Valéry has said in a famous passage, describing the medieval, running city walls, and the historic fire-burnt harbour of Cette, Cette on the Mediterranean, that he was born precisely where he would have chosen to have taken birth. Mahatma Gandhi did not say this of his Porbandar, but we could say it for him. The city, the white marble city, sitting on the shores of the Arabian Sea, linked in the past with Rome and Greece, and today with Africa, Porbandar was once called Sudhamapuri—the city of Sudhama. Sudhama was a poor Brahmin friend of Sri Krishna, prince of Dwaraka, the great sage of the Bhagavadgita. One day with his short knee-touching dhothi, and cotton shawl, a small bundle of puffed rice on his back, Sudhama decided to go and visit his old friend Sri Krishna. Sudhama’s heart was so shadowless, Krishna himself came to wash his feet in welcome. Later he seated his old friend on his own princely seat. Daridranarayana was another name for Sudhama, the God-man-of-the-poor. Gandhi often spoke of Daridranarayana, the poor of India, with reverence. And Gandhi himself, in his peasant garb, and walking staff, seemed a very Sudhama, going a-visiting his Sri Krishna, the Truth. Gandhi was ever the pilgrim.

The time too was proper, for the British had just consolidated their power. And Queen Victoria was trying to change the corrupt administration of that historic and unscrupulous consortium, the East India Company, into a government of gentlemen. She was a good queen, was Queen Victoria, and under her, tranquillity and abundance seemed to be returning to India. The railways chugged, bringing in cotton and coal, wheat and gold, from the south to the north, from the west to the east, the telegraph wires buzzed, bringing in news of birth and death and marriage, and the figures of the stock exchange. The good queen had ushered us indeed into the new world.

At such a time, and in such a city, and of such precise parents was Mohandas born—it was on 2 October 1869.

Mohandas went to school like many others around him. Neither exceptional nor dull, he was shy, conscientious. Yet on returning home he played pranks with his brothers, experimented eating meat (in hiding), helped his brother to steal gold to buy this meat, and ashamed of his untruthful acts, wrote and confessed it all to his father. Even as a child he could never utter a lie. The father returned the boy’s courage with awesome understanding. For truth is awesome but understanding all-dissolving. This was indeed the beginning of his experiments with truth.