Gandhi and Nachiketa

People have heard of the Mahatma time and again. Most ears have received the man's name with fond respect, although some cannot stop criticizing M. K Gandhi. But not too many people who use the English language to communicate have heard of
Nachiketa,
a boy who walked up to Yama and came back with the knowledge of the "atman". Both these figures from India share the common desire to know oneself- one an old man fighting for freedom, the other a child discovering the grandeur of humanity.


GANDHI:
Son, why do you sit so still?
Hasn’t your mother told stories,
Of princes, and kings, and gods,
Demons battling good to lose?

NACHIKETA:
My ears are thick with stories,
Tales of all those sweet and fragrant,
But all around there is a stink,
Although its fetid reason eludes.

GANDHI:
A child, but burdened you are,
And who said there’s some rot?
Don’t you like the smell of roses,
And the taste of honey suckle,
Which grow in our land’s gardens?

NACHIKETA:
Father, you tease as other men…
They mock my dreary soul,
And send me forth to fetch a game…
Or hunt the restless dragonflies fluttering.

GANDHI:
Come sit by my side, and we shall be men,
You, Nachiketa, the new and I, the old,
We shall talk of all that your heart desires…
And the stench might vanish from air.

NACHIKETA:
And the air shall be clean again?

GANDHI:
Boy, so you have breathed the fresh,
Wind carrying tunes of a myriad countrymen?

NACHIKETA:
I have…but I was a mere flesh then,
A being without much thought,
For now the troubles haunt me…
And in you I see the reflected,
Light that will drive my worries away.


GANDHI:
Like the Asuraas who ran at Vishnu’s sight!

NACHIKETA:
Mahatma, may I sit at your feet, as we speak?

GANDHI:
Why my feet, for your place on my lap.

NACHIKETA:
Then I shall whisper my words…’cause
In creatures of Earth I have no trust to spare.

GANDHI:
So we will begin with trust, and turn towards,
The greater burdens that your mind carries,
I shall be the scarecrow turning black thoughts,
Unto the distant hills, away from our abode.

NACHIKETA:
So be it Father as I wait to hear your words…
Words that heal the wounds inflicted by words

GANDHI:
O Nachiketa trust is a gift from Krisna,
Without it we invite howling grief,
To camp within our very make- and spin,
Cobwebs of dark and failing deceit.
But with trust we succeed to gather,
A handful quantity of peace that remains,
Deep in conscious and fires happiness.

NACHIKETA:
Do you then trust the British?
My father says they’d be cruel,
Men who would lack conscience n’ morals…

GANDHI:
Why shouldn’t I trust the British?
Wasn’t it an Englishman who was,
The cause for birth of revolutions all over –
In Africa, in America, and even in India?
Should I harbor the audacity to dislike,
A people who have given this world countless,
Truths…truths of nature, and truths of mind?


NACHIKETA:
Then why do you wish them to leave?

GANDHI:
So they might realize my truth –
Our collective truth, if I may say so
For which we have been in penance so long…
God had made man in His nature…
And it his nature to live and let live,
Sadly the politics of governance has
Taken away the art of it, forsaken,
Such a truth while harming our people,
Using us as fodder to feed their cows and coffers.

NACHIKETA:
And what say you to those killing the English,
And proclaiming superiority of our people?
Do you despise their efforts? Or, scoff at
The sacrifice they make at the alter?

GANDHI:
Does one have to despise to dislike
All things one disagrees with? Let all
Such thoughts fly away into a clear sky
That can bear seven opinions in a rainbow.

NACHIKETA:
Talking of flying Father, into the Sky
I wonder why can’t I grow wings,
Like the young butterflies and go,
Whence the flowers bloom in sun,
And the rain only adds splendor,
To the stream flowing down rocky paths?

GANDHI:
A butterfly cannot think, it flies,
But you my son, are bound to ground,
In your chains of thought - so am I,
So is every human soul on earth,
And for that we may curse or crave.
Choose you what must you choose,
After all



NACHIKETA:
A man am I then,
and not a butterfly, nor a boy?

GANDHI:
A boy, yes, a man too you are,
And I know your kind are in thinning,
Hiding themselves under blankets,
Of frivolous boyish runabouts –
Reading not the writings on the wall
But fat books of poison that dig a hole
In their imagination, and opens the door
Of wonderland with elf n’ seafarers;
But to be frolicking is your age,
And none should commit the crime,
Of snatching that child from within.

NACHIKETA:
O Mahatma, the sun sinks now,
And mother shall be awaiting my call,
The woman I do not wish to hurt,
For she has suffered much pain on my behalf.

GANDHI:
Their pain is the gift of womanhood…

NACHIKETA:
I must run down the valley now,
And fly like a kite, a post rather,
Fall before my doorstep before,
Father’s return, for his cane I do not miss.

GANDHI:
Go, go, go run wild in meadows…

GANDHI:
Look there - a child goes running,
Scampering through crowded folk,
Will my country, my land have kindness,
To give to him what he has lost -
Freedom, fun and a pair of wings?