| BOOKS: INREVIEW
WONDER WOMAN
By
Shailaja Neelakantan/NEW DELHI
Issue cover-dated May 12, 2004
On Balance by Leila
Seth.Penguin Books India/The Viking Press. $11.15
In 1959, Leila Seth became the first woman to top the London
bar exam's pass list. When she returned to India and sought
apprenticeship with a (male) barrister, he told her, "Instead
of joining the legal profession, young woman, go and get married."
"But sir, I am already married," replied Seth. "Then
go and have a child," he said. "I have a child,"
Seth, countered. "It is not fair to the child to be alone,
so, young lady, you should have a second child," Sachin
Chaudhuri, the barrister persisted. "Mr. Chaudhuri, I already
have two children," Seth continued. The barrister gave
up. "Then come and join my chambers, you are a persistent
young woman and will do well at the bar," he said. Not
only did Leila Seth do well, she eventually became the first
woman chief justice of a high court in India.
On Balance, Seth's autobiography contains many such anecdotes,
told without rancour, and with honesty and humility, qualities
that are rare in extremely successful people. Seth, now retired
at 73, was highly accomplished in her field. But she was an
accidental lawyer. When she went to England in 1954 with her
husband who had been transferred there, she planned to do a
Montessori course. Instead she chose law, because she needed
a course where the attendance requirements were not too strict
so she could look after her son, Vikram. She didn't do too badly:
This is the same Vikram who has authored, among other works,
A Suitable Boy.
Being a woman, and a lawyer at that, wasn't easy anywhere in
the world then, but especially in India. Seth doggedly fought
prejudice to take up complex cases that her male counterparts
tried to keep her away from. She writes that her husband, Premo,
to whom her book is dedicated, has always been the rock in her
life. "Premo is not like other men I know or meet, who
are apprehensive of their wife's success," she writes.
"He has given me the space to grow and not held me back;
rather, he has encouraged me."
There were lighter moments. Once, while she was intently reading
a judgment, she heard a buzz of voices and shuffling of feet
and looked up to see the courtroom suddenly packed with people
staring at her. On enquiring, she was told, "The crowd
is a group of farmers . . . invited to Delhi to see the sights.
They have just visited the zoo: and now they have come to see
the woman judge in the Delhi High Court."
Seth often worried whether her children were getting enough
attention. It was difficult balancing work and home, but once,
a very young Vikram said to her, "Mama, I am so glad you
work and use your mind and don't talk to me only about the price
of onions and the stupidity of servants." Spoken like a
Seth. In Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy, the close-knit Seth family
inspires many characters and jokes. Vikram took six years to
finish this novel, most of which was written in his parents'
house in Delhi. At one time during those six years, Leila Seth
writes that the family driver told a friend of the family that
Vikram "sits upstairs just reading and writing and sleeping
and eating and living off his parents."
While Leila Seth is anything but partisan in writing about
her three children, her autobiography has enough tales to satisfy
those who admire the writings of Vikram Seth as well.
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