A tribute to Aunty Leila Seth
I only ever called her Aunty Leila. She was my mother-in-law’s best friend, two women who stood out in an otherwise male-dominated judiciary on account of their gender — and then surpassing it on account of their work.
It’s strange to think that I am now older than my mother-in-law Sunanda Bhandare was at the time of her death in 1994, and it was inevitable and expected that Leila Seth would become a founding trustee and play a significant role in the Justice Sunanda Bhandare Foundation set up to promote the idea of gender justice.
I see her presence in my married life not as a continuous ripple but as a strong punctuation mark. There she is at the Mountain Echoes festival in Bhutan, scrupulously punctual, making no special demands, asking for no favours on account of either age or status. There she is in her handloom saris, sensible Crocs on her feet, walking stick in hand, smiling her hellos. She takes the front row seat not because she is entitled to it but because it is available and she wants to listen. She was then nearly 80 and she always travelled alone.
It astonished me that Aunty Leila could lead such a full life, well into her eighties and right up to the months before her passing. Just before her 84th birthday on October 20, 2014, I sat down with her at the Noida home she shared with her husband Premo Seth for my first proper interview with her. She had written several books, including a memoir and a Constitution for children, and had served on the Justice JS Verma commission set up in the wake of the gang-rape and murder of a medical student in December 2012.
I told her that I had been present that day in January 2013 at Delhi’s Vigyan Bhavan when the Verma commission had released its 631-page report within 29 days of being set up. If Aunty Leila saw me in the audience, she did not acknowledge me — she was far too respectful of both of us as professional women to do that.
Many of the Verma commission recommendations — recognising marital rape as a crime, acknowledging that rape could be gender neutral — were not incorporated in the new law. But that day in Noida, she said gently: “You cannot live without hope.” Change had begun and a beginning had been made — even if it was not the beginning she had imagined.
The interview coincided with the launch of her new book, Talking of Justice: People’s Rights in Modern India, a collection of essays on a variety of topics that mattered deeply to her: Judiciary’s lack of gender sensitisation, child rights, and the need to scrap the dreaded section 377 that criminalises sex against the "order of nature". She was candid about revealing that her elder son Vikram Seth, the writer, was gay but her advocacy for gay rights stemmed from her passionate belief that to criminalise love in any form was "profoundly cruel and inhumane".
These essays had originally appeared as talks and lectures that she gave after her retirement as chief justice of Himachal Pradesh. Incidentally, it was at her home in Shimla where publisher David Davidar then with Penguin, spent a week in 1992 to read Vikram’s manuscript of A Suitable Boy. When he left, Davidar had a word of advice for the mother: she ought to write her own book. That book, On Balance was written as an 80th birthday gift to her husband, now 94.
My last meeting with her was also at her Noida home where I had gone to see her after she had suffered a stroke. Her mind was clear as always. Instead of her low bun, decorated with the silver pin she always wore in it, she was in pigtails and looked like a schoolgirl not a formidable and accomplished matriarch.
On her birthday a few days later, I sent her a miniature champa in a pot. When she called to thank me for it, I would never have imagined that it would be the last time I would speak to her.
For her wisdom, patience and sharp intelligence, I will always be grateful. I find that in this gratitude, I am not alone.