Three minutes of a Tuesday morning at the family court at Bandra. A field correspondent’s notebook page, transcribed. The companion piece on mutual consent, or contested? and before you send the notice cover the procedural ground that produces the morning recorded here. This piece does not. It records the courtyard.
Tuesday morning, Bandra family court, 10:14 a.m. Three minutes.
A man in his sixties on the courtyard step in a grey suit, holding a stainless-steel tiffin and a folder of papers. He sets the tiffin on the step beside him, opens the folder, takes a pen from his pocket, writes something on the top sheet, closes the folder, picks up the tiffin, and waits.
A young woman in jeans and a kurta crosses the courtyard with a phone to her ear. She is laughing. Her shoes click on the stone in a particular way. She does not look at the man.
An advocate in black robes walks past the man, nodding without breaking stride. The man returns the nod. They have known each other a long time.
A pigeon lands on the step three feet from the man. He moves his foot a quarter-inch away, gently. The pigeon stays.
Inside, in courtroom 3, his wife’s lawyer is opening arguments. He has been married thirty-six years, and is twenty minutes from being a single man for the first time since 1990. He does not yet know this; the order will not be passed for another two hearings.
He opens the tiffin. There is a single roti, a small steel bowl of dal, a half-bottle of water. He eats slowly.
Two clerks pass at a brisk walk, balancing files. One says something in Marathi to the other. They do not look at the man. The man does not look at them.
A woman in a grey saree sits down on the courtyard bench across the way. She also has a tiffin. She does not eat from it. She has the posture of someone waiting for something she has already decided will not arrive.
The advocate who nodded earlier emerges from inside, takes out a phone, makes a brief call, returns inside. The man on the step finishes the dal. He closes the tiffin and sets it next to him on the step.
The pigeon waits.
At 10:17, a junior clerk comes out and calls a name across the courtyard. The man on the step stands up, brushes a crumb off his suit, picks up the tiffin and the folder, nods to the clerk, and walks inside. The pigeon does not move. The grey-saree woman on the bench across the way looks up briefly and then looks back at the stone.
Most of the family court is not what happens inside the courtroom. It is what happens on the step.