My 3 encounters with Mahatma Gandhi

The first time I heard about Gandhi was when I was about 5/6 year old, when I heard a female cousin of mine singing a song. Originally in one of our NE dialects, the song, roughly translated, goes like this:

Bapu Raja Gandhi Raja, is a big man

Gandhi has built a road, my dear friend

Now it’s much easier/ for us to fetch water.

As you have guessed, the singer (in this case my cousin) lived in a village where there were no running water taps and the nearest tubewell was quite a distance. To build a road, therefore, is truly something very nice of a Gandhi raja. However, till this day, I am not sure which of the Gandhis really had this road built. But the use of words such as 'Bapu' and 'Raja'/ ‘king’, and considering Rajeev Gandhi was never a popular guy in NE region, makes me believe that it was Mahatma Gandhi.

My second introduction to Gandhi happened in a government-run primary school. It was a school where 3 of my elder siblings went and I was often sent with them, tagged by my mother who thought, that was the best way to handle us.

As a non-student, I was free to roam around and sit into any class (very generous of the teachers) and this is how, one day, I heard a teacher in the 1st standard, reciting a very interesting poem:

Gandhi muni, Gandhi muni (muni=sage)

He likes daal vada/he likes to read chhara(vada =a snack, chhara=poem)

(A few months later I had learnt that the teacher had lost his mental balance and that most of the rhymes were self-composed on which the school had put a disclaimer. But I can't deny, I liked the poem! And honestly speaking, I think it would have been quite Gandhian to like both vada and a poem :)

But my most memorable introduction to Gandhi happened when I was in class 10 and went to visit an old relative who lived in a remote village. Election had just been over and I asked my relative if he too had boycotted the poll, a call given by a militant group. ‘No way,’ he said loudly, I have voted for the man with the Gandhi topi (cap).

And that would be which party? I asked.

‘I don’t know. Maybe, Congress’.

But how can you vote for someone without even knowing him?

“Well, he wore a Gandhi topi’.

And right there, right then, I learnt 3 things: 1) Gandhi and his philosophy lived on even in the remotest of villages of India where Gandhi never reached. 2) A hand spun cotton cap could be a big symbol of honesty and compassion because it symbolized a man who epitomized these virtues. And 3^rd, it is this belief that continues to be exploited and betrayed by hundreds of politicians who are neither honest, nor compassionate.

Bapu, Sir Gandhi, wish you never wore a cap i!

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