Closing our eyes to see

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Shefali Tripathi Mehta, January 20, 2013

Ethical Choices

We can tell right from wrong, yet we continue doing what’s termed ‘wrong’, for the sake of convenience. But, isn’t choosing right, every time, the right thing to do, asks Shefali Tripathi Mehta.

On a break from work, we were having coffee in the busy Bengali Market. Suddenly, my friend, sitting across from me, facing the parking lot, got up midsentence and dashed outside. Puzzled, I rushed after him and was stunned to see him overpowering an angry, violent man who was hitting the parking attendant.

What would you and I have done? Most of us would have resigned to the situation, walked away and said, ‘What can I do?’, ‘These things happen all the time’. Or, we may have been upset or angered enough to tell some others, maybe even share it on social networking sites, to fuel impassioned discussions and bitter condemnations.

Who are those that are moved enough to act when they come across such situations — unfair treatment, exploitation of the weak, brazen flaunting of power or disregard for rules and social convention? All of us are taught the same lessons in school and at home — to be ‘right’, always. Yet, tempted by the ‘easy way out’, we fail in this again and again in life. 

These are not life-changing, moral dilemmas, but the day to day looking the other way, indifference, apathy, cutting corners and seeking shortcuts. We can tell right from wrong, yet we continue doing what’s termed ‘wrong’, for the sake of convenience. Breaking queues, cheating, jumping traffic signals, paying bribes, getting out of turn favours, the list is endless.

All of us are tempted in big and small ways to take the convenient way — to bribe and use contacts for favours big and small, to pay the traffic cop instead of taking a ticket, buy pirated CD/DVDs, install booster water pumps in the corporation water lines, tamper with electricity meters, litter when no one is watching, not ask for cash memos, use office resources (fax, phone, scanner, printer) for personal work, look the other way when it suits us, like when someone else is being harassed, someone else’s sister/ daughter/ mother/ girlfriend/ wife is being teased, someone’s else’s child is leaning dangerously out of a window; when neighbours employ children or ill-treat house help.

Silencing our inner voice

Right and wrong have no definite, absolute demarcations. “But if you take the wrong path, something deep inside you will feel twisted. There are times when that will be the only way to know the right from the wrong.” (Inara Scott, The Candidates).

We see a person lying on the pavement, seemingly unconscious or hurt or sick, but we are rushing to work, for a crucial appointment, or to catch a train. So we silence that inner voice by telling ourselves that someone else will surely help, someone will call the police or the ambulance, or maybe that person is not really in need of help, maybe the person is just drunk. We walk away, believing what we would like to believe to suppress that inner voice.

Several hundreds of people lost their jobs at a multinational for submitting fake bills for medical reimbursements. Most of us believe that claiming our medical, travel, petrol bills is our right, that our employers owe it to us. But most also assume that submitting forged bills to claim the money that is ‘rightfully ours’ is our right too. This practice is so prevalent that no one stops to think it unethical. There is a queue at the medical stores where for a small fee they provide fake bills. So you can buy talcum powder for Rs 200 and it will be billed against the name of some medicine. But imagine losing one’s job for a few hundred rupees! And our self-esteem for the pittance?

We all know that a wrong does not cease to be wrong if all are doing it, but we also know how much courage it takes to go against the general wave, to stand our ground, to break the circle. To quote Noel Coward from The Blithe Spirit, “It’s discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.” ‘Everyone is doing it,’ is just another way of silencing our inner voice, of remaining in our comfort zones.

Doing nothing

When Baleshwar Mishra of Mumbai saw a girl lying on the railway tracks from his moving train and jumped down to help her even though no other passengers came forward to join him, he was only following the voice of his conscience. It was a random act of kindness and not a premeditated plan to become a hero. He picked her (Roma Talreja) up and carried her, took help from a trucker, got her to a hospital, informed her family, and saved her life.

Doing nothing because ‘no one else is doing it’ is also a form of silencing our inner voice. Traffic curbs due to VIP movement on the road, at airports and hospitals, cause unnecessary inconvenience to other (I desist from using ‘ordinary’) citizens. Instances when someone critically in need of medical help has been denied it due to such traffic restrictions are far too many to recount. It took one Delhi University professor to stand up against this transgression against us which we had silently put up with. “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.”(Roosevelt)

We do everything in our power and within the limited capacity of each to do things in order to get and stay ahead of others. But we fail to assert ourselves where we must. We repeatedly confuse aggression for assertion. When you tell a person who just walks in ahead of you while you’re waiting in a queue, to come in the queue, you’re being assertive. But when he turns around to tell you to mind your own business, he’s being aggressive. When you try to reason this, or even fight it out, you’re still being assertive.

Measure of character

A crime may be punished, but a vice is not, and we all fall for the temptation of ‘getting it done’. A parent seeking admission for his son in a prestigious school was faced with a dilemma when the form required the signatures of both parents and the mother was unavailable. The father had lived the dream of sending his son to that school and could have easily forged his wife’s signature, but his inner voice told him that it would be a wrong start for the son if he got admission by way of a wrongdoing. So he submitted the application without the mother’s signature and it was predictably rejected for being incomplete. The father says he was disappointed, but has no regrets.  

We all agree that the measure of a man’s real character is what he would do if he knew no one is looking and he never would be found out. But life has conditioned us to live more for a social face than with a sense of fairness or integrity. We, who will not litter or spit in the streets of Singapore for fear of fine or of being caught, will think nothing of rolling down the windows of our cars and disposing an empty bag of chips right on a busy road. 

The most effective way of making defaulters pay dues has always been to put out their names on a list for all to see. Loss of face and public shaming is what we dread most. Mostly, it is not a sense of correctness or duty, but the fear or awareness of being found out that stops us from doing what is considered wrong.

We may read out stories of heroes to our kids, but when we lie about their age to get them into an amusement park, it makes children think that cheating is okay. When our child gets more marks in an exam by mistake, how many of us tell them to go back and tell the teacher? How many of us, in the name of help, do their projects and assignments for them? When we pay at temples for a quick darshan to avoid standing in long queues, they learn that shortcuts are fine.

Bad stuff happens to others

A friend feels that if there are no vehicles at the traffic signal, it is okay to not wait for the signal to turn green. But, just like we all feel that ‘bad things’ will not happen to us, till they do, consequences of these little slipups, these easy ways out, can be life shattering. What if you fail to see the one rashly driven vehicle that suddenly comes from somewhere? What if just as you decide to cross, a pedestrian, seeing the stop signal, is also crossing the road in front of your vehicle?

In driving, flying or performing surgeries, we have seen grave mistakes, great catastrophes unfold due to a small error in judgement. Accidents such as car crashes or house fires happen due to what we would like to believe ‘that one time!’ But ‘that one time’ can happen anytime, and with disastrous consequences.

So many people cross the railway tracks daily risking their lives and limb for a short cut. They may have all started out cautiously, then watched others and felt more assured, and with time grown complacent, even careless. Daily, people get killed crossing the railway tracks. Those that meet such fate also believed that bad things happen only to others.

So we continue to ride on pavements, dig and leave sumps, manholes, borewells uncovered, believing nothing will go wrong. Yet, youngsters die of speeding while driving; not wearing helmets and performing foolish acts of bravado. Children fall into borewells abandoned by contractors and their clients who seem to have no concern for others’ lives. Two Mumbai boys who were filmed performing death-defying stunts on moving local trains were, contrary to their expectation of being hailed heroes, nabbed by the police for putting their own, as well as other peoples’ lives in danger.  

People play pranks for a laugh. But sometimes, they may lose sight of the consequences. Pranks can go horribly wrong, like the Australian RJs’ prank call to the UK hospital that distressed and may have led to the Indian nurse’s suicide. The RJs are regretful and sorrowing, but it cannot undo the tragedy. The Brazilian video of a ghost girl in the elevator, being dubbed as the scariest, most terrifying video, is a rage on social networking sites these days. It is being termed the best prank in the world. Yet, there is a raging debate on its appropriateness, the outcomes that could have been devastating for someone with a heart condition, or if one of the ‘victims’ had actually attacked and hurt the child who was playing the ghost.

Choosing right, every time

The threshold of right and wrong is never distinct. Why do people, who at the height of success, fame or at the fruition of their lifelong dreams, fall prey to an error in judgement? It is usually not one incident, one slipup, but a gradual silencing of the voice of conscience, the smugness of being invincible, and the short-sightedness of life’s purpose.

Why would a young, bright Indian-American, enrolled in Harvard, stoop to plagiarism and be shamed like she was. But Kavya Vishwanathan, whose book was 32nd on The New York Times’s hardcover fiction bestseller list, and who was inundated with book deals and advances, was found guilty of plagiarism. Why would a business leader of the stature of Rajat Gupta, the managing director of McKinsey and Co, put his reputation on the line? Yet, he did.

These can be attributed to an error of judgment — that decision that you take while standing at the threshold of right and wrong. The woman who gate-crashed into the London Olympics opening ceremony, marching along with the Indian contingent, regretted the incident and attributed it to an error of judgement.

This is what sets a person apart then — integrity. All our heroes are those that decided voluntarily to do the right thing when faced with a choice. We always have a choice. And we always need to choose the right thing to do in every situation. Unless it becomes a habit, we expose ourselves to a slipup, of falling prey to that error in judgment, and be faced with consequences we do not wish for. There is no ctrl+z on the keypad of life.

Waste people

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Shefali Tripathi Mehta, Dec 23, 2012
Humour

Mother Earth refused to take our dump. Landfills filled full and mountains of garbage threatened to flood back to drown us in our own muck.

Then Bangalore sat up and groaning under its load, implemented waste se-gre-gat-ion. Bangalore piles up 3500 tonnes of garbage each day. The farmers around the landfills took up scythes and a desperate administration implemented desperate measures.

But inside homes rubbish happened. On my floor alone there is a garbage thug that leaves it out in the common area each day, and has never been caught litter-handed. Can Houdini’s blood brother/sister be expected to comply as long as they can get away with trashing like this?

And here I am with a pile of garbage before disposal bins that are labelled Wet, Dry, Kitchen waste, Biodegradable and not-that. Not-that is further split into – Recyclable, Toxic, Soiled. Where does my milk packet – its inside milk-licked go? Why the sanitary pad that the ad says always dry, not so? The food foil, the toffee wrapper goes into Dry but is not recyclable. I never messed with such, I swear. 

The house-help finding her position threatened, assumes authority and informs me that it is simply ‘kitchen waste’ and ‘all else’! So garden leaves, she says is not kitchen waste but ‘all else’. If the discarded palak leaf is ‘kitchen waste’, how dare she discriminate against the fern! She challenges, ‘Eat and show?’ So I stuff the fern leaf – no, not in mouth but into another big bag I call Moot!

Kleenex and noses! How the muck did we land up with so much garbage!

Two decades ago, when foreign-returned talked of the pile up of junk in foreign and said in foreign they don’t repair, just ‘dispose off’ – cars and refrigerators of all things, everyone listened wide-eyed.

We had an army of grime-collared and amazingly efficient men who mended, oiled and painted to ‘brand new’ everything they could lay their dirty nails on. There were drycleaners who darned and dyed, repair guys that mended mixers, geysers, coolers, fans, even flasks; the sofaman squashed back jutting out sofa springs; tailors and mothers came together to turn old sarees into jholas and cushion covers, faded sheets into mattress covers, which by the way, weren’t foam or poly-fill but cotton that was beaten and fluffed out and added to when flattened out. Ditto with razais and pillows. Nothing had to be thrown away, shoe boxes were amassed for craft projects; fused bulbs carefully tipped out to grow money plants. 

There were cows in the aangan or the neighbour’s aangan to be fed the leftovers. The kitchen did not generate waste that could not be dumped in the garden to turn into compost. Frugality wasn’t frowned upon because nothing was two-minute. No snip of scissors produced ready-to-cook or to eat rice, curry, paste or puree in tetra or plastic packs. When bitter gourd was served for dinner, we knew what was coming for lunch the next day - its skin. Milk came in glass bottles that had to be washed and exchanged for more. So did soft drink. If you broke one, you repented. 

Birthday and unbirthday parties had people borrowing plates, spoons and glasses from neighbours. Wash and use was the mantra. One person was engaged to wash all evening for a continuous water-dripping stream of plates and spoons. It did not matter that some people had to wait because patience was not in short-supply.

 If the Sunday morning breakfast was to be got from the bazaar, steel tiffin carriers and dabbas were taken along, no eatery offered take-away plastic dabbas even for the price of Rs 2 and 5 we pay now. Atta was stored in Postman oil cans and dal in Sixer biscuit tins. Pearlpets, Tupperwares shelved those out. Cling foils, bubble sheets, zip pouches—how much plastic, polythene...we cannot do without! Even our soap, shampoo and ointment look delectable in shiny plastic containers on supermarket shelves. 

Waste people, all of us have become! Wait till treating someone like dirt becomes a term of reverence.

Building Bridges

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Nov 18, 2012 :

India is a land of contrasts. While one half of the country is trapped in tradition, the other half straddles tradition and modernity with elan. This divide cannot be bridged in a hurry. The ‘work in progress’ sign will be up for a long time, writes Shefali Tripathi Mehta.

A girl in a burka, the veil thrown back, riding a scooter with an old man on pillion in Ahmedabad city; sprightly women in sarees, heads covered, driving two wheelers in small-town Bikaner; an LCD TV in a 10x10 room of a Mumbai chawl; the raddiwala giving me his ‘mobile’ number at my Bangalore home, once enigmatic, these are now quintessential images of modern India.

A generation that head-bangs, also plays antakshari singing Kishore Kumar hits; gorges on pizza and fries but craves for home-cooked daal-chawal; wears jeans to college but slips effortlessly into traditional attire at religious and social functions; talks ‘dude’ language with friends and switches to the vernacular at home; men and women heading teams across the world ask their parents to ‘arrange’ their marriages — our complex social mindset and conduct straddle tradition and modernity with élan.

It is also true that this picture of amazing balance still goes askew. Those that study or work together, fall in love but cannot marry because of differences in caste, religion or social class; honour killings, female infanticide, dowry demands and deaths are still unchecked; the poor struggling to make two ends meet still borrow for elaborate marriage, birth or death ceremonies due to societal pressures; highly educated Indians still employ small children as domestic help and the instances of their abuse make us want to hang our heads in shame.   

But the learning curve has been steep. We are a country today where those that lived without electricity in remote villages, walking miles to school, work in multinationals; from studying science in vernacular, we have gone on to teach in universities across the world; the house-help who mops our floors sends her kids to study in English medium, private schools. The divide cannot be bridged in a hurry. The ‘work in progress’ sign will be up for a long time.  

Trapped in tradition

More and more youngsters from smaller towns and villages, from the middle and lower income groups, many of these first generation literates, on the strength of their hard work and the fire in their bellies, move to bigger cities to study and work; to travel and live abroad.

Though every generation of youngsters demands independence — the need to live on their own terms, away from the questioning control of parents — with increased exposure and familiarity with other cultures, interaction and exchange of ideas with foreigners, we aspire to be more like the rest of the world. 

The economic liberalisation, the new jobs, the international stores, coupled with our increased purchasing power allows us to dress, eat and live like anyone else anywhere in the world.

Indian parents try to fulfil all the needs and wishes of their children well into their adulthood. A driver who rides a bicycle to work will work extra hours to buy his son a motorbike. Parents may not be able to save for their old age or illness but will provide for their kids’ education, marriage and other needs. The West is a more individualistic society. Parents do not expect their children to live with them, care for them during old age or help them financially. Children are encouraged to work and earn for their needs. 

Just as the Indian parent is culturally conditioned to support their kids well into adulthood, so are Indian children to provide for them during old age and illness. But when children feel duty-bound and confined, or when parents cannot make adjustments with the fast-paced changes modern life demands, conflicts arise.

Children who grew up perfectly happily in joint families prefer nuclear ones now, mainly because their parents or elders cannot accept the changes that they have adopted. Tradition is a guide, not a jailer, said Somerset Maugham. In these times, the tradition of ‘respect for elders’ cannot translate into undisputed acceptance of their word. 

Youngsters still need advice and guidance from elders, but they also have more information and resources to do things independently. Nor does the ‘do as told’ dictate for women work. At the time of marriage, the groom’s family which wants a qualified girl who works and earns as well as the boy does, cannot later expect her to return home on time, eat last, bear sons and not travel on work.  

Respect and tolerance  

In a country where neighbourhoods have been extended families and neighbours are still referred to as akka, didi, bhaiya, anna, bhabhiji, even strangers on the road are addressed as uncle and aunty, we slide effortlessly into the convention of calling people much older and senior to us by their names at work.  

Oprah Winfrey’s comment that “some Indian people eat with their hands still” outraged Indians for its lack of sensitivity towards our culture. At formal buffets or sit-down dinners, we use cutlery, but when the occasion demands, most of us do not hesitate to use our fingers. This is a matter of reverence for our surroundings, people and the occasion. This is culture. Eating with a spoon is not.   

Ours is a culture of respect and love for all; tolerance of every other culture. The feet touching, head bowing, namaskara, aarti, tilak application are acts of veneration and love, not to be confused with a servile or subservient outlook.

It is imperative for us to reflect on how some of our beautiful community festivals like Teej, Raksha Bandhan, Holi, Onam and Lohri have come to acquire such an indelible religious tarnish? The Holi Baraat is one of the oldest traditions of Lucknow in which Hindus and Muslims take out a procession to spread the message of peace and brotherhood. It is Ustad Bismillah Khan’s shehnai that plays at Hindu weddings.

For generations, hundreds of Muslims in Vrindavan have been stitching clothes for the Hindu deities. In the royal kingdom of Bhopal, which had a majority Hindu population and Muslim rulers, it was the Hindus who prepared the Iftaar during Ramzan and the Muslim rulers who began the Diwali celebrations. Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia and Amir Khusrau loved and wrote about Holi. Bahadur Shah Zafar’s Holi phags are sung even today.

What is modernity?

‘Breaking the shackles of superstition, the grandchildren of an orthodox man, who never allowed his children to witness the solar eclipse, had their bit of freedom…Almost thirty years later, when his father is no more, Sarvesh with his wife and two children came to Lalbagh to see the celestial event with the dead man’s X-ray film, which was cut into four pieces.’ The newspapers reported. This attitude of the older generation was formed centuries ago when man feared the wrath of nature, when knowledge of celestial phenomenon was limited.

Modernity is not the rejection of culture and traditions, but a rational interpretation and forward-looking attitude. Any tradition that regresses should be dismissed, but to reject something due to ignorance or imitation is foolhardy.

As a society, we’re already divided on the basis of caste, culture, religion, socio-economic status and standing. Now the divide, spurred by rapid technological developments, threatens us.

When a woman climbing an escalator going down in a mall is laughed at and youngsters stand around making videos of her to share on social networking sites — such deceptive modernity shames our gracious culture. If we can take by the hand the bewildered, old man in his village clothes afraid to cross the busy city road, across, we are truly progressive and cultured.

An incident that exposes our general lack of sensitivity in dealing with those that are not with-it yet, as also our fallacious notion of modernity involves a middle-aged woman who entered the washroom at the Bengaluru International Airport wearing a traditional ghagra-choli, her head covered with an odhni. “Sit on the seat,” the attendant hollered from the other end, above heads crowding the limited space. The woman said she only needed to pee. “SIT on the seat!” the attendant was firm. 

In her anxiety, the woman left the door ajar. She first faced the seat, then turned her back to the seat, finally, unable to figure out how to use the western-style commode, left without relieving herself. Are the Eastern-style squat toilets that the whole country used not so long ago suddenly so passé that they cannot be installed in a couple of cubicles at public conveniences?

Is it better to allow a major part of the population such humiliation, distress and watch them take a dump on the roadsides? So, even though many a with-it women think it is a crap idea, many city malls have graphical illustrations inside their facilities showing how a Western-style commode should be used by women.

Reinvent, revive

The idea was a little alien at first — celebrating festivals on weekends, but in this fast-paced urban life, it has emerged as a great alternative for keeping our wonderful traditions alive. Housing societies and apartment complexes these days see people across different regions and faiths come together to celebrate all festivals in their traditional glory — with a taste of authentic food and a glimpse of traditional dress and customs.

We do not become modern by rejecting traditions, but by moulding regressive attitudes, reinventing traditions, finding new meanings to old beliefs. Can we not look afresh at the worship of animals, rivers and celestial objects and regard it as gratitude and respect for nature and natural resources so that we may stop abusing the planet we call Mother Earth? Of what use is the worshipping of kanyas during Ashtami puja if girls are not allowed the freedom to make their own life choices?

In 1905, when the British decided to divide Bengal on the basis of caste and religion, Rabindranath Tagore reinvented the festival of Raksha Bandhan, using it to promote the idea of love and brotherhood among Hindus and Muslims of Bengal and to bolster the spirit of nationalism. People censure the traditions of Karva Chauth and Raksha Bandhan as regressive. 

No woman who observes Karva Chauth today does so with the blind belief that fasting will make her husband live longer. It is more a celebration of the wonderful bond between a couple and it is also not uncommon to see husbands join the fast with their wives. Similarly, the physical ‘protection’ of a sister by her brother is not the idea behind Raksha Bandhan anymore. With siblings spread across the world, it is a day for renewing the beautiful bonds of childhood.

It is heartening to see girls increasingly taking care of parents in sickness and old age, providing financial and emotional support. Girls are not just excelling in traditionally male-dominated spheres, but taking over seamlessly whatever was once expected of boys. This is modernity. Modernity is the lifting of the stigma against divorce or remarriage of girls, allowing them economic independence. Kanya daan is a regressive term that Nandita Das, actor-filmmaker, challenged some years ago. To ‘give away’ a daughter is considered the greatest of daans, but it also ‘commodifies’ a girl. Attitudes attached to such fallacious beliefs drive many girls to kill themselves rather than walk out of difficult marriages or return to their parents.   

Assimilate change

Tradition is not all superstition. Superstitious beliefs are based on fear, not on facts or reason. These irrational fears originated at a time when people did not know better and have continued because of our insecurities. But our modern outlook must enable us to glean what is good from our age-old customs, for, as Henry James said, “It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.”

Westerners are drawn towards the simple Indian way of life, spirituality, yoga and traditional medicine. When they approve, we take pride in these practices. We talk of cardio workouts and pilates in swank gyms while the westerners are drawn towards our total mind-body-spiritually uplifting traditional exercise of Suryanamaskar; the centuries-old dands and bethaks are back in vogue as Hindu squats and push-ups. The West with its propensity for research tells us the benefits of food like garlic, ginger, turmeric, flaxseed, onions and basil that has been a part of our diets for centuries.

Change is inevitable, we have to embrace change, those that resist it will be left behind. Those that disregard their roots will lose themselves in an illusion of modernity. Traditions are our roots, modernity our wings.

An incident that I will always regret for my lack of courage to question a traditional belief, is also my beacon. It was Holi and the world was drenched in colour and merriment. All of us were playing with colours outside, but one of our neighbours, a young widow, stood alone in her balcony watching. I was hesitant in asking her to join, afraid it might hurt or offend her sentiments or some social convention. Twenty years later, I wonder if that one step by me, someone else, or all of us collectively, would have been the one strong-arm she needed to come out of her forlorn existence, her imposed confinement.

Such social, emotional dilemmas will confront us on this path we tread balancing tradition and modernity. Some bridges will need to be crossed, others to be burned. The choice we make will determine where we go

Waiting for Gandhi

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September 30, 2012:

Remembrance

On the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti, Shefali Tripathi Mehta recalls the values and principles, ideals and precepts that Gandhi stood for, propagated and preached, and rues the absence of a leader who could help us make sense of a world that’s riddled with problems.

Decades ago, ‘Gandhi Jayanti’ every year took us kids to Kamala Park overlooking the Upper Lake in Bhopal to participate in a painting competition. We drew tricolours, charkhas, Gandhi glasses and Gandhi stick figures. The year I remember with disappointment was when Archana with me drew the typical Gandhi but made XXL ears — telling me importantly that he had BIG ears. I was the artist and I scoffed at her ‘cartoon’. The prizes were announced at the Hindi Bhawan that evening and, sure enough, her lollipop Gandhi with elephant ears was displayed in the hall and won her a prize.

The Father of the Nation was someone we wrote essays about and whose life events we ‘by hearted’ to write in exams. Other than that, we remembered him only on his birth and death anniversaries. The two-minute ritual of silence that we observed on January 30 was invariably punctuated by stifled, schoolgirl giggles as we got to our feet during class when the siren went off at 11 am, the time of his martyrdom.

At home, things were different. My mother grew up in Gandhiji’s Wardha Sevagram Ashram where her parents worked — her father as the Ashram administrator (who later edited 18 editions of the Government-commissioned Sampoorn Gandhi Vangmay) and her mother as the warden/principal of the Mahila Ashram. 

Mother was nine when they moved into the ashram. Her parents and elder siblings spent years in jail during the freedom struggle. She lived her early years in close proximity with stalwarts of the freedom struggle and as a child growing up in the thick of political turmoil, imbibed the values of the stringent ashram life which included spinning and wearing only khadi.

Studies in the Mahila Ashram were geared towards preparing teachers for the villages. There was no grade or class system — just three broad categories. At 11, mother was being taught life sustaining skills along with History and Math that the students were expected to pass on to the poor, illiterate women in the villages of India. Great stress was attached to swavalamban or self-help. Spinning was compulsory for everyone and no one was allowed to have more than three sets of clothes each.

The ashram legacy

The most dreaded ashram legacy that we had to abide by at home was the threat of cleansing of the tongue with cow dung for using foul language. And foul, mind you, comprised all of today’s language, including the near endearment, sala. 

I was well into teenage when I learnt that perfectly normal people woke up late, lied at home and went to movies, stole small change to buy samosas at school and had parents and elder siblings do their homework.

Growing up, we never tired of mother’s stories of Gandhiji and ashram life. When she first went to meet Bapu, she would tell us, Ba, (Kasturba) asked her if she could make something (cook). “Yes,” said mother, “Chai”. Ba laughed and warned her not to tell 
Gandhiji that!

The main ashram, Sevagram, was about four kilometres from the Mahila Ashram and often when Gandhiji was visiting, the inmates of Mahila Ashram went to Sevagram for the evening prayers. He encouraged them to clean the villages and involve themselves in community service from an early age. 

Gandhiji lived simply and set an example for others to not waste anything. It was his vision of an equal society that made him question every excess. Mother recounts an incident when the inmates of the Mahila Ashram invited him and prepared a large map of India with food grains. The different states were filled with dals of different colours in the form of a big rangoli. Gandhiji appreciated the effort but regretted that so much food grain had been wasted. He was assured that it would be used for making a khichdi for the evening meal. He remembered to ask for it that evening. Later, in a letter to grandfather, he mentioned his distress:

Gauhati, January 11, 1946

BHAI DIKSHITJI,

I have your clear letter. It is good that you have written frankly. I am dictating this also at a Mahila Ashram. It is in Gauhati. A camp of the Kasturba Fund is being held here. On one side there is a village, and on the other, Gauhati city. It is utterly peaceful.

It gave me satisfaction to know that the cereals which were used for the camp would be cooked as kedgeree. It is quite true that I like garba and this I mentioned there. In one way I liked the scene, but from another point of view, I did not like it, and felt sorry. I could not then express myself in words as I was deeply moved. My heart was already in Bengal. I can never say that there was anything wrong in what you did. There was nothing wrong. The whole scene was one of love and it was performed with my consent.

Even so I had some talk with Shriman Narayan. But its purport was quite different. I do not remember whether I was able to convey it or not. But if I could not speak out then, I am telling you now. The Mahila Ashram is an institution of the poor. It is born of a noble sentiment.

It is filled with Jamnalalji’s feelings and Vinobaji’s tapascharya. It is regarded as a good means of rendering service to poor women. And its management is in the hands of Shantabehn. And yet, what a difference between what goes on in such an institution and the almost naked condition of the millions of poor women of India and Bengal. And I being a witness to all this. It wrung my heart then. 

Even as I recall the scene, my heart weeps. Even if I could not convey my meaning, Shriman understood it and conveyed it. I dictate this early in the morning. If it calls for further explanation, or if you want to know more, ask me when I come there. You may share this letter with all.

Blessings from BAPU

In another instance, on the first death anniversary of Ba, her photo was decked with flowers and an elaborate floral rangoli was made before it. A large oil lamp remained lit in front of her picture. Gandhiji expressed his sadness, saying that the oil in the lamp could have been used to cook at least three meals by a poor family and the flowers too would have stayed longer on the bushes.

Now, mother gets invited to school functions to talk about Gandhiji. Kids touch her and ask in wonder if she has actually, really seen Mahatma Gandhi. She laughs and tells them of Gandhiji’s simple and frugal living so they may think before wasting. But she never fails to remind them that Gandhiji wasn’t such a grave old man. He laughed and joked all the time, especially when around children. He enjoyed teasing them. Once when the ashram inmates staged a play for him, he laughed out loud on seeing another Gandhi on the stage!

Gandhi, the superstar

When Richard Attenborough created his magnum opus and romanticised ‘Gan-dai’ for posterity, Gandhi became a Rockstar. Growing up, we watched the film twice a year when most TV channels played it on his birth and death anniversaries. Ben Kingsley and Gandhi became synonymous. For my generation, the one who smiled down at us from photographs in school and college walls, acquired a human persona. He faltered, he erred, but he admitted, repented and corrected himself. 

But the world seemed out to get my idol. The cynicism, scepticism of the adult world was inescapable. Biographers, confidantes, random writers were outdoing themselves in laying out Gandhi’s personal life, his oddities, threadbare. The shine of his perfect, blue-skied pictures hanging in government offices began to dull for me. The clear-eyed, smooth-skinned Kingsley wasn’t close to the scrawny, bald man with bad teeth his real pictures revealed.

The Munnabhai movies resurrected Gandhi in a more contemporary flavour for many. The rose-offering Gandhigiri caught on the imagination of a generation for a short while but petered out as fads do. Gandhi, anyway, would not have approved.

But it was Feroz Abbas Khan’s Gandhi –My Father that shattered me. It was now time to ask mother the difficult questions. Maybe, he was a little harsh on his family, she said, but that’s because, to him, all were equal. I wasn’t happy with her reply. I was sure he had neglected the son, Harilal, just so no one would think him partial. 

A firm believer that a person’s first duty is to his family, then to the community, the nation, the world, I was ready to put my childhood idol through a full body scan. To fail as a parent is to fail your first duty, and to fail as a parent because you are preoccupied with ‘greater’ goals, I found unpardonable. My Gandhi picture — of a spindly Mahatma walking in a fast-forward mode in film documentaries, fell apart.

Search for the Mahatma

Every once in a while, like a high-tide, people suddenly begin to rue the loss of an idol, a saviour, a mahatma who could have given direction to the country riddled with corruption, poverty, injustice, disparity, greed, religious fundamentalism, and a people seeped in anger, violence, consumerism and deceit.

In a country where men lie dying on roads while others walk past; where small, unsuspecting lives fall prey to careless traps laid out by adults; where women are owned and servants abused; where each one wields their power over those they can suppress; where hunger and disease kill those that can be saved; the custodians of law, mock it; and those that stand for their rights are brutally killed; innocents spend their lives in jail and predators gloat in power and wealth, stealing from those that barely earn to eat; but we are assured that the economy is strong, that development is unprecedented. Swank metros, ostentatious airports, a coffee for the price of a family’s meal — a world in glass towers looks away as millions go hungry and struggle with ignorance and deprivation — the divide grows with time. 

Is an idol relevant in our cynical times? Do people care? Would they listen to, follow someone, however infallible? Would the lady of the house stop kicking the little servant boy because of Gandhi’s example of non-violence? Would a city driver not bludgeon another on road for grazing his car because Gandhi said an eye for an eye would make the whole world go blind?

Last year, on January 30, during a peace march in support of the passing of the Lokpal Bill, we swore in the name of Satyagrah. Yet, when during the walk, the siren went off, neither the organisers nor the marchers stopped to observe the two-minute silence. This extremely passive form of non-violent, peacefulness of the thousands unsettled me. It was clear that idols are picked and dropped at convenience.

Today, the country rues the absence of an idol, a leader whose thoughts and words would spring from deeply ingrained values and personal integrity; who would have the courage to own up to his mistakes and whose power on his countrymen would arise out of their unfailing love and respect for him.

A Gandhi in our midst today, I am more than convinced, would help us make sense of our world where leaders shamelessly retract their own words to stay in power and blame modern technological aids for portraying them in bad light, where religious armies spew hatred at each other, little trusting girls are raped by friendly men, tax payers’ money is hoarded in urban palaces and stolen to make handbag-carrying-auntie statues. The essential lesson and example in humanism, integrity, love, compassion for others and religious tolerance, only Gandhi could have shown us by his personal example. Being human would have meant more than a mere t-shirt slogan. Gandhi would be in, not just the topi.