MUMBAI: Barack Obama is big on symbolisms. His critics, whose ranks seem to swell with each passing day, contend that Brand Obama stands on the pillars of hollow rhetoric and symbolisms.
For a man who smugly rode into Washington DC in a vintage train car trying to enact a truncated version of Abraham Lincoln’s own 1861 train journey as president-designate, a visit to India, the land of Mahatma Gandhi and non-violent freedom movement, is fertile territory for symbolisms, empty or otherwise.
One of his early engagements in India on Saturday is a visit to the modest Mani Bhavan in Mumbai’s Laburnum Road that played host to the Mahatma for 17 long years. The 6’1” President will have to bow his head a bit to enter through the smallish twin-paneled front doors of Mani Bhavan.
Office-bearers here expect Barack Obama to take about 40 minutes to complete his tryst with Mahatma Gandhi’s former residence. And if the President cares to read earlier entries while signing the visitor’s book, he could see what "American Gandhi" Martin Luther King wrote about his visit to Mani Bhavan on May 28, 1959. "I had the opportunity of sleeping in the house where Gandhiji slept. It is an experience that I’ll never forget," King had penned.
The President and the First Lady will be greeted by a smorgasbord of pleasing fragrance, thanks to the dozen sandalwood and incense sticks that are permanent fixtures near the bust. The small and simple one-time residence of Mahatma Gandhi begins with this front room whose walls bear sepia tinted photos of prominent freedom movement leaders, his contemporaries and events such as the defiant burning of “Manchester silk”.
The first couple will also get to see the letters penned by Mohandas Gandhi to his wife Kasturba and her letters to the couple’s estranged son Harilal. The letters mostly written in thick running hand using dark blue ink provide a glimpse of the tensions within a family that’s headlong into a national cause that demanded utter selflessness.
The letter written by Gandhi from his prison cell in South Africa advising his seriously ill wife Kasturba to keep courage is particularly touching.
The letter, dated November 9, 1908, reads, "It cuts my heart... I can come only if I pay the fine, which I must not...If, however, my ill luck so has it that you pass away, I should only say that there would be nothing wrong in your doing so in your separation from me while I am still alive. I love you so dearly that even if you are dead, you will be alive to me."
The Obamas will find themselves in the company of 50,000 neatly-shelved books about the life of the Mahatma. If the President decides to go to the first floor, through a flight of wooden stairs with brass tacks, he’ll get a chance to see photographic posters depicting important events, Gandhiji’s correspondence with writer and friend Leo Tolstoy and few replicas of Bapu’s personal belongings.
(source:indiatimes.com)
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