Eminent jurist Soli Sorabjee may very well be known to the world for his legal acumen, but talk about poetry and there is Shakespeare on his lips.
At a session titled ''People and Books' organised by the Sahitya Akademi, the former Attorney-General of India said that English playwright William Shakespeare's sonnets are among his favourite works of poetry and that "no one is better" than the bard.
"No one is better than Shakespeare when it comes to sonnets. In literature, Shakespeare's sonnets encompass all the best that has been said about love, sorrow, separation," he said.
"They are my favourite poems. Let me not to the marriage of two minds... Is my all time favourite," Sorabjee recited Sonnet 116.
Talking about his love for reading, he said "the habit comes from within and one can't ask someone to read or legally mandate a book for them".
Having read his share of "great" writers - from Charles Dickens to George Bernard Shaw, he admitted not being a big fan of "thick" novels due to his lack of enough patience, Sorabjee said that "essays excited him the most".
"I certainly have a list of my favourite novels like Dickens' 'The Pickwick Papers' and Greene's 'The End of the Affair' among others. But, I am not so fond of novels.
"I read essays a lot. Actually, I don't have the patience to go through a 200-300 page book. Essays are to the point and crisp," he said.
When asked to pick his favourite essays, the jurist said he always enjoys reading 'On Going A Journey' by literary critic William Hazlitt and 'Letter to Chesterfield' by English writer Samuel Johnson.
Sorabjee also shared his love for Jawaharlal Nehru's works like 'Discovery of India' and 'Glimpses of World History'.
"They were great works. And about his speech 'Tryst with Destiny', I wonder if I can ever get tired of reading it. It is beautiful, and I can read it over 50 times," he said.
The legal luminary, however, asserted that the Constitution of India must not be referred to as a "book".
"Don't call the Constitution a book. It is a document. And it is an amazing read. My personal favourite is Chapter 3 of freedom rights," he said.
Calling books his 'best friends that have never let him down in his decades-long illustrious career', he said he gets appalled when he sees someone "defacing books with ink markings".
"I really don't like people defacing books by jotting down notes on books or marking lines or quotations with different colour pens," he says.
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