Читать книгу Reflections of an Extraordinary Era - Tara Bhattacharjee Gandhi - Страница 9

Ba and Bapu-ji were imprisoned in a wing of Aga Khan Palace in Pune along with some of their companions. My siblings and I would go there with our parents to meet them; we went there with as much enthusiasm as we would go to meet them at the railway station or in Sevagram Ashram. We would be so impatient to meet our grandparents that the journey from Delhi to Pune seemed endless. In Pune, we would stay in a two-room inn near the station. Mother would cook for us in a small kitchenette (probably for the lack of proper arrangement of food at the inn), and then we would be off to the Aga Khan Palace in a tonga. Before entering the palace, permission had to be sought from an English officer for the visit. Father would go to the officer’s house to seek permission. This entailed a long wait for us in the tonga outside, but Father never came back without the permit. Ba and Bapu-ji would be so thrilled to see us that the sombre atmosphere there would be instantly dispelled.

A ten-year-old girl lay quietly with her grandmother on a cot. She had come with her parents and younger brothers to meet her grandparents. Even though she had been suffering from a long illness and was extremely weak, the grandmother’s sari, her sheets and pillows were redolent of love and that special feeling that was unique to her and made the granddaughter feel secure. Every touch was familiar, but why was there a note of farewell in her grandmother’s voice? It’s amazing how children can always tell.

There was no anguish in her farewell; just an acceptance of nature’s decision. ‘Why is Dadi looking at me thus?’ thought the child. ‘Is she going to leave us? How will I live without her love?’ The grandmother’s feeble hands caressed the girl’s head with a tenderness she knew too well.