Bapu Spoke To Me

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Durban, 1895

MKG's cook (reaching Gandhi in his office): "Please come home at once. There is a surprise for you."

MKG: "Now what is this? How can I leave the office at this hour to go and see it? You must tell me what it is."

Cook: "You will regret it, if you don't come. That is all I can say."

I felt an appeal in his persistence. I went home accompanied by a clerk and the cook who walked ahead of us. He took me straight to the upper floor...

Cook (pointing to Sheikh Mehtab's room bolted from inside): "Open the door and see for yourself."

I saw it all. I knocked at the door. No reply! I knocked heavily so as to make the very walls shake. The door was opened. I saw a prostitute inside. I asked her to leave the house, never to return.

MKG (turning to Mehtab): "From this moment I cease to have anything to do with you. I have been thoroughly deceived and have made a fool of myself. Is this how you requite my trust in you?"

SM: I will expose you.

MKG: "I have nothing to conceal. Expose whatever I may have done. But leave me this moment."

On Mehtab's refusing to leave, MKG to Lawrence: "Please go and inform the Superintendent of Police, with my compliments, that a person living with me has misbehaved himself and I do not want to keep him in my house, but he refuses to leave. I shall be much obliged if police help can be sent to me."

SM (unnerved): "Please do not inform the police. I am sorry, I have misbehaved. I will go."

(SM then left.)

Cook to MKG: "I too am going! I cannot stay in your house; you are too easily misled. This is no place for me."

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There were yet two days for the Congress session to begin. I had made up my mind to offer my services to the Congress office in order to gain some experience.

Babu Bhupendranath Basu and Sjt Ghosal were the secretaries. I went to Bhupenbabu and offered my services. He looked at me, and said: "I have no work, but possibly Ghosalbabu might have something to give you. Please go to him."

So I went to him. He scanned me and said with a smile: "I can give you only clerical work. Will you do it?"

"Certainly," said I. "I am here to do anything that is not beyond my capacity."

...Sjt Ghosal used to get his shirt buttoned by his bearer. I volunteered to do the bearer's duty, and I loved to do it, as my regard for elders was always great. When he came to know this, he did not mind my doing little acts of personal service for him. In fact, he was delighted. Asking me to button his shirt, he would say, "You see, now, the Congress secretary has no time even to button his shirt. He has always some work to do." Sjt Ghosal's naivete amused me, but did not create any dislike in me for service of that nature.

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(Hermann Kallenbach relates): "On the morning on which he had to go to meet General Smuts at Pretoria for a very important interview I found him (MKG) (be)rating me generally for something that I had omitted to do.... That was the tyranny of his affection but that affection is my proudest possession."

HK: "It is no use your wasting your time over domestic trifles when you must be thinking of the interview you are going to have with Gen Smuts."

MKG (flaring up): "No, these little things are to me of as much importance as the big ones. They touch the very core of our life and truth is one whole, it has no compartments."

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