Decoding the Gandhian way for the young
CHANDIGARH: It is that time of the year again when most children — from kindergarten to senior school — get ready to play the Mahatma. A dhoti, a pair of round glasses and a tall stick. Add to this a bald head wig and the fancy dress gear is complete for the pageantry. This is how much the kids of today relate to the proclaimed Father of the Nation.
So when Sahitya Akademi award-winning writer Paro Anand, who is mistress of the art of writing fiction for children and young adults but is also read by adults, got the offer to write a book for the young to mark the 150 years of Mahatma Gandhi, she initially dismissed the idea.
The Delhi-based writer with her ancestors from the Punjab now in Pakistan, who grew up listening to gruesome stories of the Partition, says: “When my editor suggested that I do such a book I declined because I am a writer of fiction and not a biographer”. “I wondered how the young readers would relate to the story of Gandhi when for a typical teenager the greatest calamity is a pimple on the nose,” she says. However, the author who was awarded this year the Kalinga Karubaki Literary Award for Fearless Women Writers was never the one to shy away from penning stories of the impact of political crises on the young. Paro says, “A moment came when I asked myself that if I don’t bring Gandhi to the young now with a world steeped in violence and hate, when I would do it!”
So the novel ‘Being Gandhi’ came into being in which the author seeks not to explore Gandhi the man or leader but understand the Gandhian way that remains most relevant even today.
Teenager Chandrashekhar views the coming Gandhi Jayanti preparations in school with boredom. To the surprise of the boy, the teacher gives him the assignment of ‘being Gandhi’ and keeping a log of the experience. While he is living out the role of Gandhi comes the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and the killings of the Sikhs.
The young are witness to it all, and amid all the bloodshed and mayhem ihey come forward to demand peace, and an end to the killings of the innocent, go on fast and call out ‘Remember Gandhi!’
The story is told with not a single false note by the writer who can enter the world of the young with ease. The best compliment to the mint-fresh book comes from writer Ruskin Bond who says: “A brave new look at Gandhi, bringing him front and centre into young lives today”.
NOVEMBER 1984 IS THE MILIEU IN WHICH PARO ANAND’S NOVEL SEES A TEENAGER EXPLORING WHAT IT IS TO BE GANDHI