The Chief Justice of Madras High Court Amreshwar Pratap Sahi on Friday wrote a fervent open letter to lawyers, litigants and judicial officers across the State urging them to practice social distancing stringently though it may appear onerous. “It is not to quit life or stop living. It is to secure your life as well as that of others,” he told them.
In the four-page letter, “A thought and a sincere request”, he said the virtues of a disciplined life were at times hard to inculcate and those virtues included the art of resisting temptations. The most difficult and trying discipline was how to resist temptations. One of such temptations, basic to human life, was the desire to associate. “This freedom of association is a hard won freedom and any curtailment counters this temptation to associate and socialise. But there is higher value in life that was enunciated by a French philosopher and mathematician Descartes who said that the philosophy of life lies in understanding what to sustain and what to abstain from,” the letter read.
With that background in mind, he stressed upon the need to meet the challenge posed by COVID-19. He said a remedy was not yet in sight to tackle the pandemic and such a situation had reaffirmed the belief in the old adage — prevention is better than cure. “Prevention is the diagnosis of the hour and the remedy is to avoid congestion and maintain distance.
“We have to realise that we can now care for ourselves and for others by maintaining a distance howsoever paradoxical it might appear to us. Avoidance of close association and contact is to help others. We have become vulnerable and we are now largely dependant on the considerate behaviour towards each other,” he added.
