‘Gandhiji and his watch’ - by Pu La Deshpande

Gandhiji taught us freedom from many things but bound us perpetually to one thing, the 'watch'. One is intrigued thinking about this man. He touched so many diverse facets of life and was so sensitive of things that otherwise seem trivial.

He was a politician, a seeker, a teacher, a doctor. He was a lawyer, a weaver, a cobbler and a journalist. He was a unifier and a saint. He was an economist who brought forward his unique principle of economy. He was soft as a feather and hard as a rock. The list doesn’t seem to end. I often wonder, for someone engaged in so many various endeavours, how many hours in a day did he actually have?

When scientists made a schedule of the moon landing project, they did not only plan the hours and minutes, but went ahead and planned the seconds too. What action is to be taken at what moment was pre-planned.

Gandhi looked at this instrument with an eye of a scientist and accounted for every second. One has to have utmost determination for planning and doing a thing at a certain hour, past certain minutes. One has to have an independent mind to bind oneself to the mathematics of time. Only someone who believes that every given moment is a divine gift and then works to make it brilliant can move mountains of endeavour. Gandhiji’s power came from how he weaved relationships with moments. 

A ‘resolution’ is called ‘vrat’ in India. True resolutions don’t believe in exceptions. Most weak-minded men find convenient escape routes using the ‘ethics of emergency’ rather than being consistent. A vrat has no place for compromise. A man with a vrat just doesn’t recognize escape routes. Gandhiji’s entire life was spent binding himself to some vrat. His diet, clothes, speech were chosen out of his vrats. Here, I see his similarity with scientists. Like science does not allow compromises, so do vrats.

Gandhiji used to observe the vrat of Silence on Mondays. A family man would have to make multiple compromises to carry such a vrat. Gandhiji only had to lead the family of the Indian nation! But this vrat, he did not break. On Monday’s he wrote in order to convey his thoughts, but did not speak. This may seem a small thing, but it is in fact nearly impossible.

Meeting the king of England in half clad linen cloth is seemingly not a difficult effort.  But for you and me, even going to a movie in half clad linen cloth is an impossible task. And how painful it was to do that in the winter of England. But Gandhiji did all this so effortlessly. An American asked him “Mr. Gandhi, you met the king of England in such tattered clothes. Did you not feel cold?” Gandhiji smiled and said “The king had enough clothes on himself to care of both our chill!”.

Such consistent execution of vrats needs great capability. One needs to bear many negative adjectives hurled, such as being whimsical, phoney, strange. Gandhiji believed that being ruthless in discriminating between violence and non-violence is also a sort of violence. The most heartless and the most uncivilised criticisms hurled at him were all handled with equanimity. He always utlilized the technique of responding to issues and not the blows.

People who opposed Gandhiji have criticized him often crossing all borders of culture. However, the harshest criticism Gandhiji vented out on someone was, of the book ‘Mother India’ by Miss Mayo calling it “a report of a drain inspector sent out with the one purpose of opening and examining the drains of the country”. The world of news, where doling out nasty adjectives is a norm, the journalist Gandhiji never drifted from his vrat of good language. It is for this reason that people felt reading his ‘Harijan’ or the ‘Young India’ a beautiful spiritual experience.

The Bhagvad Gita tells us the value of Yuktaahar-Vihaar (balanced consumption and balanced indulgence). Just like his diet, Gandhiji nurtured his aptness of words with utmost care. I somehow feel that here too, it was his relationship with the watch that caused him to be precise and apt. To spend a certain amount of time on a certain topic must have come from this habit of time keeping.

Such behavior must need such great equanimity and it is impossible without determination. Because keeping balance means saying no to somethings. Saying no needs greater power. In the so-called practical life, 'don’ts' are usually mocked at. We mock our inabilities to follow small vrats and ignore and forget them. Simple attachments invade us. Gandhiji’s life was spent in fighting these attachments.

Unfortunately, in the hands of weak minded people resolutions become empty rituals. But that does not decrease the importance of a balanced life that results from resolutions. They make a man great and strong. Such a man considers the given lifetime as a gift and uses every moment to optimally get the best out of it.

Looking at the watch means keeping account of the moment in front of you. In Gandhiji’s life of simplicity, the pocket watch tied to his waist was precious! Even at a prayer, he did not lose his timing and concluded the conversation with god after 15 minutes. Many of us think that keeping time means the inability to be absorbed in deep work. But watching the height of efforts he undertook, one can imagine how concentrated he was in integrating time and task. For me, all the greatness of Gandhiji is his ability to be immersed in every task he took up. All skill is a result of such concentrated effort by keeping in mind time and context. He was travelling the tide of time but held his beliefs consciously. He did not ever let himself be taken over by populist opinions.

Leaders of today are swept away in the waves of fads. Wobbling and compromising at every chance that comes their way and still trying to put up a dignified front. This is a sign of the weak-minded. They can’t be expected to guide a people, when they are themselves out of control. Gandhiji was fighting the winds of the time by capable determination and was also telling others the salvaging nature of it.

He was fearlessly looking at each moment and thriving in it.  In sleep too, whose essential nature is timelessness, he did not leave the company of time. He never required an alarm. The resolve that he held when awake kept him alive even in sleep. These days we talk, discuss and write a lot about planning. All our national schemes are defined in terms of the financial budget. But we miss the resolve to keep a time budget for it. In his life, time was a key aspect. The date of ‘Satyagraha’ was fixed (Satyagraha literally means bringing truth onto something). Whether people are with him or not, on that date and time the Mahatma would start his movement.

It is this obedience to time that teaches us the value of freedom. We usually don’t have the guts to tell our guests that it is the end of the conversation and time for the next planned work. Gandhiji was able to carry on with his planned work even if that meant coming out of intense political engagements. He conferred time with power to rule him. Time was his slave and also his master. The arms of the watch are called ‘hands’. These 'hands' incessantly trouble us, but to him they contributed support.

When thinking about Gandhiji, the seed of his achievement is found in his determination. it was as if he had done a verbal agreement with time. Behaviour, actions and rest were all attached to timing. Man fights his biggest enemy, lethargy, when following time. He too had moments of rest, but these moments also obeyed the rule of time. Rest can easily turn into lethargy. And similarly, effort can turn into mindless mechanical work. Work that is done without proper rest and nurturing of sense and work organs would be sub-standard. Rest never took over his body and effort never took over his mind. 

Gandhiji belonged to everyone but before that he belonged to himself. And so, he kept the body and device called Gandhi always shining. The blow of time in fatal and inevitable, but he did not let the moments gifted to him by time blow him away. It was as if he had a contract of 125 years with time.

The bond he had with this tiny friend, hugging to his waist was exceptional. He never breached the affection between them. To keep his promise with time, how many countless peoples’ would have been hurt. How many misunderstandings and accuses had to be faced?

He was captivated by the qualities of the Gita and practically believed that every moment has to have a divine character. And that is why he was able to attach importance to each moment whether it was making thread from the spinning wheel or cleaning the latrines or writing the editorial of Harijan.

Work done with divine intent loses all hierarchy. The mother is the child’s cook, nurse, teacher and janitor. In doing each of these tasks it her motherhood that is driving. The weaver Gandhi and the Janitor Gandhi used to immerse so much in each activity that the hierarchy of these tasks vanished. He democratised all men by democratising all kinds of work.

Once few lawyers came to Gandhi expressing their intent to contribute to the nation. Gandhi was cutting vegetables when they came. Not only did he continue cutting but also asked the lawyers to join hands. The lawyers felt insulted and went away. They felt it was a lower task for lawyers to cut vegetables. But for Gandhi preparation of a meal before a meal and preparation of a lawsuit before a hearing were equally valuable. Giving his due to every moment and its purpose was his way and philosophy. This tradition is actually ancient. Krishna who conveyed the Gita, also fed his horses and cleaned the tables in a ritual and did not deem these are low tasks. 

For keeping such consistency, one has to be an Everest of determination. Visibly a slave of time, one comes out as a master of it. Samarth Ramdas’ stress on alertness is because bad habits sneak in during ignorant moments and enslave us. Gandhiji a leader of millions just could not afford the ignorance. Common man can’t handle such continuous alertness.

When we say Gandhiji's philosophy is defeated, we are actually declaring our lack of resolve to do the right thing. And when it is mastered by just one Gandhi, we see how much of achieving and movement becomes possible.

A spark was ignited in the lives of people who were numbed and rendered powerless for ages. Gandhiji was assassinated and the decisive leadership that had the guts to say 'No' ended. He was never afraid of being unpopular. Popularity becomes the slave of those who don’t beg for it – goes a Marathi poem.

The spinning of thread which was dismissed became his formula for new thinking. His idea of freedom was never merely changing hands of power. But it was the idea of a society that grows in self-discipline, removes discrimination and forms a new order. Indecisive people who compromised for a middle path destroyed this movement. India was broken, and we got freedom. We won and at the same time we lost. We collectively deserved it. What a group of people deserve usually doesn’t change for ages. Some, one, Gandhi comes along, brightens our lives and goes away. When the source of light goes, darkness swells again. I think history does this occasionally just as a mischief. What after all is the reason behind history or nature or god giving us such exceptional people once in a while, and especially to this mankind which seems to value the mathematics of fruitless moments and call it life.

When one thinks of Gandhiji, one starts to look inside, into the emptiness and one starts to feel awkward looking at the watch ticking in front. The mind which does not go beyond worrying for food, sex, sleep and fear hesitates in conferring the title of man to the self.

Translated by Amrut Kunte (on 5th December 2020).