The fading photo in the album mirrors a nearly half-century-old tie the Kuttiyil family in south-central Kerala has with the country’s Supreme Court. The black-and-white image is from a colourful incident in 1971: the Kottayam native KK Mathew being accorded a warm welcome at the Delhi airport by parliamentarians on his arrival after being nominated as a judge to the apex court. Now, 47 years later, that jurist’s son, justice KM Joseph, has been elevated as a judge of the apex court.

A collegium that recommends names to the SC may have run into controversies of late, but far from its heat and dust, justice Joseph's folks back in rustic Athirampuzha, near Kottayam town, fondly recall memories about their Ousepachan. A busy legal professional for long, the 60-year-old former chief justice of Uttarakhand High Court, would never miss to make it to the annual festival of the church at Athirampuzha.

The last time justice Joseph visited his ancestral home was on January 31, Johnny, one of his cousins, said.

While the debate over the rights and wrongs of the quarter-century-old collegium system that appoints judges to the SC continues, it has had little bearing on the typically cheerful mood of justice Joseph, Johnny noted. “He joins us on all important family functions,” he added.

Joseph had served as a judge of the Kerala High Court for almost a decade in Kochi. He had begun practice in the Delhi High Court after enrolling as an advocate in early 1982.

Like justice Joseph, his father, justice Mathew, too, had a stint as a judge of the Kerala High Court before moving to the Supreme Court. The father had taken up several legal assignments during his stint in Delhi lasting up to 1988. They included being the chairman of the the 9th Law Commission (1979-80), the Press Commission when it was reconstituted in 1980, the commission that was instituted to settle a border dispute between Punjab and Haryana, and of the commission that probed the 1975 assassination of railway minister LN Mishra in a bomb-blast at Samastipur station of Bihar.

At the Athirampuzha market, the Kuttiyil family ran businesses in the last century. The local people have high regard for the family, known for their integrity and down-to-earth conduct.

In late June, justice J Chalameswar had visited the Kuttiyil household soon after his retirement as an apex court judge.

Read more: Latest Kerala news