Today is Gandhi Gayanti, I believe that for most of us, It is just a day, a govt holiday, which fortunately if happens on Friday or Monday, we could have a long weekend. Meanwhile this is the exact period when we should think about Gandhian Principles.
I was never been an admirer of Gandhiji or Bapu, because I think he was a failure, and if we see in the totality of Gandhi as an leader , first in South Africa , later in India, it emphasizes certain kind of failures, failures as an human being. But that is a different subject, I remember when I was in my sixth class, as a child I was a compulsive liar, speak lies most of the time even if it was unnecessary. My parents also disliked my particular habit. So on one of my Birthday, My father gifted me “An experiment with truth” the autobiography of the Mahatma Gandhi. “. Those were the days of reading comics, playing videogames and fantasying to Bhagyashree singing Kabootar Ja ja in movie Maine Pyar kiya. So finally I read few pages of the autobiography and then forgot about it.
So overall there was few instances that let me think about Gandhian Philosophy , so first was when I joined Delhi University, then I saw the complete speeches of Bapu, It was a complied work in some volumes and edited by Bapu”s secretary someone Mr. Desai. Writing was good, and speeches were true.
Then someday my sister brought a CD of Richard Attanbourah”s movie, Gandhi, movie starts from a funeral scene of Bapu, and after that as the movie progressed I felt that tears were rushing out of my eyes, and I was feeling an Impulse of crying, which I was not meant to, and not intended to. And I was not a kind of person who cries just to watch a movie, and even the tragic scenes of titanic I found more of melodrama. Though this time, I could not hold up tears. I was facing truth in its purest form,a man who is seeing poverty, the great Indian Misery, suffering and a hopelessness in his people that things would never Improve.
Meanwhile my compulsive lying was decreased after that. I believed that we lie because we fear. The moment the fear is gone so the lying, and we can experience the truth in its purest. In my next post I will write on my views on the book” An experiment with truth.”
