The Contender

‘I pity people who don’t wake up early. Nature exudes a special energy at that time of day. You don’t know what you are missing if you can’t imbibe it’

RAM Jethmalani’s youth is daunting. Wake at 5.30am, recite the mrityunjay mantra 65 times, play a killer game of badminton. It’s not just the whiskey or dapper silk shirts or his famous way with women. Or even that he can still work 14 hours straight on nothing but a glass of juice; or that his capacity for focus borders on the divine. This is a man whose reality outstrips his gigantic reputation. Recently, Ram declared he was hanging up his boots, but that proved a wishful decoy. Just this year, he has won bail for men as diverse as Binayak Sen and Sanjeev Nanda; he is the driving force behind a PIL to retrieve black money from Swiss banks; and he won Anil Ambani his first reprieve in his gas war. You can never find Ram in the same city two days in a row. The source of his youth is both great idealism and great despair. “At the end of my life, I never thought I’d find my country sunk this low,” says he. What drives him is a zeal to prevent its further free fall.

shoma@tehelka.com