Fali gave me a treasured reference.   

This was Fali Nariman, the legal colossus and the greatest lawyer that I have seen in action. 

But to me, he was always Fali Uncle. Someone I had known from childhood. Bapsi Aunty and Fali Uncle being perhaps my parents' closest friends. My father had first met Fali in the late 1940s when Fali came to what was then Bombay, to live at a common cousins’ home at Rajab Mahal near the Oval. Their friendship blossomed as they both attended the Government Law College (Fali being two years his senior) and then joined the Bar as juniors at the chambers of Sir Jamshedji Kanga, "devils" to the redoubtable Kharshedji Bhabha.  They enjoyed more than an occasional glass of stout and courted their future wives together, including a weekend at my family home in Lonavala under the watchful eye of a chaperone, my jolly grand aunt! And as he recounted to me, Fali was also my mother’s cheerleader, spurring her on to win the prestigious Sirur inter-collegiate debating trophy!  It was no wonder then that years later, when I was privileged to work with him. he would absentmindedly address me as “Jangoo” (my father’s name) to the bewilderment of the others at the conference.

Apart from his fine qualities as a human being, what will remain with me forever are six outstanding features of his character.

The will to succeed

Perhaps his most pronounced quality was his constant determination to do better and perpetual dissatisfaction with his preparation. I believe this was dually sourced: first, from his early days as a refugee from Burma and his struggle at the Bar without any Godfather; second, from his senior Kharshedji Bhabha, who was equally tenacious and exacting of himself.

Fali was a hard taskmaster and drove not only his team, but also himself, hard. He would work, rework and again rework notes and lists of dates. There was much frustration and some complaint from solicitors about this. But they recognised that he was putting himself through the paces as much as anyone else, often scoring out his own dictation as “nonsense”.  “Look sharp!”, “Write it down!” were his constant refrains. An accomplished lawyer from Delhi, who Fali was very fond of, once thought he could avoid the drudgery of taking notes and smugly produced a dictaphone at the conference. His triumph was shortlived as Fali muttered in visible irritation, “No!  You take it down, if you don’t mind”. Fali recognised the impact that writing something down had. An hour’s conference with Fali exhausted you far more than a full hearing in court.

He was not flashy and did not try to find the “silver bullet” in a matter in the first five minutes. Instead, he probed the inner depths of the case to ultimately find its true pulse. 

I compare him to Beethoven, who too worked and reworked his musical scores; their manuscripts are untidy and heavily corrected, but the end product was divine. That was the way Fali did it. 

Humility

Both as a person as well as intellectually, Fali was incredibly humble and sometimes self-deprecating. I remember his argument in review that the appellate order challenged was completely bereft of jurisdiction since unbeknownst to all, the statutory provision for appeal had been repealed even before the appeal was filed! “We are the old fools today, M’Lord …” confessed Fali recounting his junior days when he used to chortle at hearing the “old fools” in court.

He never thought that his point was the best or even the only one, but gathered light from even the juniormost at the conference and not uncommonly from a surprised and then flattered client (“Yes! Yes! That’s the point” or “Oh that way?”)

The recipient of such largesse left the meeting floating on air!

Friendship and loyalty

Fali was ever loyal to his friends and they to him. He battled for many a friend in court and those conferences were always the most highly charged and tense. I recall the crusade against the Bombay Port Trust (BPT) led by his friend Jamshed Wadia, during which he asked us to come to a conference at 7 AM. We walked in only to find he’d started a previous conference at 6.30 AM! Of course, his great battle was on behalf of his dear friend Bomi Mistry, a struggle that lasted from settling the plaint in 1967 to the Supreme Court in 2019!

He came from, and was proud of coming from, Chamber No.1, the chambers of Sir Jamshedji Kanga, who was dearly loved by all. He would often tell stories of Sir Jamshedji mimicking his deep Gujarati accented voice. He never lost his great respect of and loyalty to Sir Jamshedji nor his love for his colleagues from his old chambers. 

Years later, whenever he visited the Bombay High Court for a matter, he would make it a point to spend a little time in the High Court library, meeting old friends, engaging with young lawyers and calling for the Law Quarterly Review from Govind the librarian, whom he had known from yesteryear.

Although they loved him dearly, Fali was very exacting on his clients. I remember an incident where the client had made a mistake and we had all turned to Fali to salvage the situation in the Supreme Court. The client was not able to attend the conference, so a phone call was set up. Fali was in high dudgeon, excoriating the client over the phone. That particular client was a favourite of Fali's and remained so till the very end. Indeed, clients feared the encounter with Fali more than the day in court before the judge! Yet, they couldn’t do without him.

Courage

Fali’s resignation as Additional Solicitor General of India upon the Emergency being declared is the stuff legends are made of. Few know that at the time, he was slated to become the Solicitor General. He returned the brief for the Government of Gujarat in the Narmada matter as a mark of protest against violence inflicted upon Christians. He eschewed offers to become a judge of the Supreme Court, Attorney General and Law Minister – all to retain his independence. He spoke boldly and fearlessly in defence of constitutional rights and liberties and pluralism. And I believe he was respected all the more for that, even by those whom he criticised. But unlike when Rome hath spoken, the cause never ended for Fali.

Advocacy

Fali was not the silver tongued orator – he was the piercingly sharp knife that cut through the clutter and verbiage of a case to chart a clear and irresistible argument. I recall a case before a bench of the Supreme Court led by the formidable Justice JS Verma. It concerned the compulsory acquisition of property under Chapter XXC of the Income Tax Act. We had researched law from several jurisdictions on the strictness with which the State’s power of eminent domain was to be tested. Fali opened by reading the entire Chapter of the Income Tax Act, pausing to emphasize, with great effect, the inherent strictness of the provisions themselves and then placed a list of dates, prepared in his inimitable style with notes to nudge the reader in the direction of the submission. When he was done, with just that the Bench was completely persuaded and there was no need to cite any law at all. He had made his interpretation sound so obvious and irresistible that the other side was simply blown away.

Fali’s approach, to great profit, was to push the papers away and “think” about the case – sage advice he had received from the great CK Daphtary.  Many a matter was won whilst Fali took his daily constitutional – an evening walk!

He read his judges brilliantly. The argument had to be structured around the personality of the judge. He had the turn of foot of a champion thoroughbred – he could re-orient his argument in a flash to suit the judge’s reaction. He always preferred to focus on a few points and then polished them to diamond-hard ferocity. 

To assist him was itself a feat. However well prepared you were, he managed to take you by surprise. I remember in a matter assisting him before the Kerala High Court on which we had slaved over weeks. As always, there were two or three lists of dates in varying degrees of detail.  At a sudden point of his argument, he snapped at me, saying, “Give me the List of Dates”. I asked, “Which one?”.  To which he exasperatedly barked “That one!” But by this time, I instinctively knew which one he meant and handed it to him. 

Bapsi

Fali without Bapsi would not have been the Fali we knew. They were a great team and his life was never the same after her. Each time I would visit his Hauz Khas house for a conference, he would ask, “Have you met Bapsi?” and inevitably I would have stopped by the ground floor and Bapsi Aunty would have plied me with some delicious snack such as her roasted mini idlis, which I loved. After the conference, Fali would often say, “Khambata, come down for a drink or join us for dinner,” and it was during those moments that I witnessed the goodness, transparency and breadth of the man. 

It was one of the most heart-warming sights to see both of them swell with pride to see their son Rohinton elevated to the Supreme Court. 

What will be Fali’s legacy? It will be not merely as one of India’s greatest lawyers of all time, but also as a courageous champion of constitutionalism and democracy. Fali was lion-hearted and his life will remain an inspiration for generations to come. 

Darius Khambata is a Senior Advocate of the Bombay High Court.