E-Book - Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & Timeswarm water and another with warm milk. Then she came back with two littleboiled potatoes in their jackets and some soft, flat wheat-cakes baked brown.Gandhi handed me one hard, paper-thin wheat cake from a metal container infront of him.A gong sounded; a robust man in white shorts stopped waiting on the trays,stood erect, closed his eyes leaving only a white slit open—it made him lookblind—and started a high- pitched chant in which all others, including Gandhi,joined. The prayer ended with 'Shanti, Shanti, Shanti' which, Dev said, means'Peace'.Everyone started eating with their fingers, fishing out the vegetable stew witha wheat-cake folded in four. I was given a tea-spoon and then some butter forthe cake. Gandhi munched busily, stopping only to serve his wife, Dev and me."You have lived in Russia for fourteen years', was his first political remark tome. What is your opinion of Stalin?'I was very hot, and my hands were sticky, and I had commenced to discover myankles and legs from sitting on them, so I replied briefly. ‘Very able and veryruthless.'‘As ruthless as Hitler?' he asked.'At least.'After a pause, he turned to me and said, 'Have you seen the Viceroy?' I told himI had, but he dropped the subject.You can have all the water you want,' he told me. We take good care that it isboiled. And now eat your mango.' 1 began to peel it and several people, Gandhitoo, laughed. He explained that they usually turned it in their hands andsqueezed it to make it soft and then sucked on one end, but be added that Iwas right to peel it to see whether it was good.Lunch was at eleven and dinner just before sundown. Kurshed Navroji, amember of the ashram and grand-daughter of Dadabhai Navroji, brought mywww.mkgandhi.org Page 418