Excerpted from Nimal Wikramanayake’s Life In The Law

When I went to the Bar in Ceylon in 1959, the courts were large rooms powered by a number of large ceiling fans, as they had been for many years. These ceiling fans were ancient and made a considerable racket. Murder cases were heard in the Assize Courts where either a Commissioner of Assizes or a Supreme Court judge sat. Invariably, when a murder case was heard, hundreds of the accused’s relatives and friends attended court to witness the proceedings and support the accused.On one occasion, I wandered into the Assize Court to learn that the accused had just been found guilty of murder. I watched with horror at the passing of the death sentence. It was a gruesome and frightening experience. Firstly, the large ceiling fans were switched off. The resultant hush that fell over the court was frightening. It was as if night had suddenly fallen.

The interpreter, Mudaliyar (the associate), opened his drawer and pulled out a black cap or, as it usually was, a square piece of black cloth. He walked up the steps leading to the judge’s podium and placed the black cloth on the judge’s head before returning to his seat. The judge then told the accused: “Mr X, you have been found guilty by a trial of your peers of murder and you are hereby sentenced to death. On the # day of # at #am you will be taken from your cell to a particular spot in the prison and hanged by the neck until you are dead and may God have mercy on your soul’

I found this statement that God would have mercy on his soul interesting, for Ceylon was a Buddhist Country and there was no God in the Buddhist religion.When the death sentence was passed, there was pandemonium in the court. The friends and relatives of the accused started screaming and yelling, but before the sentence was passed, the judge had made sure that the court was filled with policemen, so when the judge had finished he looked at the police and said, “Clear the court.” The police then cleared everyone out. The bystanders were shoved outside, still screaming and yelling in the large courtyard.I saw this frightening event only once and hope never to see it again, for in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) the death penalty still prevails.

An interesting testamentary case

In 1960, I was briefed to appear with my master in a most fascinating testamentary case. My master was not a brilliant lawyer. He was a down-to-earth man and reminded me of a sixteenth-century English barrister. He was short and fat and extremely laid back – the antithesis of what a barrister should be. My pet complaint was that he never objected when opposing counsel put leading questions to their witnesses. According to my leader, Kingsley Herat, it made no difference to the result of the case whether or not one objected to leading questions.

The case was fascinating for the reason that the main witness for the plaintiff was a Viennese psychiatrist, a Dr Grillmayer, who had recently started a practice in Ceylon and was then a fashionable psychiatrist in Colombo. Our client, the defendant, was an extremely astute man and the father of a close friend of mine.He had two maiden aunts who were very wealthy. None of their nephews and nieces was interested in the welfare of these two ladies, so our client, for reasons best known to himself, decided to look after their welfare for some years before they died. He would visit them regularly, run errands for them, buy their groceries and take them shopping, take them for their doctors’ appointments, and made himself available to help them in their hour of need.

The first aunt died and left her more than ample estate to our client. Her relatives were furious. How dare she leave her estate to this upstart? She had to be non compos mentis to do this. That could be the only explanation.They decided to bring proceedings to have her last will set aside. This is where Dr Grillmayer came into the equation. He was called to give evidence that the old lady had no testamentary capacity. He was a large podgy character more like someone in a Walt Disney cartoon. He clambered into the witness box with great difficulty and sweated profusely, the sweat running down his face.

He gave his evidence with great authority and declared that there was no doubt that the old lady was not of sound mind. He stated that she was suffering from dissociation of time and space.He was asked the reason for this conclusion and the good doctor said that when she was lying ill in hospital, she had written a letter from the hospital but put her home address on the letter. Judge Johnnie Alles burst out laughing and said, ‘I must be suffering from the same ailment for I wrote four letters this morning from my chambers and put my home address on them’

Dr Grillmayer added that the old lady was not in a proper state of mind because in a letter she had written, ‘I am nailed to the bed, so to speak.’ This meant that she was suffering from a coffin complex. What this coffin complex meant, God only knows because he gave no explanation.My master then asked him, “Are you aware of the fact that that statement is a Ceylonism, an expression in common use in Ceylon, so that when you say you are ‘nailed to the bed’ it means you are confined to your bed’?” The good doctor had no answer to that question. Dr Grillmayer’s evidence was the only evidence led for the plaintiff, so the plaintiff’s action was dismissed.A few years later the second aunt died and she also bequeathed her substantial estate to our client. This will was not contested.

Dining at the Bar in England and Ceylon

In England, “Dining at the Bar” was created hundreds of years ago by the several Inns of Court to help young hopeful barristers to meet and greet each other. When I joined the Inner Temple in September 1954, I was required to dine six times during each of the four terms per year and, over a period of three years, seventy-two times in all. However, when I entered Cambridge, this requirement was cut down to three dinners a term.

These dinners were formal black tie affairs. They were held fin the Great Hall of the Inner Temple. Before I entered, I was required to go into a robing room, select a gown and put it on before I entered the dining hall. The “benchers”, the governing body of the Inn, sat at a long table across the back of the hall. The benchers were men of distinction in the profession and included judges, barristers and professors of law.Many years later, I attended a course in company law at Gibson and Weldon in order to prepare myself for the final Bar examination. The lecturer asked whether any of us could tell him what a “debenture” was. A “debenture” is a term which is not easy to define, but loosely it is said to be a specialty debt of a corporation.Regrettably, an African student, I believe from Nigeria, put up his hand and said that a debenture was a controlling member of the Inns of Court!

Be that as it may, these dinners were dull, boring affairs. We sat at long trestle tables and for every four diners there was a bottle of port and a bottle of claret. I made it a point to sit with Pakistani and African students, for alcohol was not permitted to soil their lips. The result was that most nights I had a bottle of claret to myself. I often left these dinners in a very happy frame of mind.

When I returned to Ceylon, the Bar had an annual dinner called “The Voet Lights” (pronounced footlights), yet it had nothing to do with the theatre but was named after Johannes Voet (pronounced “foot”), a great and a celebrated jurist of the seventeenth century in Holland. I attended twelve of these dinners between the years 1959 and 1970.When I was called to the Ceylon Bar in 1959, it was the custom that there was a chief guest, and the barrister of the newest call was required to make a speech. A couple of other barristers were junior to me so I was not particularly concerned about having to make a speech. When I turned up there I realized to my chagrin that those other two barristers had chickened out, so I had to make a speech after all.

It was the conduct of these young barristers after the dinner that was an absolute disgrace. Every year after the dinner we retired to a private club for further alcohol and there were always fisticuffs between my friends. Most of my time after these dinners was spent trying to pull the combatants apart and I occasionally received a few blows for my foolishness. There was nothing heroic about my behaviour. I just did not want a pleasant evening spoilt by unnecessary fisticuffs.

On one occasion we went to the Sinhalese Sports Club for our usual after-dinner drinks. A solicitor by the name of Virgil James was in our party. How he managed to join our party still remains a mystery for he was a proctor of the Supreme Court and not an advocate. He was a tall, skinny man and he was seriously drunk. Also in our crowd was a gentleman called Parathalingam.

“Para’; as he was known to us, had a father who was a brilliant Queen’s Counsel, Mr Thiagalingam. Virgil, for some unaccountable reason, decided to make a speech about Mr Thiagalingam. He got up and said, “Para”, and then intended to repeat himself but he was so drunk that he said, “Para, your father is a pariah.’

There was pandemonium. Para threw himself across the table, grabbled Virgil by his shirt and proceeded to beat him up. I jumped in between them and received a few hefty blows, but I managed to spirit Virgil James out of the Bar Room, put him in a taxi and send him home.

I remember another occasion when we were dining at a nightclub called “The Atlanta” Among us was a Queen’s Counsel – Mr Izzadeen Mohamed QC. Izza was a lavish host who treated us – I believe there were about fifteen of us – to two bottles of Scotch whisky. We were all drinking in the billiards room and one of my friends, HD Thambiah (Thamby), was extremely drunk. When the waiter brought another bottle of Scotch, I said, “Thamby, I think you’ve had enough to drink. I can drink you under the table. Can I take you home?”

At this, Thamby bellowed, “Nimal, I can drink you under the table at any time.” Thamby’s response was greeted with great hilarity by my friends. They were like a crowd of schoolboys egging on two boys to fight. They said, “Nimal you’re talking rubbish. Thamby can drink you under the table at any time.’ This made Thamby even more eager to show his mettle.

I always remembered my father’s advice about how to consume alcohol at parties. Dad was always reasonably sober when he and his friends had drinking bouts because he used to have a weak drink, say a diluted Scotch with lots of water, and sip it through the night and then maybe have another. But I was terrified now as to what this drinking contest meant.

Thamby poured two full glasses of neat Scotch whiskey, then he took one and handed me the other. I protested vehemently, saying that I could not drink a full glass of neat Scotch whiskey. The crowd sided with Thambi and said that that was the terms of the bet. In a fit of bravado, Thamby knocked down his full glass of straight Scotch whiskey.

He was seated on one of the long wooden seats that one finds in a billiard room. The next thing we heard was a clatter as Thamby slipped down his seat and ended up under the billiard table, completely comatose. He had to be taken home and, of course, I won the bet. Why did I need to refer to this drunken revelry? Even lawyers have moments of absurdity.

An amusing story

I would like to relate an incident which occurred in my early years at the Ceylon Bar to introduce a note of levity into this memoir and to prevent boredom from settling in.When I first went to the Bar I would follow senior barristers around and sit down behind them in court to try to learn something from the way they conducted their cases. There was an advocate, whom I shall call Mr X, whom I admired immensely when I first went to the bar. He was slim and tall, and affected an air of insouciance. He wore China-silk suits with flared trouser legs. He smoked cigarettes through a long cigarette holder.

In my early years I used to follow him, especially when he went to the Court of Assizes. I was following a murder case in which he was appearing one day when he told members of the jury that the case for the prosecution was like a painted ship on a painted ocean. That was how he expressed his assertion that the prosecution case was false. I was impressed.

A couple of years later I was seated with my friend Manicks Kanagaretnam in the lounge of the Law Library having a cup of coffee when Mr X walked up and asked to speak to Manicks on a personal matter. He shooed me away, saying that he was not interested in discussing his personal matters before young boys. However, Manicks let me stay and listen to Mr X, who then sat down and told Manicks that he had an important personal problem. He had to go to a formal dinner that night and had never been to one before. What was he to do?

Manicks was regarded as a man of the world, having gone to England and qualified as a barrister, then returned to Ceylon. He was about 10 years older than I was. He told Mr X that he would have a woman seated on either side of him and that the easiest way to get through the dinner was to discuss their marriages and their children, and everything would be fine.

On Monday, I returned to chambers to find Mr X in a heated argument with Manicks. He was screaming abuse at him. He had gone to the dinner and found a woman seated on either side of him. He turned and spoke to the woman to his right and asked, “Are you married?” to which she replied, “No”. He then asked her whether she had any children and she became so incensed that she turned around and did not speak to him for the rest of the night.

Next, he attempted to make conversation with the lady on his left-hand side. He asked her whether she had any children to which she replied, “Yes” He then asked her whether she was married, and she too turned her back on him in a huff and did not speak to him for the rest of the evening. When I saw him that Monday morning, he was absolutely dejected and accused Manicks of ruining his dinner with his stupid advice.