katju jaylalitha
Throughout most of my life ( I am in my 80th year now ) I have had sound, dreamless sleep. But in recent months I have often had dreams. And in a dream last night I dreamt of a meeting I had with former Chief Minister of Tamilnadu, Jayalalitha.
I had met Jayalalitha personally only twice in my life.
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The first was in November 2004 in Raj Bhavan ( the residence of the Governor of Tamilnadu ) in Chennai, where I went to take oath as Chief Justice of the Madras High Court. My wife and I arrived in Raj Bhawan about 15 minutes before the oath taking ceremony. We were ushered in into a small room adjacent to the huge hall where the ceremony was to take place. Shortly thereafter Jayalalitha entered the room, and we started talking.
I told her that I was in Allahabad ( as the the Acting Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court ) when I received the notification appointing me as the Chief Justice of Madras High Court. I immediately telephoned the Acting Chief Justice of Madras High Court, Justice N. Dinkar, and requested him to tell all brother and sister Judges of Madras High Court not to come to the Chennai airport to receive me, since I was arriving at about 1 or 2 pm on a working day, as that it would create a bad impression in the public that judges were abandoning their work to do sycophancy of the incoming Chief Justice Justice. Of course they were all welcome to meet me at my residence in the evening.
On hearing this Jayalaliha was very happy, and said ” I am glad we are having a disciplinarian as our Chief Justice ”. She then told my wife that there were excellent places in Chennai to do shopping.
After this short conversation, we left for the oath taking ceremony,
Thereafter I never met her throughout my tenure as the Chief Justice of the High Court.
Our second meeting was some time in 2012 or 2013 after I had retired as a Supreme Court Judge in 2011, and had become the Chairman of the Press Council of India. This took place when I had fixed a meeting of the Press Council in Chennai. Ater reaching Chennai, I sought an appointment with her, which was granted, and I met her in her office in the Secretariat on the second floor. She was seated behind a large desk, and I was requested to sit opposite to her. No other politician was there, but beside the side wall there sat many senior bureaucrats, the Chief Secretary, Home Secretary, etc.to whom she introduced me.
She welcomed me, and I started our conversation by saying that I respected her because when I was the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court and she was the Chief Minister, she never interfered with the functioning of the judiciary, and never asked me to recommend anyone for judgeship of the High Court.
I then gave her a representation requesting her to grant an allowance to retired judges of the Madras High Court for engaging a multi-purpose domestic employee, as their pensions were inadequate, particularly of those having short tenures as judges. I told her that when I was the Acting Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court I made a similar request to the Chief Minister of UP, Mulayam Singh Yadav, who immediately acceded to the request. Jayalalitha said she would certainly consider the request ( later she granted it ).
I then said that I believed she knew Hindi. At this she smiled, and said ” Thoda bahut jaanti hun ”, and started speaking in fluent Hindi. I said that while I was strongly opposed to imposing Hindi, Tamilians should voluntarily learn it, as that would be in their own interest, since they would face great difficulties if they travelled to other parts of India outside Tamilnadu. She said that Tamilians were at one time indeed learning Hindi, but in the 1960s some short sighted north Indian politicians tried to impose Hindi, and that created a reaction and they stopped learning it. I agreed with her that this was a serious mistake by the north Indian politicians.
That was the end of our conversation on a cordial note, and thereafter I never met her again.
However, in lighter vein, I posted that in my youth I had a crush on her, as I thought her very beautiful, and this was widely published
Now coming to my dream last night. I dreamt of meeting her somewhere. She told me she was informed that I had a crush on her in my youth, and I told her that this was true. Though I had never met her then, I saw her photos in several magazines and journals, and thought her very beautiful, and fell in love with her, though it was unrequited love. She said that if we had met then she too would have fallen in love with me.
I got so excited on hearing this that I woke up with a start, and that was the end of my tryst with Jayalalitha
