Senior Advocate MC Bhandare launches memoirs titled The Arc of Memory

Former Congress politician, Governor of Odisha and veteran lawyer Murlidhar Chandrakant Bhandare released his memoirs titled The Arc of Memory in the presence of family, friends and members of the legal fraternity at the India International Centre in Delhi on March 20..Senior Advocate Shyam Divan, a long-time family friend of the Bhandares, spoke on the occasion..Divan recollected a conversation he had with Bhandare when he was in Class VI.“It had such an impact that I still remember his saying, ‘I love people. More the people, more there is to learn and more there is to laugh…' Murli is essentially a people’s person. And this great affection for people is a thread that runs through the Arc of Memory,” he said. He also pointed out that the foreword of Bhandare’s book was penned by another legal stalwart, the late jurist Fali S Nariman..The senior lawyer went on to say,“Murli’s story has encounters with Dr Ambedkar, political stalwarts — some whom are persona non-grata — great artists, musicians and engaging accounts of the many roles he donned: family man, lawyer, parliamentarian, Governor, UN Human Rights Commissioner, golfer, an early feminist, long before we created the vocabulary to quite rightly elevate these issues.".Bhandare’s daughter-in-law, journalist Namita Bhandare, was the host for the evening. She revealed how her ‘Baba’ diligently maintained a diary ever since he was young man. “It is this habit that became the foundation for his memoirs. Through his struggling days as a lawyer in what was then known as Bombay, his marriage to the love of his life, Sunanda, the birth of his children Rahul and Manali, the move to Delhi to practice in the Supreme Court, and the fight to save his wife when she was diagnosed with cancer, he always kept writing,” she said..The Arc of Memory is a labour of love that began as Bhandare's communication to his late wife and former Delhi High Court judge Justice Sunanda Bhandare, said Namita.