I remember a statue of Mahatma Gandhi I saw every day on my way to work in Ahmedabad. It was a formless sculpture set in a traffic island. Barely raised above the onslaught of pedestrians, at first sight it looked like one of the older office clerks trying to cross the road without being run over by an auto-rickshaw. The greatness of the man, the ideals he symbolised were not visible in the way it was conceived or placed. From the state of the statue, it was possible to gauge something of Gandhiji's new mood. The marble cheeks were discoloured by exhaust, a pall of dust from the city's industrial units had settled into the bald head. And every morning the road cleaner swept aside packets of Charminar, Uncle Chipps and Baba Zarda from around the Mahatma's feet.