| Wednesday , July 29 , 2015 |
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150729/jsp/frontpage/story_34266.jsp#.Vbhf0fOqqko
Your Honour, send 'em to this school. They will at least learn to feel shame | |
| G.C. Shekhar in Rameswaram and Tapas Ghosh in Calcutta | |
 A class in progress on Tuesday at Schwartz School, where APJ Abdul Kalam was a student 65 years ago, in Ramanathapuram, Tamil Nadu. School officials said Kalam had studied in the same classroom. Pictures by GC Shekhar .jpg) Schwartz School pays tribute to Kalam, its alumnus, by placing his photograph on a table near his classroom All classes were held today in Schwartz School - although its most famous alumnus and a former President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, had died yesterday. Calcutta is 2,000km from Ramanathapuram in Tamil Nadu, where Kalam's school is located. One version of the Agni missile, a project with which Kalam had been associated, can cover the distance in less than 20 minutes. Forget working an extra day. Many lawyers of Calcutta High Court did not work at all today, although it has nothing to do with the passing of the former President. Nearly 8,000 lawyers abstained from work following the death of a former acting chief justice, Samir Kumar Mukherjee, ignoring Chief Justice Manjula Chellur's repeated advice to the contrary. At a general body meeting at 10.30am today, the Bar Association, the largest lawyers' body of the court, decided not to attend court. The association's decision was communicated to the chief justice and other judges around 10.45am, 15 minutes after the judges had taken their seats.  Manjula Chellur But the association members stuck to their decision and proceedings were not conducted. Around an hour after receiving the resolution, the judges left the courtroom and went to their respective chambers and stayed there till the end of working hours. Since assuming the office of chief justice, Justice Chellur has been repeatedly requesting the lawyers to allow her to comply with the Supreme Court's directive to hold court for at least 210 days in a year. Calcutta High Court clocks between 185 and 195 days. On July 13, Justice Chellur had told advocates that she had received calls from some judges of the Supreme Court and Bombay High Court recently, wondering if there was a practice of not attending courts because of the death of a lawyer. Besides adding to the pile-up of cases, such abstentions leave clients high and dry. "I asked my clients from Hooghly to be present in the court as their cases were fixed for hearing today. After reaching here today, they came to know that their cases would not be heard. This is not done," advocate Rabishankar Chatterjee said. The Bar Association secretary, Rana Mukherjee, did not take calls from this newspaper while other association leaders declined to comment. In case the lawyers of Calcutta want to acclimatise themselves with an alternative way of paying tribute to departed souls, they can make a trip to Ramanathapuram, around 60km from Rameswaram (from where Lord Ram is said to have built the bridge to Ravan's Lanka) and 600km from Chennai. At Schwartz, one of the oldest schools in Asia and where Kalam had studied from 1946-50, tributes were paid by placing a black and white photograph on a table with a few candles in front of the classroom where the former President had studied. Since Kalam had dissuaded the school from naming the oldest block after him, officials had put up a small plaque on the corridor that reads: "President Abdul Kalam studied here." The school has changed little from the days when Kalam completed his term - the same old tiled roof and the wooden reapers are still around. "Some pieces of the furniture are also the same from Kalam's days," said vice-principal Raja Suviseshapandian. Won't it be a distraction if hordes of lawyers from Calcutta descend on the school? It will be but the gentle folks of Ramanathapuram have got used to such intrusions. "Every tourist bus that goes to Rameswaram halts at our gates as the driver informs the pilgrims that this is the school where Kalam had studied. Often the occupants would stop the bus, alight and make a tour of the school without any inhibition that they might be disturbing classes. Soon we got used to these intrusions, realising it is difficult to fight the Kalam effect," Suviseshapandian said. Calcutta lawyers need not worry. They will not find themselves entirely out of place in the southern state. Kindred spirits in the Tamil Nadu government have declared a holiday on Thursday, the day Kalam's last rites are scheduled to be held in Rameswaram. So, in spite of Kalam's wish, Schwartz School is unlikely to be able to teach the lawyers any lesson that day. |