First Person
– By Nachiketa Desai*
(From father Narayan Desai’s book on the Partition and Gandhiji. Translated from Gujarati to English by Nachiketa Desai)
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O Lord! Make me your worthy instrument and command me to do your task
-Gandhi
There is a well-known photograph of Gandhiji during his tour of Noakhali. He is crossing a narrow bridge across a small rivulet along a foot-track in the riot-affected region. He is walking all alone carrying a staff. His eyes are fixed on the narrow bridge. Even at 78 years of age, the strength of his calf muscles is visible. There is concentration in his eyes. There is a forest of coconut and areca nut trees in the backdrop. There is a jute farm on both sides of the bridge. The sky is overcast with white and dark clouds.
There have been several attempts in the past to fell the person crossing the bridge into the pool by cutting the bamboo pillars of the bridge. These attempts had failed because of the light weight of the person crossing the bridge. Little did the trouble-makers know that the traveler had a much stronger support than the bamboo pillars that they had cut down. A postcard written during this period attests to this. Gandhiji gives vivid description of his condition in just three short sentences thus:
“I am physically and mentally fit even in the midst of raging fire because God gives me energy and I live by the name of Ram.”
This photograph and this letter both aptly describe the internal and external conditions of Gandhiji during the last phase of his life. During his tour of Noakhali, the famous inspirational song penned by poet laureate Rabindranath Tagore, which Gandhiji asked Manuben to sing time and again has provided the source of his physical and mental well-being. The last stanza of the song, in particular, depicts exactly Gandhiji’s state of mind during his last 18 months which, like Yudhishthir’s climb to heaven described in the epic Mahabharat, was marked by loneliness but firm by conviction of faith:
“When dark clouds cover the sky,
When darkness engulfs the truth,
When the world cowers and bows before fear,
You be the flame, the flame that burns you
And banishes darkness from the world,
Be not afraid, Burn alone my friend.”
From Noakhali begins Gandhiji’s epic climb to the pinnacle of truth passing through steep valleys and which ends with his unity with the eternity.
– Narayan Desai
*The writer is a senior journalist and grandson of eminent freedom fighter and Mahatma Gandhi’s personal secretary Mahadev Desai
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