I saw Gandhiji yesterday.

I saw Gandhiji yesterday.

He was tall. He wore torn jeans.

He was dressed for office, and over his buttoned-up cuffs a steel kada gleamed at his wrist.

His bangles were red, and his bindi was blue, and the Lion King roared on his t-shirt.

He was in hijab, and he had just come from the temple, I could tell:  his tika was fresh.

He had a bright yellow turban, a white topi, and white hair in a neat bun.

He was clean-shaven, and had a sharp goatee, and glasses - but not those round ones. He was just about eight years old, and well over eighty.

He was wrapped up against the bitter cold, and stood sweating in the sun.

He carried a rose, he carried a sign, he carried our hope and dignity and constitution.

Every time I looked, there he stood, at Town Hall and Azad Maidan and Shaheen Bagh, and he looked back at me and smiled. Smiled like he knew me, like he recognised me, although we had never met before.

When I went home, I discovered why.

I bent at the tap to wash the dust off my face, and when I straightened up, there he was again in the mirror, still smiling at me.

I saw Gandhiji yesterday.

I slept better last night, knowing he's around.

Happy Independence Day!

I love this drawing I found in my friend's daughter's Hindi language
notebook. I'm not sure which daughter (she has several,
and most of the time I can't tell them apart! They're triplets.)

I love the fact that in Hindi class, you are actually encouraged
to draw in your notebooks. I love the way she tries out different
stars and finally settles on the Star of David. And I love
her interpretation of Gandhiji in his dhoti.

At first, I thought she had drawn him larger than life, towering
over the trees, until I took a closer look while she explained that
those were hands waving up at him. So I was only half wrong,
about the trees, not about the "larger than life". She turned him
into a rock star, with his fans reaching up to him. I can easily
imagine little disposable lighters in those hands! And she's
absolutely right:  Gandhiji rocks.

Freedom at midnight?

While the city sleeps
the sky weeps. Independence
creeps in, unnoticed.

We often wonder, don't we, what would Mahatma Gandhi make of India if he could see it now. Mostly, we think he would look at us with despair and disappointment.

Because we've not just forgotten. We simply don't get it. We are like the rich children of poor fathers. We cannot understand the price of tomatoes, let alone that of freedom.

And like the best fathers, Gandhiji might very well feel some despair and disappointment. But he would still be looking at us with love and hope.

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Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was given the title "Mahatma" (great soul) and is also called the Father of the Nation for his unique role in the quest for Indian independence from British rule. Today is the anniversary of his birth. It is a national holiday, Gandhi Jayanti, and it is now also celebrated as the International Day of Non-Violence.


(I originally wrote the haiku some years ago on August 15th, at the start of a silent and rainy Independence Day.)

Gandhi (The Screenplay) - by John Briley

It's Gandhiji's birthday today. He's been called Bapu, the Mahatma, the father of the nation .. his full name was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi - and no, Indira, Rajiv, Sonia and Rahul are not related to him.

The first time I saw this film was at Lido Cinema, it was a night show and I will never forget the audience reaction, it was uncanny. The scene just before the intermission was of Gandhi and Nehru visiting the aftermath of the massacre by General Dyer at Jallianwala Bagh: They look into each other's eyes, the scene fades out and the word "Interval" comes up on the screen. This is usually the cue for a mad rush by the audience to be first to use the toilets, to buy coffee or popcorn or smoke that cigarette.

Nobody moved. We all just sat there. It took a few minutes before people started, one by one, to get up and leave the hall. Outside, there was no pushing and shoving, no chaos. Just people standing quietly in line for the toilets, letting others through to get a coffee, smoking quietly under trees.

It's something I've never forgotten.

Today, I'm reading the screenplay by John Briley. I just finished the introduction and wanted to share some excerpts with you:

".. I was certain that no one in the Detroit of my boyhood or my adopted town in semi-rural Englad would want to pay to see a film about an old man who sat on a rug in a loincloth and spouted words about peace and passive resistance. "

He goes on to tell how he ended up working on the project, and how hard it was to comprehend Gandhi's impact, in spite of all his reading and research, until he turned to Gandhi's own writings - his newspaper articles and his hundreds and hundreds of letters.

" .. gradually the personality of this open, questing, unpretentious man began to unfold for me. The well-springs of his courage, his humility, the humour, the compelling power of his sense of the human dilemma .. and gradually I saw too that Gandhi was not 'impractical', not 'idealistic'. His ideas were forged in painful experience, a growth of perception earned from a life far harsher than anything I have ever known.

"In writing Gandhi I have tried to make real the brave, determined man I discovered and to show his unsentimental honesty about the complexity of men and his unshakable belief that on balance they are marginally more inclined to good than evil ..

"Gandhi lived -- and I hope the movie of GANDHI reflects - the most fundamental drama of all: the war in our hearts between love and hate. He knew it was a war, a war with many defeats, but he believed in only one victor. That is what Gandhi has given me. I have tried in the screenplay to give it back in a way that I hope would have won his approval."

(from the Author's Preface of GANDHI The Screenplay by John Briley)

P.S. He won an Oscar that year for Best Original Screenplay.