 food with the family, et cetera. And they say that if you get good literature for the mind, that's the best food you can have for the mind. And to understand how law and literature move together or whether law and literature don't move together, they are sworn enemies or they say that if you know literature, you can bring it in your knowledge while sharing the things. I remember watching one of the webinars where the talk was taken by Mr. Kapil Sable, the senior advocate and the union law minister. He said that once you bring in different perspectives of knowledge from different spheres, maybe it's a newspaper, social media, et cetera, that increases your horizon to think a topic on a different perspective. As they say that it was first 2D, then 3D, then 5D and now we are talking of metaverse. The same way if you grow with the literature, does it help you to evolve as a human being and the lawyer as such? They say that if you understand the literature better, you can understand the nuances of the difference between human being and being human. And all these things are actually gelled out in the right perspective. What is the way forward to understand the journey within the literature and law? We have amongst us Mr. S S Naganand, the senior advocate and the vice president of the Bar Association of India and who has recently authored a book, Story of the Clan. And they say that if the foundation is big, the building is strong. And if the clan in a legal fraternity is good, that automatically shows its trees and fruits in a different way. And Mr. Naganand is testimony that we are all cherishing sweet fruits of his knowledge and wisdom, not only on the law, but literature, et cetera. Without taking much time, I will ask Sir Naganand to take his insights. And before he starts the session, I will also make a request so that the speakers can have a peepin on the book, which he has authored on the plan, sorry, Story of the Clan. Over to you, Sir. Good evening, Mr. Chaturth. It is nice to be among your fraternity or I should say our fraternity because we all belong to the fraternity of lawyers. You know, law has always been described as a learned profession. And there are other professions which are described as the oldest profession. Now the learned profession, why they call it learned is because we are supposed to be well-informed and more than anything else, even in courts, when we refer to each other, we always say my learned friend or my learned senior counsel. So this expression learned is always something which is appended to the name of a lawyer or a counsel when he's being referred to or he or she. The reason being, we want to be constantly reminded that we are a learned profession. Now in the profession of law, whereas we all know a service organization, we are supposed to be the purveyors of knowledge and we are that group of people whose main object is to see that justice is delivered to the person who is in search of that elusive concept of justice. Now for us to understand that, if you read now throughout our law career, maybe in a law class, law college, we go through three years of legal education and in the three years of legal education, we find that number of subjects which are relevant to law are taught. Of course, now we have a five-year legal education, but in the five years of legal education that you have, you are not exposed to anything other than the law. So you read jurisprudence, you read penal code, you read all the procedural laws, you read new laws like arbitration and others, but ultimately you don't really read anything of wider dispensation that is needed in life. It's often said that the law is a very demanding profession because lawyers don't take any holiday throughout the term that they're sitting in court or sitting. Saturday, Sundays are no exception. We are always at work and there's nothing like saying that today I'm just hanging up my boots and I'm not doing anything. Your mind is something which is always working because lawyers work with minds. Now it is in this background that I was reflecting on what I should be able to speak about. I talked about it and I said, the importance of having a wide spectrum of interests in life is very, very important. I mean, I might let out a small secret. I'm in the habit of reading books every day. There's no exception to that. And some of them I read in hard copies. Many I read in soft copies. The judgments and legal literature, of course, is available in soft copies. So we read all of that. But my fascinating experience has been that I would like to read not one book, at least three books at a time I'm reading parallely. In the sense that I might read one chapter in one book, take up another book and read another two chapters. Like presently I'm reading Salman Rashid's book called Don Quixote, the very interesting book, but very different from what lawyers would read. Then there is a legal literature, which has something to do with the law, which is also stories of the law. I can, for example, I show you a book. It says, the law is an ass. And it's a beautiful book written by Ronald Irving. And if I can just read one or two of the small sentences from this book. This is a collection of verses and writings. And one of them I thought I should bring to your attention is a famous quote from William Shakespeare in Henry VI, part two. And this is how the conversation goes. Dick, the first thing we'll do, let's kill all the lawyers. And Khare says, nay, that I mean to do. It is not this lamentable thing that the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment. That parchment being scribbled over should undo a man. Some say the bee stings, but I say it's the bees wax for which I did, but seal wants to a thing. And I was never my own man since. So this quote of Shakespeare of let's kill all the lawyers is quite a popular one. There's another very interesting quote that is attributed here in this book. It says, the laws of evidence often prevents a person from telling the whole truth. And it took a man thousands of years to put words down on paper. And his lawyers still wish he wouldn't. So these are some thoughts that come to your mind. When you read this, so wide reading of things which are connected to the law and things which are not connected to the law are very important. I'll give you two examples from two decisions. One, both of them were happily argued by my late senior, Mr. Sundar Swami. The first one is a case in the year 1989. There was a very famous religious institution and there was a fight between the junior Ponte and it led to a litigation. And in the course of that argument, my late father quoted a verse from Viduranithi, which is coming from Mahabharata. And it says, chajed ekam kulasyaate, gramasyaate kulam tyajayate, gramam janapadasyaate, atmarthe pruthivim tyajayate. The point that he was trying to make, simply word, these words put in simple terms means that for the purpose of saving a village, you can sacrifice an individual. For the purpose of saving a town, you can sacrifice a village. For the purpose of sacrifice, for a country, you can sacrifice a district itself. And for our own benefit, you have to track your own atma. The reason why he quoted this was to say that this Swamiji against whom this action is taken has to be a sacrifice for the good of public. And this sloka is quoted in the judgment by late justice P. R. Shamsundar. And he says, this is what was argued before me. And finally he accepted that argument and upheld that termination. Another of the case which I remember again related to corporate law. You know why I'm giving you these examples are this litigation, which I just now mentioned to you, relates to order 39, rule one and two, the court of silk procedure, with which all lawyers are familiar. The question is, when should an injunction be granted? What are the factors for grant of injunction? Now in a case like that, what is the role of Mahabharata or Vidurainiti? Normally it should have no role, but it did have a role and it influenced the court to take a decision one way or the other. Another argument is, which again he can ask, there was a sloka from Bhagavad Gita, chapter two verse 34. Sambhavidsya chakirtihe maranat atirichyate. That means for a person of high character, his character is more important than even death. This was a sloka quoted by the opposite side, late Mr. H.P. Datar who was appearing in that case against our side. We were appearing for the bank. And this is what he said. What he was trying to emphasize was that by the action taken against his client, his honor is being interdicted, his honor is being affected. Therefore he would rather have his honor appalled than anything else because losing one's honor is something like losing one's own self. Now these are just two examples that I'm giving. Recently I was arguing a matter before the Supreme Court and one of the argument that I was canvassing was that there is a lot of discussion in these papers, but finally there is no actual decision taken as to what should be done in the case. So I narrated a sloka from Bhavad Gita and I said that after saying all this, just like what Krishna told Arjuna, now I have told you everything. It is now for you to decide what you want to do. And he said that I'm not going to guide you anything more but you take a decision. And when that sloka was narrated, just as Ram Subhanayam remembered the whole of the sloka and he narrated it and he said, yes, that is so. You can say you can do what you want, but ultimately the decision is something which you should take and which you should do. Now these are just three examples that I'm giving you to say that our reading outside the law is very important for us in court also because in many situations you get some support, something to help you from other parts of our literature. Now what is it that one must read? I just arranged in front of me a whole set of books and I can just tell you a few of them. Most of you would have heard the famous author Henry Cecil. He wrote a series of books on law and they are such tiny books and they are so informative. One book is Tales from the Bench. This is a book which contains a number of short stories. Another one called Independent Witness. Now then like this he has written another book called Full Circle. Now if you look at these books, they contain a layperson's account of what happens in court and it places a number of interesting thoughts in our mind. See, because the role of a lawyer is that he must read, he must understand and then he must apply those principles when need arises in court. Now these are invaluable books. Another series of books which most of you would have heard of is Lord Denning. It's a beautiful book about his life, Lord Denning Life, My Life and there are a number of books written by Lord Denning himself. It's a beautiful one. It's a book of legal anecdotes. Then a very, very interesting book which I found again in my library which I've read many times is Leaves from My Library. It's a fantastic book and what Lord Denning has done is he has taken up a few authors whom he thought influenced his life and I'll just give you the names of some of them. Winston Churchill, Lord Nelson, William Shakespeare, John Buchan, Lord Macaulay, Thomas Hardy, Louis Caroll, all of us know Alice in Wonderland, John Bunyan and so on, Charles Dickens. Now you see, there are many, many passages from many of his writings that are important. Now one of them, of course, Lord Denning says, everyone knows the funeral oration of Anthony on the death of Julius Caesar. He says, friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. I come to Baris Caesar, not to praise him. Then another one from the famous play of As You Like It, all the worlds are staged and all the men are merely players. All the men and women are merely players. I think these things lend a kind of presence in our mind. The reason is, we all know that in the lawyers fraternity, we appear against each other in court. We come out, trade and put our arms around each other and come on, I say, let's go have a cup of coffee, let's go have a drink and we'll go have a party. And sometimes clients are perplexed. I said, what kind of human beings are these? Inside court, they're fighting like cats and dogs and when they come out, they become friends and I don't know what he's going to do to my case. So the only thing is that this is the fascinating part of the legal profession. When we all know that before the court we are doing a drama, drama in the sense that we are trying to espouse the cause of our client for the purpose of ensuring that his justice is delivered to him. Like this, there are a number of writers. For example, this is a very famous writer, Rampol. Rampol is a fictional character. The writer is John Mortimer. He's written a number of books which are very, very interesting to read, which has a lot of stories, which has humor, which has everything. There's another book, Rampol Omnibus. This is also a book which is full of stories and Rampol and the Angel of Death. Like this, John Mortimer has written a number of books. Each of them is worth reading for the felicity of the language, for the simplicity of the expression and for the beautiful manner in which he has actually tackled the subject. No, Lord Denning was a famous judge in the United Kingdom. He served till he was 90 years of age and thereafter he retired because at those days there was no retirement age for judges. He wrote a number of books outside of the law and his collection of all the books are with me and I read them with such interests. I've read them so many times. The language is so simple. The story is told in such an interesting way. Now, one story says, the surgeon pulled too hard, too long. This is a case of a woman who had to undergo a forceps delivery and years later, she filed a case for damages against the doctor and this was what her case was. He pulled too hard and too long. This is another story he writes about a man who jumped out of the window. Like this, these are small little anecdotes which we get from his book, which are very useful. And of course, Lord Denning's famous autobiography is here, The Family Story. This is a book in which he narrates his early days and it goes back to a thousand years of history that he writes in this. Now, this is relevant because it is important for us to know that legal history has some role to play. This is another book by Henry Cecil, Friends at Court. All sorts of stories are there. If you go to a little more serious reading, you have the famous book, Introduction to the Philosophy of Law by Roscoe Pound. And that's like the philosophy of the law and the famous book on jurisprudence by Fitzgerald. Then you have another series of writers like Ari Meghari. Here is Meghari. And he's written a number of books, The New Miscellaneous Law, Miscellaneous Law, et cetera. And you now come to some Indian writers. You have the famous autobiography of Justice Krishna here of The Bench. Very interesting book to read. And we have three or four autobiographies which are incomparable. My Own Boswell by Hidayatullah, Roses in December by Justice Chagla. And My Experiments with Truth, of course, the father of the nation, Mahatma Gandhi. What is it that we get from all these books? Why should we read all these books? Now, as I said, reading widens one's horizon. It enables you to appreciate the nuances of life in the manner in which it is to come. Now, should one read only something connected with law or something else? Now, I gave you two examples of what was used in three examples of what was used in court in recent times from Mahabharata, from Bhagavad Gita. Yatechasi Tathakuru is what Krishna told Arjuna. And the thing is that these are, you can do what you want, that's what it means. These are nuances which you get from here and there. Now, let's look at some of the biographies. Now, we have a famous book by Mr. Fali Nariman, The State of the Nation. And then he wrote another book called Before Memory Fades. That's his autobiography. And you go outside of law and you find a host of books which will widen your horizon. And then I go to the field of spiritual books. Now, you see, you have a book called Meditation and Spiritual Life, published by Ramakrishna Ashram, a famous monk called Swami Yatishwaranandaji. He wrote this book. It's a world of knowledge inside this. It covers everything that one can think of outside of law. But two of my most prized possessions is a book. Here it is. It's called Adventures in Religious Life by Swami Yatishwaranandaji, presented to my father in 1959. It's a wonderful book which has a number of small shlokas from various texts. And there's an understanding of each of the concepts of it. So the same effect is another book called Divine Life. This is a book presented to my late grandfather in the year 1950 by the same Swami Yatishwaranandaji when he was in Switzerland. This has a long introduction. And it is one of the early books which introduces texts like Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads and other texts which have some aphorisms which are of universal value. As all of us know, Bhagavad Gita is not a text of Hindu religion. It is a universal religion. Jeevana Dharma Yoga is the name of the book that is written by a famous Kannada writer D.V. Gundappa which is an anthology of the compilation of what the Bhagavad Gita contains. Now the same way you have the same interesting collection of stories from various sides. Now go a little more spiritual and this is a book in Kannada. It's called Vivek Chudamani. It's a composition in Sanskrit by Adi Shankaracharya. And it's a beautiful composition which is a very highly philosophical one propounding the philosophy of Advaita which is he's the propounter of the Advaita philosophy. Now there is another book which is like an anthology of Kannada literature and it gives a number of people who are famous and among the Kannada Karnataka has been fortunate in having several people who won the Gnanapeet award for their writings in Kannada. K.V. Puttappa for Ramayana Darshanan, R.S. Mughali for Kannada Saitre Charite, Dara Bendru for Aralomuralu, Shivarankaranth for Yakshagana, Gokak for Java Prithivi. Like this, the name is endless and we have number of people who have contributed to the enrichment of our society. Now, we are supposed to be learned. How will we be learned if we don't know what they have written? The famous K.V.A. written by Kumara Vyasa of the Mahabharata, such a wonderful composition and many people sing it. And the gamaka version of it is so interesting to hear, to listen, to read, to understand and to appreciate. Now you have writings of little more modern people. If you can call that so, it's a complete works of Swami Vivekananda. You know, Swami Vivekananda wrote very many books. He was a very powerful speaker. He was India's representative when he went to the World of Religions, Conference of World Religions in Chicago. And the important part of his writings is that he enthused people to get up and recognize the youth of the country as the future. Going back a little bit, you have to go to Greece. I went to now Sanskrit is over. Canada, I've dealt with something. You go to Greeks, an introduction to the ancient Greeks. It's a beautiful book for Edith Hall. It gives you a fantastic account of the various civilizations of Greece that were there. And we have a lot of lessons to learn, the stories of Omar and Odyssey, et cetera. Then we have some real lights reading. Like, what would life be without lawyers? This is a beautiful book written by Philip Howard, which analyzes and says that probably society would be better off without the lawyers. Of course, the famous Indian poet, lawyer, Travindranath Tagore selected poems. These are also important. This is something which, you know, we cannot one part with. Now you go to the, there is in the Indian philosophy, what they call as the Prasthanatraya. The Prasthanatraya are the Brahma Sutras, the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. Now these are the three main sources of Hindu religion. And on which there have been a number of commentaries. One of them is written by a very eminent person, Mr. S. V. Giri, called Sai Upanishad. This beautifully analyzes and puts in contemporary words, the various Upanishads, like Isha Vasya Upanishad, Keno Upanishad, Katha Upanishad, Mundaka Upanishad, Prasna Upanishad, and all the rest of the Brahma Upanishads are also digested in this book. Now, you see for us, for those of us who are not efficient in Sanskrit, of course, I know just a sprinkling of Sanskrit. I can't say that I know Sanskrit as a great scholar would know. But it has a number of interesting facets of life that are interwarmed. Currently, we're in the process of reading Valmiki Ramayana in Sanskrit and trying to understand it. And the Indian Institute of Technology has prepared a kind of a website if all those of you are interested can go and look at it. It's a fantastic website. It has the text in Sanskrit or any language you want. It has a brief transcription of the text in a language you want. It has also got a small commentary on it, very crisp, very beautifully done. And when you start reading Ramayana in the original form, apart from the devotional aspect of it, you see, if we believe Rama was the incarnation of the Bhagawan of the Godhead, there you look at him in a different way. But if you look at him in a different perspective as a human being, there is a lot of things to be learned. Many times we quote from Ramayana also when we are arguing a case in quote, now the reason why I'm trying to express this wide spectrum that is necessary for us to bear in mind is something which prompted me to think of writing a book thanks to COVID and in the initial part of COVID times when everything was actually closed down and the lawyers were free and we had to be at home. I started recounting, unfortunately or fortunately, I did not maintain any diary of whatever happened in my life. But from recollections, from discussions I had, from the talks that my elders gave, my uncles, my aunts, my paternal grandfather, all of that sort of was in my mind and I started writing about it. The book has about 29 chapters. It's published by Oak Bridge, publishers and here is the look of the book. It's available on Amazon, I understand, but also many other places. There's a forward to it written by just as a M.N. Venkatachalaya, former Chief Justice of India. Fortunately, he has been a great source of connection to our family. And I will just read a couple of lines from what he says in the forward. There is a subtle sense of humor, an essential sense of purpose and an abundance of literary flourish, opening up the reader's mind to the subtle message underpinning the narrative that certain cherished the family values and a sense of collective responsibility held Indian families together. We see that the sad state of the same society when interests degenerate and become purely individualistic. The story of the clan is a reiteration of the noble theme that the example said by noble men and women is in a non-trivial sense, the measure of the standards and values that form the lynchpins of a happy society. The family has had its own sorrows, but then the book conveys that a smile can shine even through a tear. And he goes on to describe his connection with the family and his praise for the book. Now the book, I didn't want to make the book extremely chronological. So therefore, I decided that I'm going to talk in the book about certain subjects. So what I did was I started recounting the life of my great-great-grandfather Gopalappa, who lived in a small town called Mudigere near Gauri Vidnur in Nauchik-Bilapur district and how the family were worshiping a deity there called Janakeshava. And there's a temple there which was set up during the Vijayanagara times and there's an inscription there. And we still go to the temple and the temple is still intact and there's going on there. So we're looking at something like 8, 900-year-old history. And from there, he traced it to his son, only son Dasappa, who was also a landed person who lived there for some years and due to reasons of family and plague and other things, the family decided to move from there and come to a place which is nearer to Bangalore. When he came some days nearer Bangalore, they're wondering where to go. So they found this small hamlet called Sandekappa which is luckily only 33 kilometers from where I live now on the Nellamangala road, where they found their kindreds people there. They found a few families who were also worshiping the same deity. So they decided to move there. And the next chapter deals with his son, Dasappa, only one son Ganeshrao and he was born in the early 1900s. As soon as he was born, he started going to school later. It was a small primary school in the village. Then he had to move to Bangalore. He then joined Central College. He graduated with a BSc degree and as it was customary those days, if he wanted to study law, he had to go to Madras, the Madras Law College. So I talked about life of Ganeshrao before he became a lawyer. And then I've described a bit about Ganeshrao as a lawyer and number of anecdotes in his life, which make you sit up and wonder was this possible? And there's another chapter called Ganeshrao ahead of his time because Ganeshrao was the first person who got a formal education at a degree level in the family. He became the past president of the Central College Old Boys Association. He was a scout commissioner. He was instrumental in founding the Bangalore Medical College, the BMS College of Engineering. And he was a Freemason and he was a very master of the Mason. And the myriad things that he did and the number of stories that I have been able to collect about his life and times makes interesting reading. And that is in the early part of the first half of the 20th century. And then I refer to a chapter called Spiritual Awakening. This chapter of Spiritual Awakening connects us to several institutions. I've referred to Ganeshrao's connections to the Ramakrishna Mission. Swami Tagishanandji, a very famous monk, Swami Yatishwaranandji was a disciple of Swami Brahmanandji. Swami Brahmananda was incidentally one of the first disciples of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. And he was more or less senior to Swami Vaikananda also. Now his connection to that and how the bond built up and a great deal of respect and blessing that the family got from these connections. His connections to the famous Sringeri Samsthan that is the Sharada Mutt at Sringeri, the pontiffs of that lineage, you know the Sringeri Mutt was set up by Adi Shankaracharya and it has an unbroken lineage now for more than 800 years. And the family has had connection with them. And even today we are blessed to continue to have the connection with the current pontiffs Sri Sri Bharati Theta Swamiji and Sri Sri Vudhishekara Bharati Swamiji who are still currently ruling the Mutt. Then I come to another thing called the lasting legacy, the legacy of the law. How exactly did he live? What kind of practice did he do? What was his relationship with the bar? And how did he look after the younger members of the bar? There are a number of interesting stories in that. One story is about a former chief minister of the state who was his junior at the time, Mr. SM Krishna. How he happened to lose his bicycle by theft in court. And as soon as he came back to the office, my grandfather heard about it and called him next day, gave him a check and said, please go and buy a new cycle. I heard you lost a cycle. Don't worry about it. See the kind of relationship that we had and how we built up. And there's a lot of story I've written about how the temple was built. I come to the temple in the legacy. He was in tears to build a temple in 1955 in Sondegapur village, as I said, very close to Bangalore now. All the trials and the tribulations of that have also been there. And I showed you a book called Divine Life and Adventures in Religious Life by Swami Yatishwaranandji. Number of stories that are there, number of verses that are there, shlokas, which have been translated, grandfather selected many of them, had them inscribed in stone and they're all now embedded in the walls of the temple. A very unique thing have not come across any other temple like that. There are at least a hundred shlokas which are embedded and inscribed and put on stone plates in the wall. In addition, there are some famous compositions of Kruvenpu and others also in Kannada language is also done there. It, the idea was that, you know, this, the temple must speak to you. You go and speak to God and we are in the temple. If you just allow your eyes to wander around, then you'll see the famous slokas of the Bhagavad Gita, Ananya Shintayantam and Yom Yemam, Ananya Shintayantam, all those slokas which are there, many of the important ones, Karmanyavadika, Rastema, Palesh, Kadaachana, like this. And many of the stotras also, you know, Shankaracharya wrote many, many stotras. He wrote, apart from being the founder of the Adweta philosophy, he wrote three types of compositions. One was the commentary on these Vastanatryas. Second one was called the stotras that he wrote for the other people. Third one was called Prakrana Granthas. These were at different levels for school students, for college students, for PhD scholars, three different levels of instruction that he gave. And the stotras that he composed are so fantastic. And I've referred to that a little later in the book. Then after this, I go to the next generation after grandfather, when father joined the profession, sometime in the early 1940s, in the middle of 40s, he qualified from Bangalore and then went to again, like his father to Madras, got a degree in 1946 and came back and joined the profession in 47. Now at that time, how the profession was, what was the relationship? How were family life? That is very important. Today, you know, in our nuclear families, we really don't know what kind of relationship was maintained between father and son, mother and son, father and daughter-in-law. I mean, many of you might find it very strange. I think in some parts of the country, it's still there. The father-in-law doesn't talk to the daughter-in-law. There is no direct communication. And the mother-in-law doesn't talk to the son-in-law. There is no direct communication. Those were times, they were different times. How were they communicating? But they still loved each other. They looked after each other. They cared for each other. They looked after the children, the grandchildren, everything life went on. There's a strict regimen between father and son. If father is sitting, son had to stand. There's nothing like some sitting next to him, like, you know, now what happens? We sit down for a cup of tea or in some families have a drink together. But that is something which is unheard of. So those were times about which I have spoken. Then I've come to moving our family from the old area of Gandhinagar, where our office still is now. We come to a different extension. I've referred to how we moved there. And when we moved here, Bangalore was such a small city. I used to go to school by cycle. It was a long journey, but that was the mode of transport. There was no qualms about it. There's nobody bothered about it. And how life was. And before that, before I was able to cycle on my own from ninth standard, I used to go in a school bus. It's a small kind of a tempo. And what fun we used to have in the tempo and how the school was. I've given some narration about the strict demeanor that we had to maintain in the schools that I went to, especially the Baldwin Boy School, where it was a convent and, you know, all the rigor of a convent education, how it was. I've spoken about that. Then I come to independent India and the life in the garden city. I've described quite a bit about Bangalore, how it was, what kind of transformation has taken place and how life was. What was it that young people were doing then? And I've referred to a number of movie theaters. You know, Bangalore was famous for a lot of cinema theaters which were very close to our house in Gandhinagar. The famous Kempagoda Road, that's something like about 14 or 15 cinema theaters. That was the form of entertainment in those days. And then about travels. I had the good fortune of traveling practically to every country in the world. And I've described about the travels in the early times, how we had to go out of Bangalore. And when we had to travel out of Bangalore, what was the great effort that was needed to get a train reservation? If we had to go into a reserve train compartment, we had to stand in queue overnight and then get a reservation and then start going to the second class compartment. And then there was also the third class compartment. So this is something which I've spoken about. And then I've spoken about the spiritual awakening. No, as I said, the connection that we had with so many religious institutions and pontiffs and seers, they held us in good stead. One of them was the connection that we had. Friends, you've become too dark. I'm afraid there's been a power shutdown. No issues, no issues. It should come on. My generators got on and let's see how quickly it has come. Let me see if I can put on mine. Oh, but there's, yeah. Yeah, there it is. The electricity. It's a knowledge spar. Okay, then I've talked about the relationship between the executive and the judiciary in earlier times. Not just 50 years ago, the problems that we see today as so real are not there in that time. The caste configuration was not there. Nobody bothered which religion you belong to, which caste you belong to. There's quite a bit of description about how life was, how politicians were, especially the late Sri Virender party, who was chief minister of the state of Mysore, a very fine gentleman. He had no qualms about it. He was such a simple person. He would, you know, as my father's advocate general, many days he would just, you know, stroll into the house as though it was his own house and say, I would like to talk to you. Sometimes when my father went to the Sondha Gopal temple in the weekends, he would say, I'm coming with you. Just sit in his car and go. That's it. There's nothing like, you know, protocol, formality, police, siren, nothing was there. See, life was very different. Then I've talked about adventures of youth, the travels that I did everywhere. And then I come to my own profession. I started off as a chartered accountant, practiced some time. And then for good reasons, I was guided to say that it may be better for you to become a lawyer because our law chamber had a fairly vast practice in law. And that's how I started my career. Then I've spoken about friends like family. You know, we were blessed to have great friends. I've spoken at length about many of them. Some are alive, some are not alive. And the relationship, the bond that we had with our friends. And one of them was right from the time we went to school, the first day we were together. Unfortunately, he died in a road accident a few months before his 40th year. It's such a sad loss, Murli Singh. Like that, another gentleman I met, very late, Joe. The bondage that we had with Joe, he became part of our family, he used to live in London. Every year he would come to India for two months and we would go to his house for two months or one month. And he became part of our family. He attended all the graduation ceremonies of Allah, my three daughters, both in India and Allah, both of them, two of them studied in America. He came for the graduation ceremonies there. He was like part of our family and such a beautiful relationship that we had. Then I talked about changing the profession, how it was, what was the profession then, and what was the type of work that I was doing at that, in the initial stages. And I've referred to a number of cases which I've argued. And number of cases in which I assisted my late father. I come to another chapter called Law is a Jealous Mistress. Now, Law is a Jealous Mistress, I say, because she will not allow you to rest in peace. Even after you've had your dinner and you're going to bed, suddenly a thought occurs to you, tomorrow I got to argue a case. Now, this is a troublesome part of that case. What I'm going to answer there, you have to search something, you have to find somewhere, so your mind is working. And as I said, nothing like being engaged all the time. The next part is a very sad part. I talk about the passing of my father in the course of arguing a case in the High Court. He was on his legs, he'll dive with his boots on. And that brings an end to an era, is what I have said. I've also added two or three chapters. My Dalyan Switha Rotary, there's a beautiful chapter called the Service of Ourself as we all know, that's the motto of Rotary. What the Rotary Club means, how it works, what kind of people are there, how I enjoyed being, holding various offices. I was president of the Rotary Bangalore North. And thereafter, my brother became the, Ramdas became the governor of the district. And I assisted him as a assistant governor of Rotary 3190. Then another interesting organization which I've had a long connection, it's called the International Commission of Juris. It's a governmental agency established just after the Second World War in Geneva. And the Karnataka was one of the first commissions which were affiliated to it. And I had a long association with them. Mr. Fali Nariman was a very active member. He was a member of the ICJ. We had an international conference, biennial conference in Bangalore where he was elected as the chairman of the executive committee. And a number of things that happened and how the quest for knowledge, International Commission of Juris is an organization which stands for the protection of human rights and the independence of judiciary. These are two things which are very, very important. Then I come to a new dawn in the profession. I've talked about the changes in the profession, how everything has changed, what are the new lawyers doing? And next chapter is about adventure, search for adventure. What is the kind of adventure that we should hold? And the last two chapters relating to spiritual life, an entire chapter devoted to encounters with the divine. Our family was divinely blessed to be very, very close to Bhagavanshi Satya Sai Baba of Puttaparthi. He took some great affection for me right from my young days, guided me. And at crucial times in my life, he said, this is what you should do, this is what you should not do. And our children, our marriage, he was largely responsible for helping me to select my own bride, and in spite of all the problems that that creates, he helped us to overcome that. And the family, the birth of my daughters, how he nurtured them at every crucial stage in their life. And then the birth of grandchild, even the grandchild, he was so affectionate to. That is the guiding hand of Swami, another chapter. And the last thing is about Vedanta Bharti. I was fortunate to get associated with Sri Sri Shankar Bharti Swamiji, who is the patron of a trust called Vedanta Bharti, which is doing some pioneering work. It's a very Catholic outlook, Swamiji, who is in the traditional mold, but doesn't think like a traditional mold. He is universal in his thinking. The teaching of Adi Shankar Acharya are universal. There is, it has nothing to do with the Hindu Dharma or anything. These are applicable to everybody, and everybody is entitled to know it. So we had two, three great programs of lakhs of people coming together and chanting Saumdaryal Hari, one of the famous compositions of Adi Shankar Acharya, the Krna Murthy Stotra. Like this, number of the avyans that we had, and great people came, Prime Minister Bodhi participated, our Home Minister Amit Shah participated in them. Like this, many great people participated in it. So it is, I think, it's something which is, what shall I say? God's gift, I should say, because the first verse of Vivekachudamini says that durlabham treyem evaithat daivaanugraha hetukam manushatvam mukshatvam maha purushasamsrayav That means three things are very, very difficult in this world. One is, and that can happen only with God's grace. The first one is getting birth as a human being. The second one is having a desire in your mind for getting salvation, mukti. You should become one with God. That desire should come with you. And the third and most important thing, which is also not possible without God's grace, is the association with great personalities, maha purushasamsrayav. And we are fortunate to have association with so many maha purushas. Right from the Sringeri lineage and Bhagawan Baba, then currently Shankar Bharti Swamiji. And like this, you know, number of Sri Sri Ravishankar, for that matter. In fact, Sri Sri Ravishankarji is the one who released this book on in a few months ago. So what I'm saying is, this is something which is very unique to the family is what I thought it could be a very use. The last one chapter I've talked about is learning to live in an unprecedented world. Now COVID came two years ago and what happened to COVID was everything went upside down. I used to travel about 250 days a year. I used to be out of Bangalore in 365 days. In the last two years, I've not stepped out of Bangalore for even one visit, except a few months ago, we went for a short visit out of Bangalore. What I'm saying is it brought about a sea change. We're all now sitting at home. We are doing video conferencing. We are talking to clients on the phone. It brings about a complete different change. Human relationships have completely undergone a change. We no longer meet our friends. We cannot go with them for a cup of coffee for a dinner or for a evening out. Everything has changed. So this is an unprecedented world. And therefore I thought I should say a little bit and thanks to this unprecedented times, it was possible for me to sit down, find time and thanks to my niece, Arpana who lives with us who was able to take down most of it till I... What shall I say? Held my skills in dictating to my iPad and using the voice recognition software, which I now do. And that's how life comes to an end at the end of this COVID. And I hope this is not going to end. I've also talked about it, about the birth, the marriage of all our children, the birth of grandchildren. We are blessed with four grandchildren now and the life with them and how their life is progressing. And I end the book with this prayer with which I will also now stop and leave a few minutes if we can have an interaction if possible. It's a famous song. K-sara-sara, whatever will be, will be. The future is not asked to see. K-sara-sara, what will be, will be. And I end the book with a universal prayer. Sarve bhavan tu sukina ha Sarve santu niramaya Sarve bhadrani pa shantu Maka ched dukkha bhag bhaved Om shanti, shanti, shanti. It means let everyone be happy. Let everyone be at peace. Let everyone see and experience auspicious things always. Let there be no sorrow. Thus I pray for universal peace, universal peace, universal peace. Thank you very much. It has been an exhilarating experience in writing the book. And I hope all of you enjoy reading it. K-sara-sara, Ananda, Muthiru. So we are unmuting Mr. Ananda so that from his expression this can be gauge that he has been mesmerized the way you have taken things forward. Mr. Ananda, you will have to unmute. Yeah. Yes, sir. I have unmuted Mr. Ananda. You want me to say, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought that since you were... If you want to say it. Aga Ananda, I am very happy to have heard your talk nearly an hour now. Extraordinarily beautiful and very interesting talk you are given there now and you have covered a whole gamut of things not only in your life but in past several things. I'm very happy about this. I do not know how long you took to write this book and how big it is. And it's very promising. I would like to suddenly take an opportunity of reading that one now and I thank you for this opportunity. Thank you, Aga Ananda. Thank you. Thank you, sir. The book is available on Amazon and the book is not too long. It's only about 300 pages. Thank you. The triple centuries have their own mark. So thank you, sir, for your insights. And as I was seeing on the YouTube and on this platform, they are saying that law and literature is a different perspective. But still, you have hammered your point and I think a lot of people will take a lot of brownie points for their mindset. Thank you, everyone. Stay safe. Stay blessed. Thank you.