The High Court

I went along with a friend who had some work at the High Court today. As we were walking along a hallway, I heard someone saying, “Shhhhh!... shhhhh!... shhhhh!...” I looked behind me at a man dressed in white, wearing a wide red gold-braided belt and a small red turban with a gold badge. He was holding up a long decorated silver... what? mace? staff? Behind him walked a judge, in his flowing black robes. As the two of them processed toward the judge’s courtroom, the “shhhhh!... shhhhh!...” sounds caused the lawyers in the hallway, in their flowing black robes, to press back against the walls. As the judge passed each lawyer, he or she pressed hands together in namaste, and bowed.

We went into one of the courtrooms, whose judge had not arrived. Then in a little while we heard “Shhhhh!... shhhhh!...” and the judge entered from a door behind the bench, stood facing the court, did namaste and bowed. The flock of lawyers, looking like big birds to me, crowded around the bench to get the judge’s attention. Then they sat down around a long table piled with books and papers, and the proceedings began. There were a couple of wooden benches against the back wall, behind a wooden railing, for onlookers.

We left after a few minutes and I hurried to keep up with my friend. We walked down one corridor after another, and suddenly we were in the oldest building, all Indo-Saracenic red brick, with scalloped arches and wide balconies. We walked through a four-way intersection of hallways, with a statue of a seated man in the middle. The light was rosy because of the red-brick, and there were arches behind arches, beyond which one could glimpse rooms with stained glass windows glowing, and tree branches beyond the balconies, inside and outside together; and the whole space was full of lawyers in their black gowns. Two of the older ones wore white Mysore turbans. Because I was walking quickly, it appeared to me that a series of screens was sliding aside as I walked, each one framed by another arch, and showing a different view – and then in a minute the vision was over, and we were once again in a more ordinary hall.

Then downstairs, through a gothic arch filled with a high barred gate, so that I said, “Are you taking me to the dungeon?” But then we were outside somehow, walking into a crowd of people holding folders and papers, drinking small plastic cups of coffee, talking and laughing, or looking worried. Normal people and black birds mixed. It was the big world.