LEX INSIGHT

  By: A Member of the Kerala High Court Advocates' Association I am 58 years old and joined this noble profession in 1992. For over three decades, I have walked these corridors, and for the last 26 years, attending the Annual Day of our Association was a ritual I followed religiously. It was not just a function; it was a tradition of our professional family. To an outsider, these events might have seemed amateurish, but to us, they were everything. The heart and soul of the evening was often a drama staged by the advocates themselves. These performances were certainly not "market-standard" productions, but we applauded them until our hands hurt and laughed aloud like children. The true celebration was never about the perfection of the act, but the shared joy in its making. But this year, for the first time, I stayed home. My absence was a silent protest. It was a personal decision born out of deep discomfort with the manner in which the program was arranged, particularly ...

  Apartment living was never a choice for me. I was instead pulled by the city that holds Kerala's judicial capital—a non-negotiable professional backdrop to my own domestic migration. The philosophy of migration, even within a state, held true: the pursuit of better professional ground. It began in the late nineties, manifesting as a frantic, daily commute on the Coimbatore Superfast, courtesy KSRTC, departing Kollam at 5 AM. That 'day's caller' routine gradually softened, progressing from a single lodge room to a one-bedroom apartment, then two, and culminating in our current space: a three-bedroom apartment complex.   The expansion of this new life accelerated recently: I purchased my apartment in 2021, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, while my son and daughter-in-law acquired the adjacent unit in early 2024. These purchases were driven by strong commercial considerations—easy access to highways and a major super-specialty hospital—all while being located in a quiet, su...

Many things that had faded away have been resurrected—listening to the radio, watching movies in theatre, and several others. Movies were once an addiction; 9 pm was almost always movie time, and the language or genre didn't matter. That habit has since  died down. While OTT platforms have taken over a part of it, the addiction itself largely doesn't exist anymore. Instead, writing has become an obsession, and finding topics for it has become another addiction. In the life of a lawyer, especially after many years in the profession, experiences are overwhelmingly legal. Therefore, the law naturally provides the most fertile ground for topics. Today's subject, for instance, is a little fraud that was exposed in Court 5A of the Kerala High Court. The court was hearing a set of matrimonial appeals between one Anu and one Bina. (The names of all parties involved in this case have been changed to protect their privacy.) Now, don't be surprised—they were not in a matrimonial t...