Movie Review: Steven Zaillian's The Civil Action

We live in a world where huge multi-national corporations have more annual income than the entire GDP of many nations. While elected governments can be held responsible for the crimes committed on their behalf in the court of law, how does one compel the MNCs to accept their wrongdoing when they have huge resources to make a mockery of the entire legal process? Steven Zaillian’s The Civil Action is a legal take on the traditional David v. Goliath battle which assures its viewers that there can be a victory beyond defeat. 

The hard bargain that takes place over the worth of an individual's dignity at the beginning of the movie epitomizes the extent to which life has been commoditized in contemporary America. The clearly artificial concern that Jan Schlichtmann (John Travolta’s character) shows for his clients in the courtroom, starkly contrasting with his own abundant and luxurious lifestyle, highlights the propensity of the practitioners of the legal profession to use the argument of morality in pursuit of their borderline immoral ends.

It is such frustratingly effective argumentative capability that sums up Jan's outlook towards his work when he says that “the lawyer who shares his client's pain, in my opinion, does his client such a great disservice, he should have his license to practice taken away”. Ignoring the ridiculously meagre measurements of the proverbial box that such an outlook confines the definition of the term 'service' to, one is not surprised to see him almost reject the 'Woburn case' even though it involves the death of eight children - due to the absence of any defendants with deep pockets. Yet, deep pockets emerge from the margins of the case and Schlichtmann, Conway and Gordon Co. begin their work to drill holes in those pockets.

Suddenly, we see a parallel fight emerge. This is a fight beyond that of the plaintiff, the respondent or even the courtroom. This fight is the my-brand-is-better-than-your-brand fight and the name of the two fighters is Harvard and Cornell. Jan refuses to submit to an inferiority complex while practicing law in the backyard of Harvard despite not being its alumni. His reasoning is simple – he sees Harvard alumni as bullies and simply refuses to submit to them.

In deposition after deposition, we hear affected families narrate the manner in which they lost their children, sometimes on their way to the hospital, due to leukaemia caused by the contaminated water in their neighbourhood. Jerome Facher, played by the brilliant Robert Duvall, who represents one of the two corporations implicated in the lawsuit, repeatedly patronizes Jan as if he does not know the law at all. The evening before the settlement talks are to commence, we see a contemplative Travolta sitting in his car near the affected neighbourhood, imagining his clients trying to resuscitate their dead baby on the way to the hospital. Is there an ideological change in his character? Has his pride been hurt? Or has the grief of the victims – brought out in the detailed depositions that they gave narrating their loss – finally stirred something at the core of his heart?

As the chances of his securing a conviction grow thinner and thinner, Schlichtmann continues to be patronized by Fascher with an even blunter worldview than that held by him before. “The courtroom isn't the place to find the truth” Fascher says, “you'd be lucky to find here anything that resembles the truth”. Sitting in the hallway of that court, waiting for the jury to return with the verdict, we finally come to know of Schlichtmann's transformation in five odd words: “Eight children are dead, Jerry”. Your heart skips a beat as you realize that he has broken his only cardinal principal in the profession; he has shared his client's pain.

Often, while following the progress of the case, one gets tangled in the technicalities of the law so much that (s)he forgets that in most cases, it is the lawyers that matter in the courtroom. This movie beautifully brings out this facet of the legal profession through the eventual bankruptcy of Travolta in pursuit of justice. Through his bankruptcy, we are reminded of the tagline of the movie: "Justice has a price".

Horror Postcard from Uttar Pradesh

The picture of two low-caste girls hanging from a tree in Badayun powerfully conveys the sense of urgency that is required to curb the crimes against women taking place all over the country.

The non-stop media coverage of the terror of rapes and molestations that women in Uttar Pradesh are living under for the past few days have rained down as hammer blows on the conscience of our nation. Scarcely had we begun to condole the family of the two unfortunate girls in Badayun who lost their children in such a reprehensible crime, that we were told about the manner in which such violence was taking place all over the state in some or the other form. In Aligarh, two men tried to rape a civil judge in her well protected home and forced her to drink pesticide. Exactly a week after the incident in Badayun, another girl was found hanging from a tree in Sitapur district in the state. A minor girl was thrown off the train near Bareilley when she tried to resist the advances of three youngsters.

There is a lengthy list of such crimes. According to a report by Center for Social Research, in 2010, out of a total of 213585 crimes against women recorded by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), 20169 were in UP (9.44%), the highest in the country. According to a Times of India report, the state recorded 23,569 crimes against women in 2012, which included 1,963 cases of rape, 7,910 cases of kidnapping, 2,244 cases of dowry death, 3,247 cases of assault on women with intent to outrage modesty, 505 cases of Dowry Prohibition Act, 7661 cases of cruelty by husband apart from other acts of violence against women. In 2013, the state registered 126 rape cases in one week alone.

Despite such chilling statistics, the state government headed by Akhilesh Yadav, son of Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, is smug in its defense. Akhilesh's uncle Ramgopal Yadav blamed the media for disproportionately focusing on the crimes in Uttar Pradesh and ignoring other states. During the Election season, Mulayam Singh himself caused an uproar by casually stating that "boys will be boys and they will make mistakes" and promised his supporters that if his party was voted to power, he would change the law prescribing death penalty for those convicted of rape and murder. Akhilesh Yadav too tried to brazen it out of the current crises by asking a journalist to worry about his safety and to leave the safety of the women in the hands of the state government.

Such responses do not surprise anymore. It became apparent after the December 16 gang rape incident that the instinct of those in power in times of crisis is not to solve that crisis, but is instead to shift the limelight so that they can cling on to their power. Although not surprising, this behavior is disappointing as it comes from a government headed by a Chief Minister who was considered a part of the country's younger generation and hence embodying the hopes and aspirations of millions of his counterparts. Yet, instead of taking strict action that could have helped in healing the wounds of the aggrieved families, the Akhilesh Yadav led government has been following the routine investigation-is-going-on track. It took a week for a state government official to even visit the family of the two girls in Badayun to offer his condolences and to assure them of speedy justice in the matter.

Apart from leaving the state government red-faced, these incidents have also pointed to an urgent need to improve the sanitary conditions in India's countrysides. Various reports published in the aftermath of this incident (see, for example, here, here and here) have pointed to the absence of toilets as one of the primary threats to the safety of women. The central government slammed the Uttar Pradesh government for not utilizing Rs 293 crores out of a total of Rs 543 crores allocated to it under the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan scheme for building toilets in the state. Considering that the new Prime Minister himself had outlined his policy of "Toilets first, Temples later" during the election campaign, ensuring an end to the practice of open defecation should become one of the top priorities of the new administration.

As news of the horrific incident in Badayun spread, political leaders from various parties made it a point to visit the grief stricken family for a photo-op. It is an image that people in India have grown accustomed to. One can say with some surety that what the public would really like to see is the image of the culprits, heads lowered in shame, being sent on their way to long prison sentences. It is up for the new government to decide which image will prevail by the time its term comes to an end.

What Shahid taught Me

As a law student, you are often taught that your duty is to defend your client and it is the judge's duty to determine whether (s)he is guilty or not. You look at the legal high society and find people like Ram Jethmalani, who have made an illustrious career for themselves by strictly adhering to this maxim. Any law student would know that in litigation you cannot afford to be choosy as clients are hard to come by and establishing a successful practice is dependent upon your argumentative skills and not judgemental ones. Many young and honest lawyers have to swallow their rightfulness and pride to defend those clients whom they know to be guilty simply because of the nature and pressures of the business.

Gradually, you begin to internalize and rationalize these ideas and the humanist within you starts giving away to the realist. You begin to question the veracity of your judgements and the foundations of your assumptions. You cannot decide whether this change taking place within you is for the good or for the bad. You do not know whether your questions and endless queries are just arrows in the dark or purposeful taunts on a conscience unaccustomed to such piercing interrogation. When you read the law it is fairly simple and straightforward and as soon as you start reading the cases, a maze of ifs and buts and whys and why nots crops up. Every day, you find yourself sinking deeper and deeper into the ideological morass of your own creation.

It is when you are still fighting with these questions that you see Shahid, a movie based on the life and times of Shahid Azmi, a noted lawyer and human rights activist who was killed for successfully defending many innocent muslims falsely implicated in cases of terrorism. You see Shahid as a vulnerable, sensitive young man trying to find his feet in the world with the help of the law. He is passionate and hard working individual who believes in the fights that he is fighting and quotes Roy Black with impunity:

“By showing me injustice, he taught me to love justice. By teaching me what pain and humiliation were all about, he awakened my heart to mercy.  Through these hardships I learned hard lessons. Fight against prejudice, battle the oppressors, support the underdog. Question authority, shake up the system, never be discouraged by hard times and hard people.  Embrace those who are placed last, to whom even bottom looks like up.  It took me some time to find my mission in life – that of a criminal defense lawyer. But that ‘school’, and that Teacher, put me on my true path.  I will never be discouraged. Even thorns and thistles can teach you something, and lead to success.”  

Slowly, as the movie progresses, the humanist within you starts fighting back. The ability to distinguish between white and black is called common sense, it retorts. Sure, defending the guilty will bring great rewards and recognition but what about the idea of law as a public service? What about the moral compass of the society which operates by the fundamental belief of everyone that justice will be done, truth will prevail and that the guilty will be punished? What about the corruption of that moral compass by the agony of countless irreproachable paupers pitted against the might of the state?

Throughout the movie, you see Shahid as a lone warrior fighting against the legal system, the media, the society and even his own family to stand for what is right and what is correct. You cheer as victories come his way, you froth with indignation as wrongs are heaped upon him. Gradually you realize that more than just being a tool for making money, law can actually be used for serving the cause of social justice - a cause for which it was promulgated in the first place.

Long after the movie has ended and you realize that Shahid is no more, you sit thinking about the role of law and its practitioners in the society. You think about all the questions and counter questions that cropped up in your mind during those brief two hours and realize that you won't be able to stand a lifetime of such questions. The ideological dilemma solves itself, the mind is unburdened and sleep creeps its way inside among the thoughts of justice, equity and good conscience.  

Marquez in my Imagination

The last book that I read by Gabriel Garcia Marquez was A Chronicle of Death Foretold. I carried it along with me the last time I went back to my hometown in December and casually started flipping through its pages before getting hooked by the narrative. The train journey was 12 hours long in which I had completed reading the novella twice and stopped myself only to play the story over and over in my mind: to picture Angela Vicario’s wedding to Bayardo San Roman, to think about his anger when he found that she wasn’t a virgin, to envisage the feeling of humiliation experienced by the Vicario brothers and to visualize the expression on Santiago Nasar’s face when he was finally stabbed. In short, I stopped only to imagine the imagination of the writer.

Such is the magic of Marquez. As a first year student in Delhi University, I came across a copy of the despondently titled One Hundred Years of Solitude when it was brought to the college by a friend who was halfway through it. I kept thinking of the title and stole glances at the cover and after a few days, borrowed it to read it myself.

 To say that I was blown away would be an understatement. My first introduction to Marquez caused the equivalent of a nuclear explosion in my imagination and transported me to a world that I could hardly believe could be made to exist by the power of mere words on paper. Yet here I was, roaming the streets of Macondo, clapping wildly at the magic fair after seeing the tricks performed by Melquiades and listening intently to Jose Arcadio Buendia as he explained his every new invention. I was a soldier in Colonel Aureliano Buendia’s rebel army who felt sorry for him when he lost Remedios the Beauty. I admired the longevity of Ursula and cross checked the list which she made to document the 17 Aurelianos. I was a fly on the wall as seven generations of the Buendia family passed by and I was the awe, the horror and the surprise that swept Macondo along with the great wind when Aureliano Babilonia decoded the parchments written by Melquadiez.

After completing the book, I held it and admired it and went to sleep with it – an honor previously reserved for my cricket ball. I returned the book with a heavy heart and never bought a copy again. Marquez’s magical realism held the potential to singularly destroy my academic grades by drawing me in its beautiful world while Huntington, Fukuyama, Hobsbawm and Rawls scowled in a corner. Yet, when I found it again in my final year of graduation in an acquaintance’s book rack, I couldn’t resist but borrow it. I had to part with a couple of my own valued books for the exchange, yet I could survive it as meeting my old love had made me a kid in Macondo once more.

Yesterday, while passing through Kamla Nagar, I spotted a copy of Love in the Time of Cholera. It is one novel by Marquez that I haven’t read yet – partly because of my own embarrassment with the concept of unrequited love, having been both on the giving and receiving side of it. Still I had difficulty walking past without stopping to flip through its pages. Anyone who has read Marquez will tell you that his words are a magnet to the reader’s heart – to ignore them is to attempt the impossible. I stopped for a couple of seconds, just to admire the beauty of the words. With my respects to his writing paid, I marched on into the evening. 

Today, my peace of mind was rudely interrupted by the news of his death. At the age of 87, he finally “shook off his mortal coil”. They say he is not with us anymore. And I emphatically deny it.

Men like Marquez do not cease to be with their death. Men like Julio Cortazar and Carlos Fuentes, in short, men like Gabrial Garcia Marquez, have already immortalized themselves in the world of our imagination. They shape it, expand it and color it every time a word written by them is read anywhere on this globe. Their memory is refreshed and tributes are paid to them every time a copy of their work travels from the bookshop to a reader’s home. Their lives is a cultural phenomenon, their work a literary event and their deaths a historical bookmark. And bookmarks are made to remember which page you were reading the last time and can never be equated with the finality of a full stop.

I never got to speak to him or hear him speak. Yet, its his words that have affected me, moved me and made me smile. The 30 million reverberations of One Hundred Years of Solitude continue to echo throughout the world and my imagination is filled with its music. Today he lays hundreds of miles away in Latin America and I will never get to go and see him. But that does not mean I cannot bring him to my own home.

I just need to walk to Kamla Nagar for that.

A Meeting with Irom Sharmila

Published in Daily News and Analysis

"Irom Sharmila is in Delhi. Please do come to Manipur Bhawan today at 5:30 PM." A terse facebook status update by one of my friends informed me of only the second visit by Irom Sharmila, the Iron lady of Manipur, to the national capital. To students like me, people like Irom Sharmila are a great source of inspiration. While those who claim to be Gandhian capture public imagination one day and fizzle out the next day, this woman on the other hand has been continuing her indefinite fast against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) away from the media glare in the remote state of Manipur for the last 12 years. She has been awarded by organizations and countries abroad, but back at home, she remains relatively unknown by a media whose sight is restricted only to events happening in Delhi and Mumbai.

Sharmila last came to Delhi in 2006. Back then she stayed here for six months and sat at Jantar Mantar to continue her (by then) 6 year long hunger strike. As she started attracting editorial comment and significant news coverage, she was picked up from there by security agencies, force fed and transported back to Manipur after being booked under IPC for attempt to suicide. I was not here in Delhi back in 2006. But I was here now when she was coming back for the court hearing of the case lodged against her and I was determined not to miss the opportunity.

Manipur Bhavan, located near Assam Bhavan on Kautilya Marg in Central Delhi, bore a deserted look as I arrived there. There was a solitary guard standing outside smoking a cheap cigarette. I went up to him and inquired about the event. "The event is already over. Some students just left" he said in an attempt to shoo me away. "No No" I insisted "This event is taking place at 5:30. Irom Sharmila is coming. You know Irom Sharmila?" "No. I don't know her. But there is no event at 5:30. Are you sure you are not confusing Manipur House with Manipur Bhavan?" In confusion, I called up my friend who had posted the status update who in turn gave me the number of another person who was accompanying Irom from the airport. After speaking with him I got to know that the event was scheduled in Manipur House and not Manipur Bhavan. Heaving a sigh of relief, I began looking for an auto to go to Manipur House. But to my dismay, there was some auto rickshaw union strike due to which no auto wallah was ready to drop me to the desired destination. Finally, I woke up an auto wallah who was sleeping inside his auto and coaxed and cajoled him to drop me. At last he thankfully agreed and I was able to reach the venue in time. Having dropped me to the guest house, the auto wallah parked his auto outside and slept again.

A couple of media vans and half a dozen students loitering outside the gates of Manipur House assured me that this was indeed the venue. To confirm, I just asked one of the students whether he too was waiting for Irom Sharmila. He replied in affirmative. I strolled inside the guest house to pass my time somehow while the cavalcade made its way from the airport to the venue. I checked the time: 4:30. I loitered around, made small talk wwith some of the media persons already there and started messaging all my friends and others who might be interested in meeting her. Sitting under the statue of Bir Tikendrajit Singh, erstwhile Prince of the Independent State of Manipur who was hanged by the British in 1891 for rebelling against the queen, I tried to order my thoughts and think of the one question I would like to ask if I got an opportunity to speak with her.

As we waited, more media vans started trickling in. Some local news channels were already present when I arrived around 4:30, but soon the national media came calling. Times Now, NDTV, ANI etc. all rolled in their swanky OB vans. Meanwhile, news reached that the cavalcade had started from the airport for the guest house. I looked at my watch again: 5:45. Just started? Why such delay? Someone informed me that Irom had to wait for more than an hour at the airport while transportation as being arranged for her. This stuck me as odd and insulting at the same moment. Had it been a VIP, VVIP or a media celebrity, there would have been a jet of swanky cars and heavy security 2 hours beforehand at the airport. Yet, Irom Sharmila was no VIP or media celebrity and hence she had to wait at the airport because the administration here hadn't bothered to make sure that all the arrangements were in place. Still lost in such thoughts, I saw the guards at the guest house requesting everyone to move out of the premises as they had to close down the gates. No one was allowed inside. Not even the media. 

We all sat outside as media persons kept trickling in. One well known anchor came and asked in panic "Has she arrived yet? Thank god! I would have been so screwed. Can somebody get me some water?" I kept speaking to my own group of bechara student people who were present here out of a mix of sheer respect and curiosity. As the media persons fixed their cameras on their tripods, rolled out python length cables and shouted at and jostled with one another for some space, we heard a group of people arriving while chanting slogans. "Long Live Sharmila!" "Repeal AFSPA!" chants filled the air as these motely group of 10-15 people made their way to the guest house. The media immediately thrust their mikes in front of their previously agitated and currently intimidated faces.

I strolled around, listening one moment to the questions the media persons were asking to those protesters, going back to my group the next moment and then strolling away towards the road to look out for the cavalcade the very next. It was around 6:30 that finally a couple of Meru Cabs took the turn towards the guest house and someone shouted "She is here!" and there was a huge commotion in which cameras was uprooted from their tripods and space was made for the cars to pass and students were pushed to one side and gates were thrown open that we saw Irom Sharmila, with a tube attached to her nose for feeding, sitting shyly in the rear seat of the second car, sandwiched between two intimidating plain clothes police women. As soon as the cars entered the guest house again, the gates were again closed and everyone who had wandered in was forcibly pushed out. Cameras were on tripods again now as she got out with some difficulty from the car and glanced shyly once towards the cameras before going inside.

"That's it? Isn't she going to come and speak to us?" One of us asked. Others murmured indistinctively. The crowd outside the gates was now divided into two camps: the optimists and the pessimists. The Pessimists were obviously in the majority. "She won't be allowed to come and speak to us. We should have known this earlier" one of the students whispered in my ear. "Let's wait. Don't jump to conclusions" someone else replied. Meanwhile, some of the protesters succeeded in speaking to one of the main guards accompanying Sharmila. Being from Manipur, they all spoke rapidly in Meitei, the local language, while others like me waited for the conversation to get over. Finally after about 15 minutes, the conversation got over and I, like others, crowded around Rojesh, the person who was speaking to the guard. "He says that they are going to force feed her and that it may take some time. Only then will she be allowed to speak to the media." More wait.

It was around 7:30 that the weak figure of Irom Sharmila finally appeared on the entrance of the guest house. There were shouts and chants in which media persons pushed everyone behind (again) and kicked and jostled with each other for the best possible shot. The gates were to remain closed, the guard informed us. There was a small table and a chair that was set up behind the gates from where she was to address the Press Conference. Finally at around 7:45, the Press Conference started.

One thing that I noticed about her was her extremely frail and weak state coupled with a girly giggle that came out every two sentences. One normally expects political activists as being serious and angry, but here she was, 12 years on the hunger strike and yet unchanged by the circumstances around her. I won't go into the details of the Press Conference as it has been widely reported in various media outlets and elsewhere. But I got to see firsthand how some irresponsible sections of the electronic media misquote people. During the course of the briefing, Sharmila said that "the attempt to gain political legitimacy by the use of army in Manipur is very terrible". There was a journalist standing right next to me who was tweeting at the same time. He tweeted "Irom Sharmila says that the use of Army in Manipur is very terrific". Almost instinctively, I grabbed his hand and said "Terrible. She said Terrible." The guy was looking at me for some time while he sent out the tweet.

The Press Conference ended about half an hour later. As the media persons dispersed, we students and other non-accredited people finally got an opportunity to speak to her. There was a lot of laughter, a lot of smiling faces and people wished her best of luck. Finally, I got a chance to speak to her. "You are a huge source of inspiration for people like me. What advice would you give to people of my generation?" Her eyes lit up. She smiled and giggled while answering. "The People of younger generation are the future political citizens of this country. They should set an example for others through their conduct. They are my only hope for change." I smiled back. Others murmured in agreement. Finally, the guard shouted "Okay. Enough. Now she has to go back inside."

Feeling happy for having met her but miserable for the state she was in, all of us dispersed for the night. The autowallah who dropped me to the venue slept soundly in his auto outside.