Today is the fifth death anniversary of my very dear friend Arun Jaitley, who left this material world for his heavenly abode at 12:07 pm on 24th August, 2019 at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi. The name "Arun" is a majestic name which means "charioteer of the sun," "beautiful dawn," or "stunning morning star," symbolizing strength, passion, and courage. I had the good fortune of intimately knowing Arun for over 49 years, virtually since the time I joined Delhi University in the year 1970 to study BA (Hons) in Economics from Hindu College, which had been established in the year 1899 by Krishan Dassji Gurwale with the motive of providing non-elitist, non-sectarian, and nationalist education to the youth in the backdrop of our freedom struggle against British rule. Hindu College was ranked as the numero uno college in India on 12th August, 2024 by the Union Ministry of Education. Arun had joined Delhi University that very year to study B Com (Hons) from Sri Ram College of Commerce.

I met him for the very first time in August 1970 at the YMCA Freshers Debate on the subject “This House believes that the individual must live for the society,” which took place at the New Delhi YMCA Tourist Hostel on Jai Singh Road, cheek by jowl with the historical Jantar Mantar Observatory. I stood first in that debate, and Arun got the third prize. The stunningly beautiful Kiran Sethi (who was a legend of her time, both as an amazing painter and an enchanting fashion model but is no more in this world) from Miranda College won the second prize.

Arun used to spend a lion’s share of his student days in Hindu College, and the Hindu College Hostel and Canteen were undoubtedly his favourite haunts. He particularly relished the lip-smacking “Chole Bature” at the Canteen! He was an ardent cricket aficionado and never missed a single Hindu College vs St. Stephen’s College cricket match on the Delhi University cricket ground, where he unhesitatingly supported the Hindu College team vociferously.

Whilst we were undergraduates in Delhi University, Arun and I used to travel to various places in India by bus or train to participate in debates and elocution contests. In the year 1971, Arun and I travelled by bus to Roorkee to participate in an All-India debate at the University of Roorkee (presently the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee). The very evening we arrived in Roorkee, we went to watch the 1970 Bollywood film Sawan Bhadon, starring a pompous Navin Nischal (who happened to be my senior in Delhi Public School) as Vikram, a wealthy man, and a lean and lanky Bhanurekha Ganesan, popularly known as “Rekha” (she made her Bollywood debut in the film!), as Chanda, a village belle, and produced and directed by Mohan Segal in a ramshackle cinema hall called Neelam Talkies in the Civil Lines area.

The seats were not only stiff and uncomfortable to sit upon, but their tattered upholstery was infested with pernicious bugs, making our presence in the hall a truly harrowing experience. And to add to our misery, the audience comprised a bunch of unruly local boys who even went to the extent of frenziedly whistling at two pretty lady students from Loreto College, Lucknow, who had also come to Roorkee for the debate and had voluntarily accompanied us to the cinema hall, smitten by Arun’s good looks! The whistling got rather intense when Asha Bhonsle’s playback song “Ankhiyan Na Maar Mundia” came through the multi-cracked speakers, creating a miserable cacophony of sounds! Arun and I were most disgusted, and we hastily left the hall in the midst of the film, with the two embarrassed damsels in tow!

In a moment of helpless nostalgia, my mind travels back to an amusing incident in 1973 when we arrived in Chandigarh in the early hours of a cold wintry morning and were desperately trying to locate an auto-rickshaw driver who could take us to the venue of the debate on “This House believes that the entry of China into the United Nations will wreck the organisation” at Chandigarh University. Some of the auto-rickshaw drivers were in a foul, abrasive mood and began hurling abuses at us in rustic Punjabi without any provocation whatsoever. Arun was totally unperturbed, but I reacted strongly and told Arun in no uncertain terms, “These guys have a sour tongue.” Arun was never tired of repeating this incident to his friends and comrades!

Arun was an indefatigable fan of Bollywood films and used to regale his friends and comrades with Bollywood hit songs in his deep, resonant voice. His repertoire of Bollywood songs was stupendous, and he knew all the songs by heart! Significantly, Arun was also a classmate of mine at the Faculty of Law, Delhi University, where we both enrolled to study Law in 1973. Since those days, he affectionately used to call me “Professor Bose” or “Dr. Bose.” In fact, Arun, who was then the elected President of the Delhi University Students Union (DUSU), was arrested in my presence on 26th June, 1975 (a state of emergency had been declared under Article 356 of the Indian Constitution just before midnight on 25th June, 1975!) whilst we were savouring hot, sizzling coffee and delectable masala omelettes on toast in the iconic United Coffee House in Delhi University. He was thereafter incarcerated in the infamous Tihar jail, where he spent 19 long, pathetic months of “preventive detention.”

Image: 1973 Law Faculty Batch

One of the determining factors that brought me close to Arun was the fact that I could impersonate Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru to the hilt and was never tired of delivering Nehru’s speeches at the drop of a hat. On the occasion of the wedding reception of former Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi’s younger son Samir in Delhi in March 2017, Arun asked me to recite Nehru’s famous “Tryst with Destiny” speech in the presence of many personages, including politicians, lawyers, and media persons.

Right from the very moment I got to know Arun, I conceived a deep and abiding admiration for his razor-sharp intellect, his unwavering love for clean and unobtrusive politics, his tireless zest for work, his discernible pertinacity, his innate simplicity, and his disarming personal charm. Arun was an exceptional man with a brilliant and wonderfully incisive mind. He was the perfect combination of intellect, integrity, humanity, and humility. He was a rock of principle, not starry-eyed about the law but conscious that it reflected deep values that we abandon so recklessly at our peril. Like my old departed friend and well-wisher Lord Alfred Denning, who lived a full life of more than a century, Arun combined “a love of liberty with a passion for justice.”

Fair, robust, and principled, he was the embodiment of what we imagine the ideal lawyer to be all about. To me, he was a great man with towering legal acumen and a good and steadfast friend whose humanity was as evident in his good manners and treatment of his opponents, both in court and parliament. Arun, by his charm, his personality, his example, and his bearing for so many years, had endeared himself to all of us in a truly magnificent manner. One of the most remarkable qualities Arun possessed was his complete lack of prejudice and the warmth and affection with which he spontaneously received not just old and trusted friends but anyone and everyone, including political opponents and detractors, who visited him at his office or home. None of us could enter his presence without being aware both of his grace and warmth, not to mention his superlative oratorical and political skills.

It is said that behind every great man there’s a great woman—and not without cause! And behind Arun stood his most charming “bestest half” and cheerful ministering angel, Sangeeta (popularly known by her nickname “Dolly”), who hailed from Jammu and was with him and for him over the years of his triumphs and tribulations like the proverbial Rock of Gibraltar. I am highly emboldened to pontificate that Arun had probably been deeply inspired by the immortal words of Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill: “The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions.”

Today I really miss my dear friend Arun from the core of my heart, and here I am drawn irresistibly to the immortal words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the monumental American poet: “Lives of great men all remind us, we can make our lives sublime, and, departing, leave behind us, footprints on the sands of time.”

I conclude on a Shakespearean note: Here was an Arun, when comes such another?

- The author is an internationally reputed senior lawyer practising in the Supreme Court of India and various High Courts and Tribunals in India.