EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH

Two gentlemen, separated by nearly a century at birth, come together at the Maha Kumbh of this page where we shall trace some experiments with truth and untruth in their lives. One went on to become the Father of the Nation and the other remains just a Father of a Lovely Daughter.

Episode One:  A young Gandhi, on his return to India, was waiting at a platform for the train to arrive. In those days, if the driver did not see a white man at the station, the driver would just slow down the train expecting the Indian to scramble on to the running train. As Gandhi managed to board the running train, one of his slippers fell off. Gandhi immediately took off his other pair and threw it to a bewildered onlooker. Gandhi remarked later, “Ah, well if someone is to find one of my shoes, hopefully he’ll find the other one too and thus have a fine new pair for himself.”

In the book on leadership, where I found this story, the learned author goes on to say, “What a Man. In this age of scams and greed and never ending wants, it strikes me that we can all take a leaf out of the Mahatma’s book.”

The story shifts to 1982, Ambedkar Stadium, New Delhi where East Bengal was playing Incheon University, South Korea in the DCM Cup Finals. The boy, who never missed any of these matches starting from the Quarter Finals onwards for years, along with his friends, was there to witness the epic match hoping his team in red and gold would win the prestigious cup. It definitely was not his day and the Koreans won the tournament. No sooner had the match got over, than the boy and his friends ran outside for a glimpse of their favourite footballers like Mona da, Bhaskar Ganguly and others. The losers came and quickly climbed onto their waiting bus and drove away without even waving their hands…what a disappointment. The attention then shifted to the Korean team which by now had settled in their luxury coach. The boy, like many others, started screaming for the Tshirts and shoes from the winners. One of the Koreans threw one shoe and the boy fought off a hungry tide of mad soccer fans to grab it…Yes..he had won the shoe. The Korean player now threw down the second pair and the boy made a desperate attempt at snatching the same but failed despite his best attempt.

The person who had the second pair asked the boy to give him the other shoe since it was of no use to him anyway. The boy thought, not having read the memoirs of the Mahatma, that it was true.  “What am I to do with one shoe?”  and he threw his prized ‘Golden Boot’ to the other fellow. This definitely was not a sign of any Gandhian leadership but sheer foolishness. While on his way home he thought, “I too could have asked the other fellow the same question and maybe I would have been taking home a fine pair of football boots with plastic studs.” And so the story goes that the boy was left playing football for another couple of years with ordinary Indian make shoes with leather studs fixed with nails, which would often pierce his foot and cause him pain as much as the story of the missed chance which haunted him for a long time.

Episode 2: While in England, Gandhiji took to the habit of walking to the court and other places in order to save on fares. He would walk up to eight to ten miles a day and he goes on to say that , “It was mainly this habit of long walks that kept me practically free from illness throughout my stay in England and gave me a fairly strong body.” And then who can forget his numerous Walks for Freedom including the Dandi March which was a 24 day and 240 miles long walk from Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi to produce salt without paying tax.  For those who have seen the pictures of Gandhiji walking will vouch for his speed which his followers found it hard to match.

The boy when fairly young took to the habit of long and fast walks. The reasons for this habit was simple.  One, the options of conveyance were limited, and even more limited was the currency in his pocket. So the more he walked, the more the coins remained in his pockets to spend on other luxuries of marbles, cricket ball and cream rolls. While walking he developed another strange instinct of trying to overtake the person ahead…and then the next and next till he discovered at least in some activity he could beat a host of people. This habit held the boy in good stead later in life.

In 1998 on his maiden visit to Paris for two days, the boy who by then had turned a man found it very irritable to talk to the French in English and figuring out the metro there. He took to walking in Paris and he walked and walked and walked for 2 days for almost 16 to 18 hours a day. By the time he would retire to his hotel room, his legs would be shaking and he would try relaxing in the bath tub but failed as the stopcock in the tub was not working properly and the hot water would quickly drain away. But one thing was for certain, no place in Paris was left untouched….from climbing the two allowable levels of Tour de Mars, to Arc‘d Triumph, Notre Dame, Louvre, Champs Elysee, museums, cemeteries, bridges….everything , walking through the streets of the historical city. He would have almost covered the entire Dandi route of Mahatma in just two days flat!

It was 6^th December 1992 when the Babri Masjid was demolished. The boy was enjoying a movie at night on the video with his friends at Salt Lake City while his wife and ten month old daughter were at his in-law’s place at Barasat on the outskirts of Kolkata. On the morning of 7^th when he woke up he wanted to see his kid desperately but unfortunately everything in Kolkata was shut…with a couple of incidences of communal violence springing up, curfew had been declared and only fools and goons would dare to venture out in the streets of Kolkata. A Capri by birth and Capri by character, the mountain goat was determined to reach his daughter 18 kilometres away and so began his long walk in a pair of slippers. Stopped at a couple of points by people wanting to cause trouble, the boy slowly but steadily made his way to his daughter who was so overjoyed seeing him that all his pain melted away seeing the kiddo smile and giggle as she jumped into his outstretched arms. The blisters in the feet never mattered at that point when she started playing with him. Love cures.

Finally the year was 2015. Our man, who had by then suffered severe bouts of spondylitis, entered his name in the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon. The doctor had asked him to stay away from running…he told his wife and daughter who was by now a fine lady and a doctor…”I will walk the 21 kms and promise not to run! He walked and walked pretty fast and completed the half marathon in 2 hours and 42 minutes beating many a runner. It is another matter that after this great run, he was laid to bed for nearly 2 months but that did not prevent the Johnny Walker from completing the half marathon yet again the following year…with a slightly slower timing of course.

Episode 3: The boy’s wife and daughter would complain about his snoring. They said it was nothing short of animalistic noises of all hues.  When the daughter was a kid, one night she started crying and when the mother asked her what had happened, the kid said, “Ma Hambaaa”…she called a cow Hambaaa which meant she feared there was a cow in our room. My wife stepped out of the mosquito net and showed her there was no cow and put her back to sleep. Surely my wife must have given the stare of her life to the cow that was snoring away to glory next to her.

Gandhiji in his autobiography narrates a story of how he once ate meat along with a friend of his.  “I had a very bad night afterwards. A horrible nightmare haunted me. Every time I dropped off to sleep, it would seem as though a live goat were bleating inside me and I would jump up in full remorse.”

Our protagonist never had any remorse to all the meat he would have on a daily basis, at times thrice a day. It is quite possible the bleating of the goats, the clucking of the chickens, the chirr of the pigs and the moo of the cows would peep out of his inside to the outside world as he slept soundly, oblivious of the cacophony he made.

Post Script: In the end let me admit, while not staking any claim to the Great Soul’s legacy, my complete admiration for the man and no words can describe him better than those of Albert Einstein who said, “Generations to come, it may well be, will scarce believe that such a man as this one in flesh and blood walked upon this Earth.” Truly a Mahatma.

SS