Way back when or, to be more precise, way, way, way back when -- an illiterate meat cutter, Abdul Waheed, filed a lawsuit against his next-door-neighbor, a stubborn milk merchant named Mohammad Nanhe.

The milkman had built a brick wall at the edge of his property, inserting two small drains that emptied into Mr. Waheed's front yard. Though only rainwater escaped from the spouts, the meat cutter was furious. He had hopes of adding a third room to his modest cement house. With those new drains loomed the probability of irksome seepage.

Quite appallingly, though not so atypically, that was 39 years and several hundred court dates ago.

Mr. Waheed and Mr. Nanhe are long dead, but their litigation has plodded onward, moving with all the speed of a creaky bullock cart through perhaps the most overburdened justice system in the world. Those troublesome drains, while promptly ruled illegal, have remained open while the case moseys along on appeal.

If, as the adage goes, justice delayed is justice denied, then India's courts can be said to customarily live in a state of denial. Some 25 million cases are pending, a breathtaking pileup of the untried accused and unsatisfied aggrieved. By one expert's calculation, if no new actions are filed, 324 years would be needed to clear the dockets.