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Chapter 2

Barrister Mr. Gandhi
and Poet Rajchandra

Their First Meeting in Mumbai

Though Gandhi was able to survive a huge sea storm on his voyage back from London to Mumbai, he was not sure if he could withstand a much bigger storm awaiting his return home to Rajkot. Three big challenges weighed heavily on his mind: (i) confronting once more his revengeful caste elders, (ii) paying off all the financial debt incurred by his older brother for sending him to and supporting him in England, and (iii) finding a suitable job as a newly minted, London-educated lawyer in order to support his young family comprising a wife and a child. Amidst these dark clouds of fears and anxieties, the only silver lining for Gandhi was an exhilarating, anticipatory feeling of meeting his beloved mother again; perhaps, he was more looking forward to seeing her than meeting even his wife and their child after three years!

Alas! It was not to be! What a tragic irony that the first heartbreaking news Gandhi would receive upon landing was that of his dearest mother’s sudden demise during his absence. His older brother—who had come to greet him at the dock—had decided to not break the sad news until then in order to spare him the blow in a foreign land. Although Gandhi could outwardly bear the pain, his heart was breaking inside into thousand pieces. Mother was the first person Gandhi “was pining to see!” He was dying to hug her and even to brag to her about how, overcoming all kinds of ordeals, he had kept all the three promises given to her. But now, he lost that precious moment of seeing his mother’s face light up with joy and pride as she listened to him. Gandhi was honest to admit that the pain of losing his mother hit him much harder than the pain of departing from his father. “Most of my cherished hopes were shattered,” wrote Gandhi (GATB, 112), yet, amazingly, he could retain his equilibrium to meet several people who had come to the Mumbai seaport to greet him!

Dr. Pranjivan Mehta, who was the first Indian friend to receive the then eighteen-year-old Mohandas Gandhi at the London seaport in 1888, was also the first to greet the now twenty-two-year-old, London-returned barrister upon his coming home in 1891. Among all the friends and relatives of his that Dr. Mehta introduced to Gandhi, the first person was his older brother, “Sheth shri” (sheth: an epithet meaning rich, and shri: respectable) Revashankar Jagjivan, with whom Gandhi would develop a lifelong friendship. Being the owner of a highly reputed firm of jewelers in Mumbai, the Sheth lived in a big mansion (now called “Mani Bhavan”) in Mumbai. Upon landing, Dr. Mehta took Gandhi straight to this historically significant house, where he would be introduced to someone very special—someone his heart had secretly been searching for all these years! Call it Divine Providence or a miraculous moment in Gandhi’s spiritual developmental journey, just when the pupil was ready, his teacher would appear!

On the first day of his arrival in Mumbai, Gandhi was also introduced to Sheth Revashankar Jagjivan’s son-in-law and business partner, “Kavishri” (respectable poet) Raychandbhai Mehta (same as Shrimad Rajchandra); the poet had also earned a reputation as a “shatavadhani” (shata: hundred, and avadhani: capable of attending to), or one who could not only remember a hundred things at a time but also recapitulate each item in the same order as presented to him. Agewise, the poet and the barrister were not too much apart; born in 1867, Rajchandra was barely two years older than Gandhi, who was born in 1869. At the very first meeting, their mutual magnetism was evident, as if each found in the other a “soulmate.”

Gandhi Gives a Memory Test to Rajchandra

Knowing that, the poet was a “shatavadhani,” Gandhi could not resist his desire to give him a test and thereby, the proud, London-returned barrister also wanted to show off, perhaps, his own recently acquired knowledge of a few European words, including English, French, German, and so forth. Interestingly, Gandhi does not mention—either in his Autobiography or elsewhere—which exact words he gave Rajchandra to repeat. What he does say, though, is that “I exhausted my vocabulary of all the European tongues I knew, and asked the poet to repeat the words” (GATB, 112). On a sidelight, we still see some traces of Gandhi’s youthful vanity and pride for having been educated in England—akin to having “a badge of honor”—in the Victorian Colonial India!

The bubble of Gandhi’s educational hubris was about to burst, however, the moment Rajchandra not only repeated the words but also presented them in the exact same order. Gandhi was further humbled to find out that the poet knew no English and no other European language. Gandhi was also impressed to see that despite being gifted with such phenomenal power of retentive memory, Rajchandra put on no airs, nor did he use his gift to impress anyone. Gandhi would later learn that in his early youth and before he met Gandhi, the then-teenage Rajchandra had given many public shows of his memory feats; he had also won several regional as well as national awards, including the most covetable “gold medal” with the title “Hind no Hero” or “the Hero of India.” An important point to bear in mind is that by the time Gandhi met Rajchandra, the latter had willingly given up displaying his talents in public; he agreed to perform this time only because Gandhi was a special house guest.

What was Gandhi’s reaction? It is obvious from what he entered in his Autobiography, that he “envied his gift without, however, coming under its spell” (GATB, 112). To his further astonishment, Gandhi would soon find out that having an “exceptional memory” was only one of the poet’s many prodigious talents, gifts, powers, and accomplishments; Gandhi was now ready to know all about this multifaceted man and even more excited to see how he actually lived.