He did so at a time, when Swaraj was supposedly an elitist dream, with masses having no role whatsoever, in choosing the governance of their own nation, heck, there was not even a nation in sight. I readily gave him credit for being the leader of mass movement, encouraging common people to believe in the dream of Free India. I had always been a hardworking student, and believed that with sound knowledge of Indian History and Freedom Struggle, I knew exactly what role was played by Gandhi. Mahatma Gandhi’s realistic ‘My Experiments with Truth’ seemed much more engaging than Stephen Crane’s made up biography of the soldier I had read a few months back. The book hooked me from the very beginning. Here, I was introduced to a young man, who is shy, introvert, extremely fearful of public speaking, and yet is able to inculcate a fan following of millions, all thanks to his magnetic persona solely carved out of honesty and sincerity. In his autobiography, I chanced to meet the real Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, devoid of monikers of Mahatma and Bapu.
However, as I began to read the present book, I realized that every coin has two sides and one should never make a decision by looking at one side alone. I teetered under the impression that our Father of Nation, failed miserably as far as his own fatherhood is concerned. I read the said book last year, and as was perhaps inevitable, all my sympathy was swayed towards Harilal, Mahatma Gandhi’s eldest neglected son.
I am not a big fan of biographies or autobiographies, and the thing closest to knowing Gandhiji‘s real life, I have read so far is Mahatma vs Gandhi. Gandhi, which was first published serially in ‘Young India’, written by Gandhiji in Gujrati, translated into English by Mahadev Desai. For the uninitiated I am talking about ‘The Story of My Experiments with Truth:An Autobiography’ by M.K. Luckily, I had one such book lying in my bookshelf for months now, and at last I picked it up, snugging next to my pillow, to decipher the real world charm.
And what better way to understand the real history than studying the autobiography of someone who lived in blood and flesh during the troubled times.
So, I thought why not leave aside fiction for a moment and instead concentrate on the reality. Perhaps it is far removed from the reality, or at least poetic license had made the stories far more wretched than actually they were in bad times in India, before and after partition. Politics indeed seemed a dirty world, out to make lives of common people miserable and hammer out their small joys.īut, then I realized that whatever I had read is probably just fiction or at the most faction i.e. Tears welled up in my eyes, as I read about the devastated lives of tailors during emergency in ‘A Fine Balance’ and about the peaks and valleys dented by partition and politics in Baksh’s life in ‘A Long Walk Home’.
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