I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about people who helped to make our country. Or any country for that matter. I try to go back in time, you know, put myself in their shoes and all that, but I always come to the same conclusion — if it were me battling for independence/women’s rights/apartheid — I would probably stay at home and let someone else do the fighting for me. I don’t know whether it’s just laziness or lack of courage, but I don’t see myself as one of life’s great fighters. Blame it on a generation that has had things handed to them their whole lives, I guess. But, while I realise my own inertia, I’m equally fascinated by the lives of people who have gone before me and have actually made a difference in this world.
When I was a child, living in Thiruvananthapuram, I often made a visit to their excellent library with an even more excellent children’s section. (Side note: where are all the libraries? I remember when they were everywhere, and now, nothing.) And while there, I’d pull out the children’s biographies of famous people. Often just featuring a childhood, with a few chapters on what they went on to achieve, but mostly it detailed famous people as kids. Edison, Newton, Mozart, you name it, I knew about their youths.
Recently, I felt the need to infuse some greatness in my life again. Just sit back and be amazed with someone’s memoirs. Nowadays, memoirs are all the craze. Read about how my stepmother abused me! Read about my journey through drug addiction! Occasionally, you’ll have stuff about famous people: pop stars or movie actors, but nothing that’s actually going to make a difference. So, I rummaged through the bookstore till I found what I was looking for. A nice paperback edition of My Experiments with Truth by M.K. Gandhi. Mahatma, to you and me. Now, I’m still in the middle of it, but what I’m liking so far is how honest he is. Yes, he tried to tell the truth, but even in telling the story of his life, he’s laid bare his faults for all to see. How he ate meat in secret for about a year. How he was consummated with a desire for his young wife. How he felt human and real, and not the god-like figure we in this country have built him up into.
You might have never read any Gandhi beyond what was in your textbook. Certainly, I got no further than that famous incident when he was in school and his teacher asked him to cheat and he refused. The movie has done a really good job at relaying his life, but I feel that if you want to know this man — this man on your currency notes and part of the fibre of your country — you need to read what he has to say. And as a complete bonus: he was a really, really good writer.
The columnist is an author