Balancing Life: A Study of Leila Seth’s On Balance

Abstract

Leila Seth’s On Balance (2003) is an autobiography of a judicial luminary whose crown of career is studded with numerous jewels of public accomplishments. Her life-narrative depicts how she has obtruded upon the uninterrupted circumference of the purely male bastion of the judiciary in order to establish her own regime in public sphere and how she has been implemental in pioneering socio-cultural and legal transformation in Indian society. As put by A.O.J. Cockshut, “How did I become what I am?” (Art of Autobiography 16), this paper will examine how Leila Seth has displayed her private and public self on balance. She has overstepped the hurdles laid in her way and has built up a distinguished career gilded with a list of achievements to her credit and simultaneously she has maintained her family life and domestic responsibilities. Leila’s inclination for her family is distinct from her description of her grandmother to her granddaughters in her life-narrative and Geetha Ganapathy-Dore says, “It is exceptional in the sense that it gives us a glimpse of five generations of Indian women” (Commonwealth 40).