MKG

If I were to walk around with a stick in my hand and a cloth around my trunk, no one would blink. The MTV and other channels have encouraged ‘that look’ as a Goan one; besides, most tourists come here to expose skin and wear cheap chappals, they sport the Gandhian look, in a way, Spartan, minimal.

If Gandhi were alive today, pukka bania that he was, he wouldn’t have encouraged people to bully the government with salt or khadi or getting hit with lathis. He was pragmatic and earthy. I have a feeling he would have encouraged us to take over neighbouring enemy countries by setting up shops, stalls, hawking Indian-made maal on their pavements, and making sure the exported brain-power contributed to the motherland by investing in schools and hospitals.

Our politicians wouldn’t have known what to do with him: I mean, how can one deal with unfashionable traits like honesty and ahimsa and whatnot? They (the principles, not the politicians) died with our grandmoms and, like with discarded grinding-stones, we have no idea what to do with them except sit them in the corner of a yard, a haven for scorpions and other creatures of the underworld.

Personally, though, I wish MKG were around, for even though the PM and his jokers, NaMo and his hardliners are out to destroy the sub-continent, I firmly believe the Father would have found a way out. He would have convinced the aam junta to yawn, stretch and participate literally and figuratively to clean up the country. He knew how to lead.

Wherever you are, Bapu, please do something for India. Soon.