Colours of Ram, now in black and white

The end result: the Jethmalani you didn’t know. Even the man admits the book ‘‘does not contain any monstrous lies’’ and is ‘‘quite readable though I have still not read it in full.’’

In the chapter, The Ladies Man, Nalini writes: ‘‘For someone who has a reputation for speaking his mind, he is surprisingly cagey about his supposedly frequent encounters with women. His reason: he has no right to speak about the lives of others. The lawyer in him shows when he says, ‘If it is so that I have had some affairs, have I the right to make them public? Every person has the right to keep his affairs private. I may open myself to public examination, but I have no right to intrude into the privacy of others. I must first take their consent in writing.’’

She narrates the 11-year-old’s crush for an Anglo-Indian girl two years his elder, his marital life with wives Durga and Ratna, and recalls two romantic interruptions at the Afro-Asian jurists’ conference in Damascus in 1957: a fling with a dancing girl and another with a professor called Zohra. A young daughter of an American lawyer too comes into the picture.

‘‘Don’t believe that men are seducers all the time. The power of sex is the power of women and not of men. Throughout history, man has used his superior physical strength to sexually subjugate women. But women have been more intelligent. They have been succeeded in evading man’s strength and establishing themselves in power, while convincing man that the delights he was trying to obtain by force were available by flattery.’’

Says Nalini: ‘‘Ram talked freely, without mincing words, on any topic. But I have observed restraint because sensationalism would have been an exaggeration. Ram comes across as a man with principles, someone who has the courage of conviction to believe strongly, never mind if it’s detrimental to his career.’’

In the chapter Challenges in the courtroom, Nalini profiles the infamous Nanavati murder case in which a naval officer shot dead his wife’s lover. Jethmalani never loved limelight.

‘‘In 1969, Ram represented Haji Mastan, one of the country’s most notorious smugglers, in a case which reinforced his image as a ‘smuggler’s lawyer…Although many wonder why he takes up some controversial cases, he believes that every citizen, whatever he may be, is entitled to a judicial trial. If you pre-judge a man, he will never get a lawyer.’’

In another chapter, Ram is asked by the Delhi High Court to undertake the defence of Balbir Singh and Kehar Singh as they wanted him to represent them in the assassination case of Indira Gandhi.

Jethmalani agreed, knowing the repercussions. ‘‘I could not refuse a case sent to me by the High Court. It is considered the grossest form of contempt for anyone to prejudice mankind against a person fighting for life. It pollutes the stream of judicial process…It betrays ignorance of the phenomena that trial courts can wrongly convict, and many a time the appeal courts reverse their decision.’’

Nalini also cuts back in time to the Janata Party years. Post-Emergency, Ram was appointed public prosecutor to try cases related to excesses and went all out against the Gandhi. Finally, Indira Gandhi decided to meet him at A R Antulay’s home one night.

‘‘It was a cold, wintry night. Ram had a dinner engagement he could not cancel and it was 11 pm by the time he arrived. Antulay ushered him in, took him to one of the bedrooms and knocked on the door. Ms Gandhi opened it. Ram went in and Antulay shut the door behind him.

‘‘Ram now chuckles, ‘It was a most piquant situation for Mrs Gandhi and I to be locked in a bedroom a little before midnight on a cold wintry night.’

He placed his arm around her shoulder and led her to the sofa and they sat down side by side. Mrs Gandhi started by saying, ‘‘Why are you so harsh with my son?’’ The reference was to the Kissa Kursi Ka case.

The chapter Friends, foes and confidants throws light on who he made friends with and why.

‘‘Amongst the friends he made because of opposition to Mrs Gandhi was Ramnath Goenka, the fiesty media baron who owned The Indian Express. It was identified as one publication that was unafraid to take on Mrs Gandhi’s authoritarianism and consequently had to pay a heavy price.’’

Nalini says it was not easy writing about Ram. ‘‘I sometimes used to wait for him from 10 am to 5 pm. He would say he’s coming home in five minutes but often wouldn’t show up. And when I did get him, phones would ring incessantly. It was difficult tracking him down. The most fruitful sessions were in Pune and Mahabaleshwar where phones didn’t ring as they did in Delhi.’’