Connecting with the Mahatma

This weekend I was at New Delhi to attend a wedding and I took the opportunity to visit Rajghat, the memorial of the Father of the Nation—Mahatma Gandhi. This is the second or third time that I am visiting Rajghat and the experience has always been the same. A sense of peace and quiet descends on me. Indeed it was this search for peace that took me to Rajghat again. It was as though I wanted to reconfirm that I would feel this peace again.

As I closed my eyes before the Samadhi, I saw before me the light (the jyoti) which was enclosed in a glass container of sorts. Till that point I was merrily clicking pictures on my mobile phone. It seemed to be sacrilege that one should click photographs at a spot like this. While I refrained, I could not but see that crass commercialism had intruded here too. A photographer was offering to click anyone who wanted to pose at the Samadhi and give instant photographs for a fee of course. .

While this sight filled me with revulsion, on closing my eyes I not only experienced overwhelming peace and quiet but also felt energized. I think that perhaps I went into brief meditation. This is not something that I have experienced even in religious places and maybe this has something to do with the fact that I am not particularly religious by nature. Gandhiji of course stood for religious harmony which is a strong article of faith with me. The Mahatma is perhaps my shepherd.

As I walked away from Rajghat and went about the daily business of life and living, I could not but think of Jawaharlal Nehru’s famous speech after the assassination of the Mahatma—The light has gone out of our lives. After beginning with these lines Nehru says in his speech, “The light has gone out I said, yet I was wrong. For the light that shone in this country was no ordinary light. The light that has illumined this country for these many years will illumine this country for many more years, and a thousand years later that light will be seen in this country and the world will see it and it will give solace to inuumerable hearts.”

Gandhiji had fallen to an assassin’s bullet many years before I was born. The light at Rajghat not only gave solace to my heart but enabled me to connect with the Mahatma.