My Family

 

My childhood was spent in the Konkan region of Maharashtra. Gagode was a small village of about eighty houses, in Colaba district. It had no school and most of its inhabitants were illiterate.

 

The women of every household used to get up with the first light to begin their work. The first job was to grind grain into flour for the day's needs, in the circular stone hand-mill. Then followed the sweeping of the courtyards, which were sprinkled with a mixture of cow dung and water to lay the dust and keep them fresh and clean. While their hands were occupied with these and other chores, the women's lips would be singing hymns in the name of the Lord. The sweet sounds filled the morning air with purity.

 

My grandfather was an Inamdar, a kind of landlord. We lived in quite a big house, with a spacious courtyard where there were a great many frogs of various kinds, which all night long kept up a regular Mandukya-Upanishad.1 I was quite scared of these innumerable frogs; later I read the description given by the sage Vasishtha in the Veda: 'One frog looks rather like a bullock, another like a goat, another is spotted, and they all croak in chorus like Brahmins chanting the Vedas. In the hot weather they grow dry and withered like Brahmins performing austerities, but in the rains they grow fresh and vigorous and shout with joy.' What an imaginative way of looking at frogs !

 

But people tell me that nowadays the number of frogs in our courtyard is not even a quarter of what it was then. Frogs' legs are regarded as a delicacy in America,2 so frogs are caught for export. Sometimes when I am asked when I plan to go back to Gagode I answer: 'When the courtyard is as full of frogs as it used to be !'

 

Gagode had a lake-a very large lake ! There was a very tall tree beside it, and a spacious temple. Many years later, when I was forty years of age, I went back there and found that lake, tree and temple had all shrunk ! One could easily throw a stone right across the lake, easily climb the tree. It was only in a child's eye that they had seemed so big.

 

I used to wander about the village watching labourers at their work. One day I was standing watching some men splitting a big rock. One of them noticed me. 'Would you like to try your hand, Vinya?' he asked. 'Oh yes please !' So when after a few more blows the rock had reached breaking point they put the hammer into my hand. I struck with all my little might, and sure enough the rock fell apart ! To please me the good-natured labourers stood and cheered: 'Well done Vinya ! The Inamdar's boy split the rock !'

 

Sometimes on special occasions a Brahmin would come to our home at Gagode and give recital from the Vedas. I would sit and listen, and soon had made up my own Veda in Marathi, which I chanted with all the sonorous intonation of the Brahmin's Sanskrit mantras. All it said was that 'horses are grazing on the bank of the river', but delivered in that style it sounded magnificent !

 

A blind uncle lived with us in the Gagode house. He was very hard-working and gentle, and everyone loved him and cared for him. Later on when we went to Baroda with father he remained in Gagode, and one day a letter brought the news of his death. Usually when any such news came mother would give us all a bath and bathe herself, but this time there were no such rituals and I asked her why not. 'You see, Sonnie,' she said, 'blind uncle did not really belong to our family. He was in great need and had no one to care for him, so he lived with us.' So it was only after his death that I learned that the uncle we had known for so many years was not a blood relation.

 

The first nine years of my life were spent in that village home. Then in 1905 we joined our father at Baroda, where he was employed. During our holidays we used to go and stay with our grandparents at Gagode, but I had no more close contact with my native village, and a few years later I cut loose from my family also. As I have said I went back to Gagode in 1935 at the age of forty, just for two or three days. While I was there I had something to write for Bapu3 about the spinning wheel. By the time I had finished it was midnight, and I was about to go to bed when I heard the sound of singing from the temple nearby. The villagers had assembled there, and I went and sat quietly among them. Hymns of devotion went on for about an hour. My feeling for language would normally have been outraged by their crude pronunciation, but before the depth of their devotion nothing else mattered. I was completely carried away, sunk in bliss.

 

One of their hymns struck me as specially sweet, and I remember it to this day:

 

Nowhere in this world is happiness,

crave it not in vain:

 

The whole world is a snare of sorrow,

 

where happiness is not to be found.

 

Here, I thought, are these villagers in this tiny village, miserably poor, like walking skeletons, with practically nothing to cover their nakedness, and yet they can lose themselves in such devotional music ! I was delighted. Where had these people, in this village without a school, where no one could read or write, obtained this knowledge? It must surely be because they sing with such devotion so many of the hymns of Tukaram and other saints, that they keep to this day their understanding and intelligence. It is here that our strength lies.

 

Saint Tukaram himself fell into such great poverty that his wife died of hunger. Yet he turned to the Lord and said: 'Oh my God, if there were no sorrow, there would be no remembrance of Thee !' and in the midst of his grief he found joy:

 

Joys piled on joys have filled

my heart to the brim;

 

Love is an everflowing stream

 

resounding with Thy Name.

 

It is because our country possesses this spirit of devotion that even the very poorest show the world a smiling face. The people of poverty-stricken Gagode, outwardly so dried-up and withered-looking, were filled with the nectar of devotion.

 

Once before, in 1920, I had spent a day in Gagode. Some had died, others still survived-some of the grain, as it were, was being cooked on the stove, some was waiting its turn in the basket, that was all the difference ! The same stars that I had seen in Wardha shone over Gagode also; I was the same too, except that in Gagode the sight of the hills haunted me. Perhaps I had once been a wild creature of those hills, a deer or a tiger maybe, the companion of some hermit? Perhaps by mistake I was born as a man? I am not wholly tamed even now-I am still the same Vinoba, even though I have been 'fried in Gandhiji and rolled in Jamnalalji.'4

 

During my 1935 visit I wrote, in a letter, that the mountains and the mother, between them, are the symbols of all creation and all relationships. In the course of those three or four days I must have recalled my mother about forty times. Gita, Mother, Takli:5 that is my 'Trinity', and for me those three include every one of the thousand Names of the Lord.

 

My Mother

The Ideal Devotee

There is nothing to equal the part my mother played in shaping my mind. I have spent time in the company of many good men; I have read the books of many of the great, filled with the wisdom of experience. But if I were to put all that in one pan of the scales, and in the other what I learned from my mother of practical devotion, that second pan would carry the greater weight of value.

 

Mother was a really great devotee. She would serve everyone in the house with their food, and finish all her other household work, and then before eating her own meal she would seat herself before the Lord and carry out the ritual of worship, offering the lights and flowers in the customary way, just like everyone else. But the devotion in her heart was revealed when she made her obeisance to the Lord at the end of the puja. Bowing before him she would grasp both her ears1 and pray aloud: 'O Lord of this bound- less universe, forgive me my faults,' while tears filled her eyes and ran down her cheeks. Such tears are not produced at will; they can come only from a heart overflowing with devotion. Of course it is common enough for us ordinary folk to shed tears on special occasions such as Ramanavami or Krishnashtami,2 as we contemplate the divine image we have installed for the festival. But I have watched the tears flowing every day, at the ordinary daily puja, in a way impossible without a heart-devotion. Of all my treasured memories of Mother this is the most precious.

 

Mother was an ordinary housewife, busy all day long with her work, but her mind dwelt continually on the Lord. She was in the world, but the world was not in her mind or on her lips, and we never heard her utter a harsh word. From the moment she rose in the morning she would be repeating the Name; as she sat grinding the grain she would sing hymns to the Lord. All her songs were songs of worship, and she sang them with wonderful love and devotion. She had a very sweet voice, and she would become completely absorbed in her singing.

 

I said to her once: 'Mother, you must sing a new song every day-it won't do to have yesterday's song today or today's song tomorrow !' So for six months she sang a new song for me every day, so many did she know. She was from Karnataka where her family still lived, and she knew Kannada songs also, besides Marathi.

 

Whatever Mother was doing, whether bathing or cooking, she would be inwardly absorbed in some devo- tional chorus or other, so much so that one of the dishes occasionally got salted twice over. She herself would never eat until everyone else had finished and she had completed her puja. I was usually the first to sit down to the meal, but I paid very little attention to the food: I simply ate whatever was set before me and then went off. Then my father would come and say that there was too much salt in the vegetables. In the evening Mother would tackle me: 'Why didn't you tell me that the vegetables were over-salted?' 'Why didn't you taste them and find out for yourself?' I would reply. But that would never have seemed right to her. How could she possibly taste food until she had finished her worship and made her offerings?

 

Mother had great respect for my father, but she also took a lot of notice of what I said. For example, she had resolved at one time to offer to the Lord one hundred thousand grains of rice. Every day as she made an offering, she took a handful of rice and offered one grain at a time, counting as she did so. Father saw what she was doing, and said: 'Why do you do it in that way? Why not weigh up one tola3 of rice and count the number of grains in that? Then you can easily reckon up how many tolas will make one hundred thousand grains, and you can add an extra half-tola to be sure you have the full number.' Mother did not know what to say to this, so when I came home that evening she asked me about it: 'Vinya, this is what your father suggests. What do you think about it?' I said: 'Well, this offering of yours, this hundred thousand grains of rice, isn't just a matter of accounts or arithmetic. It's matter of devotion, done in the name of God and the saints. With every grain you count your mind is fixed on the Name, so you should go on counting one by one, I think.' Mother was very pleased and told my father about it.

 

When the Nagapanchami4 festival came round Mother used to offer puja to the Nag (the snake), and she would ask me to make a drawing of the Snake-god for her. 'You can get a beautiful drawing in the bazaar, Mother,' I would say. 'May be,' she would reply, 'but I don't want their beautiful drawings, I want your drawing.' Such was her affection for her son. So I would take a small wooden plank and draw the Nag on it with red kumkum powder.

 

Every evening Mother would set the milk for curd, invoking the Lord as she did so. Where was the need, I once asked her, to bring God into the business? 'Look Sonnie,' she answered, 'of course we on our part do everything we can, but all the same it will only set well by God's grace.' She knew that there is a place for both human effort and divine grace.

 

The Teacher of Good Conduct

Mother insisted, when I was a child, that I must water the tulsi5 plant every day. One day after my bath I came straight to the kitchen and sat down for my meal. 'Have you watered the tulsi?' asked Mother. 'No,' I said. 'Then go and do it now. I will only give you your food when it's done.' That was her lasting gift to me. She gave me so much else, milk to drink, food to eat, and stayed up night after night to care for me when I was sick; but this training in right human conduct was the greatest gift of all.

 

There was a jack-tree in our courtyard at Gagode. I was only a small child then, and as soon as I saw a fruit beginning to grow I would start asking when I could eat it. When at last it was ripe Mother would cut it down and fill a lot of leaf-cups with segments of the fruit. Then she told me to take these as gifts to every house in the neighbourhood. When they had all been distributed she would seat me at her side and give me some of the sweet segments to eat. 'Vinya,' she would say, 'we must first give, and afterwards eat.' She was teaching me some of the deepest truths of philosophy, but she made it into a little rhyme:

 

Giving is God-like,

 

Hoarding is Hell6

 

This teaching of hers made such an impression on me that without it, I must admit, I might never have had the inspiration to start the land-gift movement.

 

If any of our women neighbours fell ill Mother would go to the house and cook for the family. At such times she would first finish the cooking for our own household and then go to the other house.

 

'That's selfish, Mother,' I said one day. 'You take care of your own children and your own home first, and the other family comes second !' Mother began to laugh. 'What happens?' she said. 'Our food is cooked too soon, so it gets cold. I want those people to have their food fresh and hot, so I go there and cook it at the proper time. That's not selfish, it's unselfish !'

 

When I was little I was afraid of ghosts. Mother explained to me that ghosts would never harass the devotees of God. 'But if you feel frightened just take a lantern with you while going out in the dark and go on repeating the Name of God. Whatever ghosts happen to be there will soon run away.'

 

One night during that time I saw a big shadow on the wall. It was my own shadow, but I was too little to know it. It seemed terribly tall, the tallest man I had ever seen. Off I ran to my Mother. 'There's no need to worry,' she said. 'That fellow is your slave. Whatever you do, he will do. If you stand up, he will stand up too. If you sit down, so will he.' I thought I would try this out and see what happened. I sat down, he sat; I stood up, and he stood; I walked along, so did he; I lay down and he lay down too. He was my slave, I discovered-why be afraid of him? That was how Mother rid me of fear of ghosts by faith, and fear of shadows by commonsense.

 

God in Human Form

If a beggar came to our door Mother would never allow him to go away empty-handed. One day a very sturdy-looking beggar came, and Mother gave him alms. I protested. 'Mother,' I said, 'that man looks perfectly fit; to give to such people is to encourage laziness. Those who give to the undeserving are the worse for it themselves. Does not the Gita tell us to consider that gift pure which is given at a fit place and time to a worthy person?' Mother listened, and then said very quietly: 'Vinya, who are we to judge who is worthy and who is unworthy? All we can do is to regard everyone who comes to the door as God, and offer what is in our powers. Who am I to judge him?' To this argument of my mother's I have not to this day been able to find a convincing reply.

 

My father often had a needy student living with us in the house. When some food was left over from a previous meal Mother would eat it herself, and if there was too much for her she would serve some to me. For the student however she always served fresh hot food. This went on day after day, and finally I spoke to her about it. 'Mother,' I said, 'you tell us that we ought to regard everyone as equal, but you are still making distinctions yourself. You never give that boy left-over food, you always give it to me. You are not treating us as equals, are you?'

 

Mother answered at once: 'Yes, you are right. I do treat you differently from other people. I am attached to you, I am partial to you, because I still look upon you as my son, whereas I look upon that other boy as God in human form. When I can see you too in that way, these distinctions will disappear.'

 

There is a custom among the Brahmins to set aside five small portions of rice at every meal as an offering to God. One day I omitted to do this, and Mother asked if I had forgotten. 'No, I've not forgotten, but I've been thinking. Five of these portions make about a quarter tola of rice, so that in a month of thirty days it adds up to about seven tolas. There are about thirty million Brahmins in India, and that means that in the course of a year about thirty million seers7 of rice go to waste. It's not right to throw away all that rice when there are so many poor people in the country.' 'All right,' Mother replied. 'You are a learned fellow and I've no doubt your calculations are correct. But my way of reckoning is different. If you put that scrap of rice by the side of your plate, the flies sit on that and not on the food that you are eating. The flies get something to eat, it's a service to other living creatures.' I often reflected on the meaning of what she said.

 

One day I was idly swinging a stick, striking the wooden columns of the veranda. Mother stopped me. 'Why are you doing that?' she asked. 'They are an image of God, why do you hurt them?' I stopped at once. In India, the feeling that even a wooden pillar should not be needlessly hurt is in the very air we breathe. This reverence for all the creatures of God is something Mother taught me from earliest childhood.

 

As a child I was often sick and under medical treat- ment. When Mother gave me the medicine she used to make me recite a Sanskrit verse, and one day I asked her what it meant. She said: 'It means, Look upon the doctor as God, and upon his medicine as Ganga water.' 'Might it not equally well mean that God is the true healer and Ganga water the true medicine?' I asked. 'Yes,' she said, 'that is also a correct interpretation, but one has to be fit for it; for the present, you had better look upon the doctor as God.' Two alternative lines of thought, and truth in both of them.

 

Mother was not well-read but she was familiar with the stories of the saints in such books as Bhakti-vijay. One day I commented that saints like these were to be found only in ancient times; there were none such today. Mother replied that there are saints alive in our times, but we do not know about them. 'If there were no saintly spirits to give the world the strength of their austerities, how could it survive?' That was her faith, and on the basis of that faith she taught me things which have been of value to me throughout my life.

 

I myself became my Mother's teacher in reading. One day she was spelling out the words in a book of hymns, letter by letter, so that it took her at least fifteen minutes to read one hymn. I was sitting in the upstairs room, and I could hear her struggling with the letters. In the end I came down and helped her to finish the hymn. After that we read together a little each day, and she was able to finish the whole book.

 

Mother and the Gita

One early morning I was sitting in the upper room reciting one of the poems of Wordsworth. Mother heard me. 'Why that lingo, Vinya, at this time of day?' she asked. I told her the meaning of the poem. 'It is a good book I am reading,' I said. 'I know you would never read anything bad,' she replied, 'and even in English some good things must have been written. You should read English too, there's nothing wrong with that. But in the early morning you should read Sanskrit.' She meant that while other things might be read at other times, only Sanskrit was fitting for the sacred early hours.

 

It was Mother who gave me my enthusiasm for Sanskrit. When I was about to enter High School there was a discussion at home about which 'second language' I should choose. Father suggested French, and I agreed. Mother took no part in the discussion but she listened to it all, and when I came home from school in the evening and sat down to eat she asked me which language I had chosen. 'French', I replied. 'Shouldn't a Brahmin boy learn Sanskrit?' she asked. 'Of course he would,' I said, 'but that doesn't mean he has to learn it at school.' Nevertheless Mother's words made an indescribably deep impression on me, and after that I began to study Sanskrit.

 

About 1915, I think, a man was giving commentaries on the Gita in Baroda, and Mother would go every night to listen to his discourse. After a day or two she came and said: 'Vinya, I can't follow what he says; can you please get me a copy of the Gita in Marathi?' I did so, but when she opened it and saw that it was in prose, she asked for a verse translation instead; probably she found the verse easier to read. I found that Vaman Pandit's Samashloki Gita (translation of the Gita verse by verse) was available and got it for her. But in a few days she said that it was too difficult, she couldn't understand it. 'What's to be done?' I asked. 'There is no simpler translation.' Her answer came like a shot: 'Why shouldn't you make a simple translation for me? You could do it !' It was Mother's faith in me which made me write my (Marathi) Gitai.

 

The Giver of the Ascetic Ideal

As a child I was full of day-dreams. I used to dream of brahmacharya,8 so I gave up sleeping on a mattress, wearing shoes and so on. One day Mother remarked: 'Vinya, you do a lot of playing at asceticism; if only I were a man I would show you what real asceticism is.' The fact is that she felt the slavery of womanhood, even though in our home Father gave everyone their full freedom. I feel quite sure that she was capable of doing what she said. Her three sons all became brahmancharis. 'Vinya,' she would say, 'a virtuous life as a householder brings salvation to one generation, but the life of brahmacharya at its highest brings salvation to forty-two generations.' When she was thirty-six years old, at her earnest desire, she and my father took a vow of celibacy, as Father told me himself after she had died.

 

Mother died at the age of forty-two on 24 October 1918, at the same age as Tukaram, whose devotional hymns she so often read. I was with her when she died, as it seemed to me, in great peace. I had asked, did she feel at peace? 'Completely at peace,' she had replied. 'For one thing, you are grown up, and I have no anxiety either about you or about your brothers, for you will look after them. For another thing, two months ago I had that darshan of the Lord.' She was referring to a visit to the shrine at Dakor two months earlier. Dakor is only four hours' journey from Baroda, but because of her household work she had never previously been able to go during all her twelve years in Baroda.

 

When the time came for Mother's last rites to be performed I said that I would carry out all the ceremonies myself without bringing in any Brahmin from outside. The others, however, were against it. 'Do you think your mother would have liked it?' my father asked. 'I feel sure that she would,' I replied. 'She would prefer me to anyone else.' But they didn't agree; so I absented myself, bathed, and sat down to study the Vedas. From that day on the Vedas took my mother's place.

 

Some of my mother's words have had such an influence on me that I have included them in my book Vichar-pothi (Random Reflections): Vinya, don't ask for much. Remember, Small is Sweet, Much is Mischief.

 

A stomachful of food and a cloth to cover the body, that is all we need.

 

Give ear to nothing save the words about the wise, the gods and the saints.

 

When you serve your country, that service shows your devotion to the Lord, but let there be songs of devotion also.

 

Mother had the fullest faith in me, her son, and that faith had moulded me. When I left home my father, thinking it would comfort her, told her that I would be sure to come back after a little while. Mother did not agree. 'When Vinya says something he will not change,' she said. 'See,' said the neighbours, 'this is how modern boys behave; they care nothing for their parents.' 'What !' Mother retorted. 'As if my Vinya would ever go off and get into bad ways ! He will never do anything wrong.' To this day Mother is with me; she is an abiding part of my life.

 

O Mother, you have given me what no one else has given, and yet even you did not give me in your lifetime what you are giving me now, after your death ! I need no other proof of the immortality of the soul.

 

My Father

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.'

 

My Life as a Student

Father had planned not to send his son to school but to have him learn dyeing. So he taught me at home up to the level of the fifth or sixth class, and then sent me for admission to the Kala Bhavan (art school) at Baroda, where he was well known and respected. Everyone there knew me as 'Bhave's son', but they could not admit me. They asked me how far I had gone in English and I told them 'up to the third English class'; since other candidates had got as far as 'intermediate arts', I had no chance. My father then began to teach me further himself, and finding that his lad spent more time roaming about than studying, gave me a lot of mathematical problems to keep me busy. So what did I do? I would concentrate on the more difficult ones which were set out in small type at the end of the text books, work them all out and leave the rest. Father realized that I grasped the subject, so he said nothing; and what I learned with him was all I needed up to the matriculation level. I would first finish my assignment in maths and English within an hour and then be off on my wanderings for four or five hours at a stretch. So finally in disgust Father dumped me in school.

 

There too I carried on in the same way. I not only went on roaming, I pulled my friends out of their homes to join me and gave them no chance to study. Babaji Moghe used to hide in some temple to study and keep out of my way, but I would search for him, find him and drag him out.

 

As a boy my two hobbies were reading and roaming. I would be off whenever I got the chance. Another friend of mine, Raghunath Dhotre, would always tell me that I had wheels on my feet. 'Vinya,' Mother would say, 'in your last birth you must have been a tiger; for one thing, you must have your daily round, and for another you have a very keen nose, you can't bear the slightest bad odour.' So I soon knew every street in Baroda, and I would be off at all times of day or night-any time would do for me. I liked running too; I used to run a lot, without any idea of the distance covered.

 

I once set out for a run at half past midnight, and took the road past the Baroda Palace grounds. The sentry shouted his customary challenge Hukum . . . Dar,1 but I took no notice and ran on. A little later I returned by the same road. This time the sentry stopped me and asked why I was running. 'For exercise,' I replied. He retorted: 'Who runs for exercise at one o'clock in the morning? You are up to mischief, you are a thief !' 'And when did a thief ever come back by the same road he went out?' I demanded. He had no answer to that and let me go.

 

One Diwali2 I spent hours during the three days of the festival going into every little lane and side street in Baroda to see whether there were any houses that did not display the festal lamps. I did not find a single house in the whole city where no lamps were burning. The Muslim houses too all had their lighted lamps.

 

I also used to visit the various temples. There was one temple close to Kamathi-bag, whose deity I named 'Lord of Exams'. Our college was nearby, and during examination days crowds of students would visit the shrine for darshan, and to pray that the Lord would grant them a 'pass'.

 

In school and college my only concern was how soon the class would end and I be set free. There was one occa- sion when the teacher began to dictate notes. I wrote nothing, I just listened, and the teacher noticed it. When he had finished the dictation he told me to stand up and read what I had written. I stood up at once with my notebook in my hand and repeated all I had heard. The teacher was taken aback. 'Just let me see your notebook,' he said. I showed him the blank pages. 'You won't be able to read what I have written, Sir,' I said.

 

Mathematics was my strong subject. The teacher was fond of his pupils and took great pains over his work. One day I consulted him about an exceptionally difficult problem. He thought for a while and then said: 'Come back to me tomorrow. In all my years of teaching no one has posed such a problem before. I am so familiar with ordinary mathematics that I could teach it in my sleep, but this problem of yours is a different matter. I shall be able to give you an answer only tomorrow.' These words made a very deep impression on me.

 

Our French teacher was of a quiet nature. He would never raise his voice while teaching. Once he was taking roll-call while we were writing examination papers. When my name was called out I, engrossed in writing, almost shouted, 'Yes, Sir'. After finishing the roll-call he came to me and said, 'I see, you were engrossed in writing. Still it is not good to shout in this manner. Your tone should have been gentle.' And then he added, 'I am telling this because I love you.' This touched me deeply.

 

But some teachers, when the children can't work out their maths problems, have a habit of slapping their cheeks. I wonder what a slap has to do with mathematics? Is it that a slap on the cheek stimulates the flow of blood to the brain, so that it begins to work better and so solve the problem? Could that be the reason? When I was a little lad, about twelve years old, one of the teachers in our school used to cane the children a lot. He seemed to think that caning was the only basis for knowledge. He had a long cane which he kept locked up. We children didn't like caning, but what could we do? Finally one day I managed to pick the lock and throw the cane away. When the teacher found it gone he guessed, of course, that one of us had been playing pranks, but he said nothing. Next day he brought another cane, and I got rid of that one too. He got yet a third cane, and that also I disposed of. Then he got really annoyed and began asking questions to get at the source of the mischief, but none of the boys said a word-they were all on my side.

 

In the end, however, the teacher did discover the truth, and having found the culprit he had to devise a punishment. He sentenced me to five hundred 'sit-ups'3 and told another boy to stand by and count. The boy was a friend of mine and his counting went like this: 'one-two-three-four-seven-ten'. After a while he got tired and sat down. I went on with my 'sit-ups', and soon he started counting again, and told the teacher that the five hundred had been completed. But I too had been counting in my head, and I knew I had only done one hundred and twenty-three. So when the teacher told me to stop and sit down, I said: 'The five hundred isn't finished yet, Sir, only one hundred and twenty-three.' The teacher thought, 'Here's an honest lad,' and said: 'Sit down, you have already done eighteen too many.' So I did sit down, but I didn't understand what he meant. I puzzled over it and in the end got it: five hundred meant five plus a hundred, not five times a hundred-and on that reckoning, as the teacher said, I had done eighteen extra 'sit-ups'. That was how that teacher took pity on me, and I have never forgotten those figures.

 

Our English teacher once set, as the subject for an essay, 'Description of a Marriage Ceremony'. But I had never attended any marriage ceremony. I couldn't describe it-what was I to do? So I invented a story about a young man who got married, and all the sorrow which befell him and others as a consequence. The teacher noted on my essay: 'Although you did not deal with the set theme, you used your intelligence,' and he gave me seven marks out of ten.

 

The Central Library at Baroda was then considered one of the best libraries in India. During my vacations, after I had had my meal, I would spend the afternoon there. Two or three hours would go by very pleasantly; the librarian had given me free access to the books in the library. During the hot weather I would take off my shirt and sit reading stripped to the waist, until one day one the attendants objected that my dress was not 'decent'; I ought to have the sense to dress properly, he said. I told him that I dressed by the common sense God had given me, and turned back to my reading, in which I was soon absorbed.

 

But a complaint reached the Director that a student was sitting in the Reading Room without a shirt and refus- ing to listen to the staff. The Director was an Englishman; his office was on the third floor and he summoned me there. I found him 'correctly' dressed in shirt and trousers-but he had a fan over his head. He kept me standing before him (as the English usually did in those days) but as he was older than me, I did not find that humiliating. But then he pointed to my naked torso. 'Why this?' he asked. 'Don't you know what good manners mean?'

 

'Certainly I do,' I replied, 'in my own country.' 'And what is that?' he asked. 'In this country,' I said, 'we don't think it's good manners for one man to remain seated and keep another man standing.' He was very pleased that a mere lad like me should have answered so boldly. He at once gave me a chair, and I explained that in India it is no breach of good manners to go naked to the waist in the hot weather. This he accepted, and went on to ask me which books I read, and then told the librarian to give me all the facilities I needed.

 

Then there was the celebration of the birthday of Shivaji. My friends and I were discussing where it should be held. Shivaji was a lover of freedom, I said, so we should celebrate the day in the open air, not under any roof; we should go off to the hills and the jungles. So that was settled, but then a difficulty arose: the day was not a holiday. 'Well,' I said, 'we are studying Shivaji in the history class. We might cut that class and go off into the jungle then.' This was agreed; off we all went and held our commemoration with all solemnity. On the way back we began to talk about what would happen the next day, when we would surely be punished for our absence. I suggested that we each take a quarter-rupee with us to pay the fine.

 

In the history class the next day the teacher asked where we had been, and we said that we had been to the jungle to celebrate Shivaji's birthday. 'Couldn't you have done that here?' he asked. I answered like a shot: 'Shivaji the freedom-lover can't be commemorated in the halls of slavery !' The teacher didn't like that. 'You'll all be fined,' he said, and we all put our hands in our pockets and laid the coins before him.

 

In this way we had a lot of discussion and debate about special days and important topics, and a lot of vigorous argument went on in the course of our walks. There were about ten to fifteen of us friends, and we all wanted to undertake some public service. After a time we decided to give our group a more definite shape, and in 1914 we formed a 'Student Society' which held regular celebrations of the birthdays of Shivaji, Swami Ramadas and so on. We also had study-discussion groups with talks on such topics as the works of the saints, love of country, the lives of great men, the development of character. At first we met in one another's homes, then later we hired a room for a few annas. I began by asking Mother for the money for the rent, but afterwards everyone subscribed. We got together a good library, about sixteen hundred volumes of biography, travel, history, science and so on. I had once given a talk on Mazzini, which my friends still remember. In fact I used to be the main speaker and I used to give talks with a serious sense of responsibility.

 

It was in this Student Society that my public life began, and I believe that the foundation of Gram Seva Mandal (Village Service Society) by me in 1935 was, in a way, linked to that Society. I certainly profited by all the study needed for the talks I delivered, but the greatest boon the Society gave me was friendship; the friends I made in it have remained my friends for life and have never left me. In 1917 I returned to Baroda for its annual function, and suggested that the Society should propagate the use of the Hindi language. I wrote and told Gandhiji that I felt sure it would take up the work and be ready to carry on in Baroda his campaign for Hindi.

 

After High School I went to the College. But I found the 'education' being imparted there totally senseless. Once there was a notice that the Principal was indisposed; so there would be no class on that day. One of the students stood up and said, 'The Principal is indisposed. Let Mr. Bhave take the chair.' So I took a class of English poetry. What was there in that poem? It was just an average poem with words like 'white foot, light foot'. What does one require to teach such a poem? And the Principal was drawing a salary of Rs. 1200 for taking a couple of classes per week ! It was nothing but loot. I could not interest myself in such studies. Ultimately I discontinued them.

 

Near our house in Baroda lived an old man who used to sit spinning yarn by hand for the 'sacred thread'.4 I and my friends looked upon him as a laughing-stock. 'What a relic of the primitive !' we would say. In later years many of us joined Gandhiji; we too were destined to spend our time spinning yarn by hand on the wheel !

 

Leaving Home

When I was ten years old I resolved to follow the path of brahmacharya and already, even in childhood, I was thinking about leaving home. I had three great examples before me: Gautama the Buddha, the Maharashtrian Saint Ramadas and the Jagat-guru (world-teacher) Shankaracharya. They exercised a powerful attraction. The Buddha had left behind his wife and little son; Ramadas had been impelled to abandon his bride while the wedding ceremonies were actually in progress; Shankaracharya had never married at all, but taken the vow of brahmacharya and left home when he was only eight years old. These three men were always in my thoughts, and I cherished the inward hope that someday I too would leave home. I was like a girl whose marriage has been arranged, and who in imagination abandons her parents' home and dwells already in that of her future husband. I too had inwardly left home, and I gave my attention to making sure that I did not go out into the world raw or 'half-baked'. I prepared myself of course by study and meditation, and in addition I did all I could to make my body a fit instrument of spiritual discipline.

 

During childhood I had got hold of a book which des- cribed a brahmachari's rule of life, and quoted from Manu the things forbidden to him: he should wear no shoes, use no umbrella, sleep on no mattress. So I too stopped using these things. Giving up the mattress and the umbrella cost me nothing, but going about barefoot, roaming on the tarred roads for hours on end in the fierce midday heat of Baroda, proved to be bad for my eyes. In Manu's time students would probably be living in an Ashram where there was no need for any footgear. But as a boy I was very rigorous about this discipline of the body.

 

I also observed rules about eating and drinking. I never attended wedding feasts or similar festivities. My sister was married when she was still a child, and even at her wedding I stuck to my rule and told Mother that I was not going to eat the feast. Mother said nothing; she cooked some food for me and served me. But afterwards she told me, 'Vinya, I can understand your not eating the sweets and other wedding delicacies, but why should you object to the plain dal and rice? How can it be wrong to eat the rice and dal cooked for the wedding, when it is exactly the same as what I have cooked for you now?' How skilfully Mother managed it ! She didn't argue: she cooked, she fed me, but then she made her point, and I agreed to eat the rice and dal as she said.

 

I had a knack of putting my thoughts into verse. I would compose poems, taking two or three hours, sometimes a whole day, over each one. Then I would chant the verses aloud and correct any shortcomings that I noticed, and when I felt fully satisfied with it I would offer the poem as a sacrifice to the god of fire. One day during the cold weather I was sitting by the kitchen fire keeping myself warm and burning poems. Mother noticed it and asked what I was doing. When I told her she said: 'But I have never seen your poems !' So after that, whenever I completed a poem, I would first recite it to her and then throw it into the fire. Later in Benares I would sit composing my poems on the banks of the Ganges, and after I was satisfied with them I would immerse them in the water.

 

Near our home in Baroda lived a potter who kept a donkey. When I sat down to study at night it would begin to bray, and I found it especially irritating when I was working at some mathematical problem. Could anything be done, I wondered. Then it occurred to me that though the braying was a nuisance to me, the other donkeys probably enjoyed it, and in that case it couldn't be called 'bad'. From that day forward I began to train myself to think of it as 'good'. Whenever the donkey started to bray I would stop studying and attend to its discourse, trying to hear the music in it. Sometimes I would start braying myself in unison with the donkey, so as to feel more at one with it. I began to hear 'compassion' in the sound and named it, in high-sounding Sanskrit, 'Theme Song of the Donkey'.

 

As a boy I was physically weak and sometimes had severe headaches. When the pain became unbearable I would say to myself, sometimes speaking aloud, 'This aching head is not I, I am not my aching head ! I am not my head, I am something else !' It was a great help to me to use these words; they led me to practise the attitude of mind which declares: 'I am not my body'.

 

I had also read the Yogashastra, and in it was a descri- ption of the posture of one who has attained Samadhi (the experience of ultimate unity). I would seat myself in this posture and imagine myself to have reached Samadhi, though all the time my mind would be running here and there. In Baroda the summers are extremely hot, so I would sit in this posture under the water-tap. As the water dripped from the tap above me and trickled over my head, I would imagine that I was the Lord Shiva5 himself entered into Samadhi. As I played these games my mind did sometimes grow so peaceful that I felt I really was in Samadhi. I don't know whether it was what the scriptures mean by Samadhi, but it gave me a great joy and I felt emptied of all desire.

 

The Maharaja of Baroda, Sayajirao Gaikwad, had installed a statue of the Lord Buddha in one of the public parks, the 'Jubilee Gardens', which I always thought of as 'the garden of the Buddha'. The statue attracted me greatly because the thought of leaving home was in my own mind-put there by the life and teaching of Swami Ramadas, and reinforced when I became acquainted with those of Shankaracharya. It was kept continually before me by the statue of the Buddha, who in youth had turned his back on the pomp of kingship and the pleasures of family life, as being things of no account. There was no solitude to be found in my Garden of the Buddha, but I often went there nevertheless, in order to contemplate and reflect upon this image; it had a great influence on me.

 

Before I left home I made a bonfire of all my certificates, including my matriculation certificate. I wanted to cut loose, once and for all, from every cable that might tie me down, but Mother was very unhappy and asked why I should burn them. 'I don't need them now,' I said. 'Perhaps not now,' she replied, 'but what harm is there in keeping them?' 'No, I shall never take any salaried job,' I said.

 

The thought of leaving home had come to me first in 1912, but I tested myself rigorously for four years before making my final decision. Once my mind was made up I never looked back. I wanted to go to Benares, for two reasons. One was that I had read Western science of education, and also studied the lives of the saints, and therefore believed that my education would not be complete without travel. Benares was reputed to be a storehouse of knowledge, especially of Sanskrit and the Scriptures. There I could study the Scriptures. The second reason for going to Benares was that it lay on the route both to the Himalayas and to Bengal, and both these places had a powerful attraction for me.

 

I felt a great affection and devotion for my father and mother. I was so deeply attached to my mother that in 1918 I went back home to be with her on her death-bed. After her death I chose two of her things to keep in her memory. One was a sari, her precious wedding sari; the other was an image of the goddess Annapurna to which Mother had always without fail made a daily offering. I used the sari as a pillow for many years, until we took the decision to use only khadi (homespun cloth) for all purposes, and the sari was not made of khadi. I went and bathed in the Sabarmati river and immersed the sari in its sacred waters. As for the image of Annapurna, I used it occasionally for meditation-which is a form of worship. But it had always been used for regular daily worship, and I began to feel that my mind would be more at ease if it were in the hands of some pious woman who would offer daily puja as my mother had done. I could have found many such, but I had a special faith in Kashibehn Gandhi.6 I said to her: 'This image was my mother's : will you accept it and offer the daily puja as she did?' Reverently and lovingly she agreed.

 

But love and attachment for my parents could not stop me leaving home. Everything else paled before the force of the spiritual quest.

 

In those days one had to go to Bombay to appear for the Intermediate Examination, and a few of us set off from Baroda together. But I and two others, Bedekar and Tagare, left the Bombay train at Surat and took the train for Benares. I wrote to tell my father: 'Instead of going to Bombay for the exam, I am going somewhere else. You may be assured that wherever I go I shall set my hand to nothing that is wrong.' That day, the day I left home, was March 25, 1916.

-- Acharya Vinoba