FIVE QUESTIONS

"Hullo,  Santosh, kaisey ho? "The pony tailed , khadi clad charming gentleman said, with a smile of recognition, crinkling his  face . He had only seen me on Facebook, but this great grandson of Bapu,  recognised me immediately as I walked up to him in the convention hall of Clarks Amer, where he was surrounded by a horde of people.
He had graciously consented to write the foreword to my labour of love , BALLAD OF BAPU, published by Vitasta Publishers, Delhi  and I was very keen to present it to him personally.  Lucky me,  he had  arrived in Jaipur unexpectedly  to deliver a lecture on Bapu , at Clarks  , Amer.
Needless to say, I was more than delighted.
"The hosts have very graciously called me,  "extraordinary"and , I think , when they said EXTRA , they were referring to my weight...but  of course I AM ordinary. Most of you must have expected to see a frail , underweight great grandson of Bapu and must have been disappointed ." He said with an impish smile , facing the  jam-packed convention hall, which  echoed  with laughter .
He had definitely inherited his great grand dad's sense of humour , I thought , as   a snippet of  Bapu's self-derogatory humour whirred in my mind  .  On 29 August 1931, he had sailed from Bombay by the SS Rajputana as the sole delegate of the Indian National Congress, to attend the Second Round Table Conference to decide the fate of India, which was being held in London. He disembarked at the French sea port of Marseilles in order to catch the train to London. The French customs officer on duty asked him whether he had anything to declare. He promptly replied:
'I am a poor mendicant. My kit consists of two spinning wheels, a few jail utensils, a can of goat’s milk, four loin cloths, two towels—and my reputation which cannot be worth much."

With Mrs. Tushar Gandhi

While my mind was recalling this episode, Mr. Tushar Gandhi was relating some more anecdotes from his great grand dad's life,  to a spellbound audience.
"My father Mr. Arun Gandhi was born in Durban, S. Africa and  he often recounts memory nuggets  of those days of childhood, when Bapu would charge a pittance  from his grandchildren , for  all the autographs taken and the pics clicked.
"Santosh, I am keeping an eye on the number of photographs you have clicked ."
He  later quipped during dinner in the lawns ,  when I clicked yet one more photograph of his .

From the dais , he reiterated that the present day India has failed miserably in realising Bapu's dream. We have forgotten to see things in the perspective of Bapu's Talisman, which says-

"Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self  becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of  the poorest and the weakest man [woman] whom you may have seen, and ask  yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him  [her]. Will he [she] gain anything by it? Will it restore him [her] to a  control over his [her] own life and destiny? In other words, will it  lead to swaraj [freedom] for the hungry and spiritually starving  millions?"

 Have we been able to alleviate the condition  of the poor , have we been able to provide for the hungry and spiritually starving millions ? No, we have not.
This ornate hall is overflooded with light, but 50 miles from here , there is no light, no water .
I was going through a village in a car, and one scene that I witnessed on a roadside , will never leave me. A farmer had collected water in five clay pots and   they lay crushed on the ground. The man sat on the curb bemoaning his loss. How have our policies helped that man , do we ever think of that ?
Bapu was ordinary, his extraordinariness lay in the fact that he was able to rise above those flaws.We, too need to rise above our flaws , and for that, first of all we need to be aware of them .If we are not aware of them , how will we overcome them? We will be like the  drug addict who thinks that there is nothing wrong with him, and continues to live in a state of bliss.
We need to save Bapu  from the title of Mahatma, he emphatically maintained.
This ordinary man , who , as a child had been afraid of snakes  and ghosts  overcame his fears , his flaws and rocked a nation .
A pinch of salt changed the course of history .
Each one of us needs to be like that selfless , old farmer who plants a mango sapling with the dream  rippling in his old eyes that someday, his progeny will eat those mangoes.
"Peace is the only way," the great grandson said , as soft music played in the hall and the  great grandfather beamed from a picture on the wall.
The spell was finally broken as the audience dispersed for dinner .