Gandhiji had had a long day. He was on the Coimbatore leg of his journey in the Madras Presidency, collecting funds for his Harijan Welfare organisation. It was 11pm by the time he arrived at the guest house at Podanur, a suburb in Coimbatore. But he was not ready to retire for the night; not when he had accounting work to do — funds collected in Coimbatore were one-fourth of the entire amount collected in the presidency. It was 2am by the time he went to bed, and he was up at 4am.
This was on February 6, 1934.
Eighty-eight years later, I walk into the same house, and stand at the entrance of the tiny room where Gandhi did his accounting. A lantern sits in a corner, near a low table. A white mattress is spread along a wall, and a charkha stands in front of it. Dusk has just passed and in the brief moment when traffic slows down and silence fills the air, I feel the weight of the moment.
