Son of a former chief minister of Assam, RANJAN GOGOI remained steadfast in the practice of law, which he chose to join after graduating from the Faculty of Law, New Delhi, in 1978. Earlier, he had spent five years at the University of Delhi studying history at St Stephen’s College. He preferred to wait for the call from the Bench instead of plunging into electoral politics, as many expected. The call came in February 2001 when he was appointed a judge of the Gauhati High Court. After serving as a judge for nearly two decades, he demitted office as the 46th Chief Justice of India on 17 November 2019. Essentially a family man who has always kept a low profile—away from the limelight, Gogoi did not hesitate to answer life’s challenges whenever they arrived. Fiercely independent, he refused to be overawed by the series of controversial issues that had confronted him in and out of Court. Criticized and revered in equal measure, he will be remembered for the undiluted verdicts in the Rafale and NRC cases and, of course, the litigation of the decade if not the century