Five important people

The first time I ever went to India — to attend a conference in Goa — the person who had invited us arranged for several of us foreign visitors to take a small tour of Mumbai the day before our respective flights back home. He arranged for a taxi driver to take our little crew — two Americans (including yours truly), a German grad student, and a professor from England, on a tour of the sights.

One thing that made the entire adventure slightly surreal was the fact that our taxi driver spoke nothing but Hindi, whereas none of us spoke any Hindi at all. So we ended up being driven around Mumbai — which means madly careening from one location to another at top speed, missing oncoming cars and random pedestrians by mere inches — until at various points the driver would suddenly stop, which would be our cue to get out and try to figure out where we were. Then, we’d pile in again and careen off to the next mysterious stop.

Sometimes we could figure it out from context. One stop was clearly a famous market of some sort — an opportunity to purchase gorgeous silk scarves and other raiments in astounding shades of turquoise and saffron, all at exhilaratingly low prices.

Another stop was a Hindu temple, no doubt one of great importance and significance — just not to us. In any case, it was exceedingly beautiful. Among other stops were a lovely park of some sort, a large government building, and a rather spectacular train station that clearly dated back to the days of Queen Victoria.

But one stop in particular had us stumped for a while. We were let off by our driver at what looked like an ordinary house. Nothing fancy, just a simple entry hall and some furnished rooms, all slightly musty and old fashioned.

I went with the German grad student, a very likable young man with whom I’d had some splendid conversations in the preceding days, to wander through the house, as we both valiantly tried to figure out where we were. Then we came upon some framed black and white pictures on the wall, and suddenly realized that we were standing in the house where Mahatma Gandhi used to live.

As we contemplated the photos of Gandhi shaking hands, greeting various world leaders, and generally setting the stage for his magnificent non-violent revolution, we were filled with a sense of quiet awe at the way this exceptional man had managed to accomplish so much.

I turned to my young German friend and — without really thinking about what I was saying — remarked “Wow, wouldn’t you say that Gandhi was one of the five most important people in the twentieth century?”

There was a long pause, and then the German grad student replied, rather sheepishly, “Yes, we also had one of those. But it didn’t turn out very well.”

Indeed.