My grandfather had a limestone pulverising mill.
Big boulders of limestone used to come in trucks. Then labourers used to break stones into small pieces. The small pieces were then fed into a pulverising mill to make limestone powder.
One day, I saw a woman laborer. She had only one leg. She stood on one leg with a long handed hammer held by her both hands.
She could balance her body on one leg. She could lift hammer with both hands above her shoulders and then let it fall on boulder to break it. She had keep doing this continuously to maintain balance on one leg.
It was an amazing moment. I wished I could take her photo. But in those days, there were no handy mobile cameras.
Her resilance, to live life of a labourer in spite of having only one leg, was awesome.
My mind was frozen in the moment. I tried to take in my mind as much details as possible. I memorised that scene.
This unknown woman shall always inspire me. Whenever I am depressed and overwhelmed with work, the memories of this woman lifts up my spirit.
METAPHOR TO LIVE BY
Imagine for a moment that you are a stone breaker, a labourer. On your left side you have a pile of files to read. Each paper in file contains 100 to 200 hundred words relating to facts of a case.
Your job is to break stones or these words.
Your job is to make sense or legal meaning from the words, and then reduce meaning to few words on a separate sheet of paper. Then you move on to next document.
This is how good judges and good lawyers live.
They are like stone breakers. The facts come to them in long sentences documented on paper. They break them into small pieces.
In this sense, they all are labourers.
And now I remember, Socrates too was a stone breaker by his occupation.
Haresh Raichura
1152
