My mother tongue is Hindi. But, I have always taken a keen interest in learning English. During childhood, my family used to subscribe for a Hindi newspaper only, with I having no scope to learn English by reading English newspaper. But, I was very passionate about learning English. So, I started collecting used thongas and unfolding them to learn English words, their usages, sentence-structures that they are used in and so on. [Thongas are packets made of old, read newspapers (usually English ones) that grocers pack their merchandise in.] I was an avid collector of English dictionaries. Though I had a good collection of English dictionaries, yet, whenever I would save money, I used to rush to purchase a new English dictionary – an English dictionary that I had come to know about, but I was not having. Usage dictionaries were my favourite tool to learn English. I used to spend hours together flipping through the pages of the dictionaries to learn new English words and their usages.

Today, I am a legal professional. We do all our professional jobs in English. As a legal professional, I find a lot of interest in drafting pleadings and agreements. Legal writing is a hyper-technical job in that a legal writing cannot be left capable of admitting two or more meanings. It must throw one and only one meaning, even if one reads it in bad faith. A general writing is always read in good faith, but a legal writing is not. A party to a legal writing may choose to read it in bad faith and find out a different meaning to defeat the claim of his adversary. It is here the legal writing poses a challenge. I like taking on such challenges.