21 November,2010 07:25 AM IST | | Abhijit majumder
I needed to clear my head. The week was getting more and more surreal. A telecom robbery; the arrival of a Hollywood woman who has made a multi-million-dollar career off her fake breasts; thieves caught stealing a skyscraper from war martyrs' families; Pepsi-guzzling, pista-munching goats going snobbishly to Eid slaughter -- stuff straight out of an LSD trip.
One had to step out of the circus tent for fresh air, and in the middle of a busy Mumbai week, I decided to visit Mani Bhavan, where Mahatma Gandhi lived between 1917 and 1937. In the 16 years I have spent in Mumbai, I had never been there. I suspected it to be a drab, dead-ass, textbook place you ought to visit once, but don't really need to.
Ironically, it had to be the week I thought nothing could surprise me. Mani Bhavan comes like a slap. The contrast between what's happening outside and what exists in and around that house on Laburnum Road is humbling.
Incidentally, Laburnum Road is one of Mumbai's last roads that live up to their green names. There is hardly a jackfruit tree at Phanaswadi near Kalbadevi, lady fingers at Bhendi Bazar, fig trees in Anjirwadi in Mazgaon, tamarind trees at Tamarind Lane in Fort or Chinchpokli ('chinch' is tamarind in Marathi), banyan trees in Wadala (from the Marathi 'wad'), babul or acacia trees at Babulnath, or 'taad' or palm trees in Tardeo. Strangely, Laburnum Road retains its leafy inhabitants.
Inside, images tell a powerful story. His days in South Africa, racial humiliation on a train which changed his life, the resistance marches, the Salt March, Satyagraha, Quit India, the declarations of India being an independent nation of independent people...familiar events, but you get gooseflesh when you see those photographs in the electric quietude of his house.
I have no doubt that Gandhi was one of the most violent human beings in history. His violence was mental, spiritual. He did not slit throats, but instead tore down every defence, every symbol of his adversaries with cold stubbornness, unshakable energy and determination. It is incorrect to call Gandhi a moderate, a garden-variety peacenik. In one of his notes, he proudly refers to Jawaharlal Nehru as an "extremist" fit to handle the job of leading the nation. Of course, Gandhi himself pushed the extremes.
Revisiting Gandhi is like revisiting a grammar and spelling book. It takes us back to the very basics. Even if you do not entirely agree with his politics or decisions -- and I don't -- it is undeniable that he cut the crap and stripped life down to the basics.
While we add newer Apps to our phones, silicon or Botox to our bodies, ill-gotten money to our banks, xenophoebia and intolerance to our neighbourhoods, Gandhi simplified -- through his clothes, the charkha, his food and long walks. That's why it is so easy to draw him, in just one brushstroke.
Gandhi attacked symbols. By making bonfires of foreign goods, by marching to Dandi to pick up a fist of salt to protest the salt tax levied on Indians, by attending the round-table with the British administration in London in just a dhoti, he hit out at every symbol he found oppressive and unjust.
What would he have done with our latest shame: the Adarsh cooperative society building scam?
I'd think he would not rest till it was stripped down, brick by brick, dust to dust, in full public view. He would have made sure a spectacular demolition of Adarsh got tattooed in India's public memory as the collapse of the great symbol of corruption. I agree with him. We need to remember Adarsh for a long, long time.
Abhijit Majumder is Executive Editor, MiD DAY
Email: abhijit.majumder@mid-day.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/abhijitmajumder
