|
My Father’s way of
life was not unlike Gandhiji’s, in that while he was flexible in
many things, he was very firm on points of principle. Not to cause
pain to others, always to show respect to older people, to be
helpful to one’s neighbours—that was his code of conduct. When I was
a child he gave me a little book of maxims from which I learned a
good deal about these standards of conduct, and which also showed me
my faults. I owe my father a great debt of gratitude, and I remember
him as I remember my mother, with joy and thankfulness. I may not
have recounted so many reminiscences of him as of her, but he too is
part of the very fabric of my life.
Father was scientific in everything he did. He ate by rule. His
evening meal was a bowl of milk, three wheaten pancakes and ten
tolas of vegetables. For breakfast he took a quarter-measure of
milk. These meals were fixed and never varied. The midday meal he
left to mother’s choice and ate whatever she prepared, though he
himself decided how much.
When he began to suffer from diabetes he reviewed his diet and gave
up all sugar and milk. For milk he substituted chhaina (solids
separated from the milk), and instead of wheat and cereals he began
to eat soya-bean, which contains a lot of protein and fat but is low
in carbohydrates. He set about making the change in an interesting
way. On the first day he took one soya-bean only and reduced the
quantity of wheat by three grains. On the second day he took two
beans and reduced the wheat by six grains. In this way in about six
weeks he had gradually reduced his intake of wheat to forty per cent
of what it had been, and in the end, with fifteen tolas of soya-bean
and some vegetables, the disease was cured.
At another time he suffered from piles. One day he visited another
house where he was served with puri (fried pancakes) and karela
(bitter gourd). Next morning he had a good bowel movement with no
difficulty, and began to wonder which of the two dishes had this
effect. So next day he tried eating only puri, but got no benefit.
Then he tried karela, found it was beneficial, and continued to eat
it regularly. That is an example of his scientific and experi-
mental turn of mind. He outlived Mother by thirty years, and for
nearly twenty of those years he lived almost entirely on milk though
he sometimes took soya-bean too.
One day my brother Balkoba asked father what diff- erence Mother’s
death had made to him. ‘Since she died I have been rather better in
health,’ he replied. ‘I am a man who believes in self-restraint and
science, but while your mother lived I used to leave one meal a day
in her hands and eat whatever she set before me, whether or not it
was good for me. Now, I eat only what seems to me to be good for my
health.’ When Balkoba told me about this I was very much moved. What
power of detachment there was in that response ! It was very close
in spirit to the words of Tukaram:
My wife has died, she has attained her freedom;
And to me the Lord has granted release from illusion.
Father was a yogi, mathematician and scientist. As a chemist he
carried out a lot of experiments with dyes. He would dye small
pieces of cloth with various dyes and then test them to find out how
fast they were, how they stood up to strong sunlight and hot water.
He kept them all in an album with details of the dye and the
results. ‘You could have dyed a whole sari for me with what you are
using on all those scraps !’ said Mother once. ‘As soon as I have
completed these trials you shall have many saris, not just one,’
said Father. ‘But till then you’ll have to put up with the scraps !’
When the first textile mill was started in Baroda, Father was
extremely delighted. He came home full of happy excitement and told
us all about it. ‘Why,’ said Mother, ‘you seem to be even more
delighted than when you heard of the birth of your first-born, Vinya
!’ Modern thinkers are happy with machinery. For them it means the
birth of a new age, and they can’t wait to discard the tools of the
old one. Like nestling birds, wanting to fly high into the sky the
moment they come out of the eggshell, our modern thinkers too want
to fly high, now that they are no longer imprisoned within the
eggshell of the old tools. ‘India must be modernized,’ Father would
tell us day after day.
Nevertheless, when Gandhiji started the Village Industries
Association Father was very pleased with the idea. Gandhiji invited
him to visit Maganwadi,1 and he inspected everything that was being
done. His advice was that a machine should be used for the pulping
of hand-made paper, and all other processes carried out by hand.
That was in 1934-35 when Maganwadi had only just begun, and there
was such emphasis on hand processing that Father’s advice was not
then accepted. Later, however, it was realized
 that he was right and
a pulping machine was installed.
From Maganwadi Father wrote me a letter on which, unfortunately, I
cannot now lay my hands. I ought to have kept it, but I do not
usually keep the letters I receive, and I must have let that one go
with the rest. He had written ten or twelve pages in a large hand on
paper with a slightly bluish tinge. ‘Everything about this letter,’
he wrote, ‘is my own handwork. I made the paper, I made the ink, I
made the pen I am using, and I am writing with my own hand.’ The
letter was an example of complete self-reliance. Father went on:
‘The paper is a bit blue. I could have bleached it, but only by
getting a chemical from outside, so I decided to leave it as it was,
and really there is nothing wrong about the colour.’
Father also urged that we should study what had been written in
England on this subject about one hundred and fifty years ago.
England too was earlier using handspun yarn. When the mills were
started there was a transition period during which many experiments
were tried out. Now that India is in a similar position books of
that period would be of use here, he thought. He bought whatever he
could find, and made a good collection.
Father was by nature very self-reliant: he never asked Mother or us
children to do things for him, and after Mother died he never had
any servant to help him. Someone once suggested that he should get a
maid-servant to clean the cooking vessels, sweep the floors and so
on. He replied: ‘No matter how good she might be, she would be bound
to make occasional mistakes, and then I might lose my temper and
scold her. I would rather do a little work myself than run the risk
of hurting someone’s feelings.’
Once Jamnalalji (Bajaj) went to see him at Baroda. Receiving the
notice of his arrival Father went to a Marwari (the community to
which Jamnalalji belonged) gentleman and enquired about their eating
habits. He then purchased all the necessary things (his own diet was
altogether different) and prepared the dishes himself. The elaborate
arrangements, made with care and concern so touched Jamnalalji that
he later told me that he had never seen a person with such love and
concern ! There were tears in his eyes when he said so.
Father was extremely punctual and self-disciplined. He had a friend
in Baroda to whose home he would go every evening to play chess.
They had arranged to play for half an hour a day, no longer. At the
time Mother had gone to her parents’ home in Karnataka, so I used to
go to this friend’s house for my meal, and was there when Father
came for his game. It was to end at seven, and Father sat down with
his watch in front of him, and got up to go on the minute. Sometimes
the game was not finished, and when he stood up his friend would
say: ‘Oh, just let us finish this game; it won’t take more than five
minutes.’ Father never agreed. ‘We can finish tomorrow,’ he would
say. ‘Leave the board as it is, and we can start from where we left
off.’ No one could ever persuade him to change his rules.
He was also very fond of music. During his later years he studied
Indian music with a Musalman musician, and would practise as much as
seven or eight hours a day. He was anxious that our old classical
music should not be lost, and he took a great deal of trouble to get
two books published at his own expense: Nadar Khan’s Mridangabaj and
Sheikh Rahat Ali’s Thumari-sangraha. He had eight or ten more books
in his possession which were deserving of publication.
My father gave me plenty of beatings when I was a boy, but even his
beating was done scientifically so as not to injure any of the
bones. Every day I would roam about the town and come home late, and
after supper before going to bed I was expected to report to Father.
He would be sure to discover some kind of mischief or disorderliness
in my day’s doings—I had not put his book in its proper place, I had
not folded my clothes neatly, I had been obstinate about something:
there was always some reason for a beating. I sometimes asked Mother
why she didn’t beat me too. ‘What?’ she would say, ‘Do you want me
to add to what you’ve had?’
Then one day things were different. I had been roaming about as
usual, had come in and eaten my supper, but there was no summons
from Father; he just went to bed. ‘Well,’ I thought, ‘for once I’ve
got off without a beating !’ But the same thing happened the next
day, and the next, and the day after that; he never beat me again. I
only found out what was behind it when I read Manusmriti.2 Manu
says: ‘When your son reaches the age of sixteen you should treat him
as a friend.’ On that first day I had entered my sixteenth year, so
following the law of Manu my father stopped beating me. In other
words, he had beaten me only because he regarded it as a necessary
part of a boy’s education.
When Father first left Gagode for his job in Baroda we did not go
with him, but stayed on with Mother in Gagode. He would sometimes
visit us and bring little gifts, and when the Diwali holiday drew
near Mother said he would be sure to bring sweets. I looked forward
to this very eagerly and when Father arrived I ran to greet him. He
put a rectangular package into my hands. I felt it and thought, it
can’t be round laddus or pedha, they would have been in a bundle;
perhaps it is barfi. But when I tore off the wrapping paper I found
two books, Children’s Ramayana and Children’s Mahabharata. I showed
them to Mother and her eyes filled with tears. ‘Your father has
brought you the best sweets there could possible be,’ she said, and
I have never forgotten her words. In fact I relished those sweets so
much that I still relish them today.
Father had his own way of teaching us good conduct; he always tried
to explain things reasonably. He and Mother both disliked seeing us
leave uneaten food on our plates; it would do us no harm, they said,
to take a little less. Mother would say: ‘Fate has decreed that each
person has a fixed amount of food to last his lifetime—so eat less
and live longer.’ An interesting way of thinking ! Father appealed
to our commonsense. ‘Where do you enjoy the taste of your food?’ he
would ask. ‘It’s on your tongue, isn’t it? So keep it there as long
as you can, go on chewing it, don’t swallow it down straight away.’
And of course a person who chews his food slowly does eat less. So
Father appealed to science and Mother to the wisdom of the
Upanishads, and it’s a very good thing to keep them both in mind.
During Father’s last illness he sent no word to his sons. My friend
Babaji Moghe happened to go to Baroda; he visited my father, saw his
condition, came back to Wardha and told me. My brother Shivaji was
in Dhulia. I asked him to go to Father, and with a good deal of
difficulty Shivaji persuaded Father to leave Baroda and go with him
to Dhulia. There he died on Sharad Purnima, the day of the autumn
full moon, 29 October 1947.
It was suggested that the ashes should be immersed in the river
Godavari at Nasik, which was not far away. I had arrived a few days
earlier and asked why the Godavari should claim Father’s ashes: ‘The
Godavari is water, the bones are earth—what authority has water over
earth? Fire to fire, air to air, water to water, dust to dust—that
is the rule.’ So after the body had been cremated and the ashes
collected we dug a hole in the courtyard of the house, buried the
ashes, refilled the pit and planted a bush of tulsi. Many people
criticized us for doing this; in their opinion ashes should always
be immersed in some holy river. I felt however that there was
justification for our action in the Vedic prayer, ‘O Mother Earth,
give me a place for my dead body.’ Western commentators discuss
whether cremation or burial is the more primitive custom. That is a
matter of historical conjecture, but a single verse of the Vedas
combines the two: first burn the body, then bury the ashes. So on
the authority of the Vedas we committed Father’s ashes not to the
river but to the earth. We set up a stone over the grave, and carved
on it the words of Saint Ramadas: ‘May all be happy, that is my
heart’s desire.’ |
|
|
|
