Beyond the Gavel: Tushar Mehta's New Books Shed Light on Courtroom Curiosities and Lighter Side of Law

 On a Sunday afternoon in New Delhi, where the heat usually silences the city’s legislative heart, a different kind of thunder rolled through the halls of power. It was not the gavel of judgment, but the collective roar of laughter as India’s legal vanguard gathered to witness the birth of a literary "double-decker."Tushar Mehta, the Solicitor General of India—a man more accustomed to defending the state’s most solemn secrets—stepped into the light as a chronicler of the absurd. With the launch of The Bench, the Bar, & the Bizarre and The Lawful and the Awful, the event became a rare intersection of heavy-duty politics and the delicate poetry of the courtroom anecdote.  

Union Home Minister Amit Shah, presiding over the occasion, offered a reflection that was as much a celebration of the state as it was of the author. In his view, the stability of the Indian project is a miracle written in ink rather than blood. "Over the seventy-six-year journey of our Constitution, we have driven the roots of our democracy to profound depths," Shah observed. 

"Every change that has taken place in this country—whether through the Parliament or the State Legislative Assemblies—has been accepted without the shedding of a single drop of blood."  

Yet, if Shah provided the gravitas, Justice Surya Kant provided the sparkle. To read Mehta’s books, the Justice suggested, was to witness "a courtroom drama that accidentally wandered into a stand-up special." 

He wondered aloud how a man so deeply entrenched in the grueling machinery of Court No. 1 found the time to breathe life into these pages. "My money," the Justice quipped, is on the theory that Mehta has discovered the "best time for comedic writing is while sitting in Court No. 1." “Who could have guessed that dusty case files, legal jargon, and solemn judicial proceedings could turn into full-fledged literature? Yet here we are, grinning from ear to ear as if we have just stumbled across a Supreme Court ruling authored by Mark Twain.”

The Justice’s speech was a tour-de-force of legal nostalgia, invoking the ghosts of giants like C.K. Daphtary, whose wit once sliced through judicial tension like a scalpel. 

He recalled Daphtary’s refusal to "swallow" a colleague’s argument and his gentle suggestion to a judge that it was time to "repent" for past contradictory views. It was a reminder that beneath the black robes and the stiff collars beats a heart that thrives on the human comedy.  

When the "hero of the day" finally took the podium, Tushar Mehta spoke with the self-awareness of a man who knows he is playing a dangerous game. To write humorously about the law while still practicing it is, in his words, "rather like a surgeon writing humorously about his own operation theater."  In a move of tactical brilliance—or perhaps professional survival—Mehta revealed that his books contain no mention of Indian judges or judgments. 

"Since I am practicing in India and intend to do so for quite a number of years hereafter," he admitted to a wave of knowing chuckles, "I have chosen not to include any instance of Indian courts." Instead, he has looked outward, finding the "lawful" and the "awful" in the far-flung corners of the global legal map.  As the sun dipped lower, the event took on a softer, more personal hue. 

It was Mother’s Day, and Mehta had dedicated his work to the woman who gave him life. Amit Shah noted the beauty of the gesture before grounding it in an Indian reality. "The fact that he chose to hold the launch of this book today... is a deeply symbolic and truly beautiful gesture," Shah said, before adding with a smile: “Although here in India, every single day is Mother's Day.”

Mehta, whose nearly eight-year tenure as SG — beginning 2018 — is the second longest after legendary CK Daphtary’s 13-year tenure as the first SG, says the judiciary is the most respected branch of the State.

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