He gathered his papers and left. Behind him, the courtroom erupted in the sound of two parties' worth of people all saying things simultaneously that they very much needed to say.
He did not look back. He had made the ruling. The ruling was the correct ruling under the circumstances. Whether it was also something else — whether it was the ruling of a man who had watched two very interesting people for forty minutes and had arrived at a conclusion about them that was somewhat outside his formal judicial mandate — was not something he felt it necessary to address.
He walked down the corridor. He went into his chambers. He made himself tea. He thought that thirty-one days was a very instructive period of time and that the voters of Lucknow North were going to find this election rather more interesting than most.— — —
