I sit for five minutes, ten minutes, twelve, seventeen, twenty minutes. It is time for me to go. How make any movement? How disturb the spinning of spinning. The eyes are closed. Gandhiji goes on doing the something, doing nothing, nothing. An actionless act, as it were. It moves by itself. Who is there? No one.

Ultimately, I must take courage in my heart. One must not tarry. It is inauspicious to steal time that is not yours. You cannot move. Yet, must you rise and go: fold your hands in namaskar. And go.

You finally give courage to your limbs, and move your left big toe first. Instantly the spinning stops. Nothing happens. However, nothing ever happens. ‘Happening happens to happening,’ as the texts say. The earth seems to stand still. Does it? No. You feel the earth underneath you move. When everything spins, nothing truly spins. You go round and around—and you are free.

Gandhiji opens his eyes. ‘Beta,’ he seems to say, in a warm whisper, as if he were speaking to himself. His dialogue was always with himself. ‘Son, give your sister Saroja, my grandfatherly blessings. Could I permit myself to say that? May this be a blessed marriage.’

Gandhiji closes his eyes. His spinning wheel seems to move again.

How to rise now? How move. You would burst into tears. But you cannot. The feet do not want to move. Yet, must you rise, and leave. How will you cross the threshold. And where will you go now?

I was one of the hundreds and thousands of people Gandhiji knew. He knew every one, and everyone’s family: five brothers and two sisters, the father dead, and the mother paralysed, in Lahore, Punjab; one son left at home, and the others at the war in Europe. But here so many, many young men, in political prisons, some fasting, yet others spinning. He could almost hear the women cry. And all the daughters were Saroja to him. Just as I was his Beta, son—like any other son. And he was Bapuji, our father.

Outside, under the beating sun, there is before me fold after fold of untilled land. Thistle and mustard green grow between the folds. There is a lone babul tree, somewhere far away. And maybe some yellowed grass, beyond, on the edge. The eagles still fly. The earth is hotter.

7

Wisdom and Power

A Marriage of Necessity1

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