Justice Ruma Pal

New Delhi, May 12: The judge who just missed being India’s first woman chief justice lost a diamond earring on her first day in Supreme Court. Six-and-a-half years later, as Justice Ruma Pal prepares to hang up her judge’s gown, she feels she is about to lose something “infinitely more precious”.

“I shall not miss the judges or lawyers or the court. I will miss hearing arguments and deciding cases,” Pal, who retires in the middle of summer vacation on June 3, said.

At the farewell meeting today, Chief Justice Y.K. Sabharwal recalled that both were sworn in on January 28, 2000, the day the apex court celebrated its golden jubilee. “I had never met her earlier but today I feel as if I have known her for decades. That’s because of the human touch in her.”

Sabharwal, sworn in before Pal, became chief justice ahead of her.

Pal remembers it was a Monday when she made her debut and lost her earring. “I thought it was a bad omen and my stint here would be miserable,” the former Calcutta High Court judge said. “But it was a great time. The occasional teasing by my colleagues made my life in Delhi better and a pleasure.”

She will be remembered for the ruling that a man can be divorced on the ground of cruelty if he’s frigid and indifferent towards his wife, denies her company and abstains from sexual intercourse without reason.

She also had a role in stopping states from levying sales tax on lotteries or facilities provided by telecom firms to subscribers.

The bar, however, will remember her as a “no-nonsense” judge who would cut short long-winded lawyers with “Just a minute?.”

Pal, though, insists that her sister Arundhati Ghosh, who was India’s permanent representative to the UN, is “more formidable”.

Born on June 3, 1941, Pal began arguing cases in Calcutta High Court in 1968. She became a high court judge on August 6, 1990. Along with her, Justice B.N. Srikrishna ? of the Bombay riots report ? was given a farewell.