Dadi’s gift

She left all of us a priceless legacy – together with an equally great responsibility

She was Dadi to all those fortunate enough to know her. Bunny and I were lucky in that we got to meet her shortly after we moved from Calcutta to Delhi.

Bunny and I came to Delhi as economic refugees in search of better jobs. But after the comradely informality of Calcutta we found Delhi to be a city of crass snobbery where your social status was determined by what part of the city you lived in, and how many high-up contacts you had, and how many strings they could pull for you.

Then, by great good chance, we happened to come across the elder of Dadi’s two sons, both inheritors of her boundless generosity of heart and spirit, thanks to which we found ourselves regular guests at get-togethers in their family home, a celebrated salon of industrial tycoons, and movers and shakers, eloquent writers and opinion-makers.

At the centre of this glittering galaxy was Dadi, in an immaculate white sari, joining in the many conversations with characteristic wit and humour, her gentle smile impervious to guests’ solecisms of speech or manner, or the preening of the peacock feathers of vanity.

Her innate gift, which she unstintingly bestowed on all she met, was that of a genuinely affectionate welcome. But, in 1947, the greatest gift she helped to give to 340mn of her fellow Indians, a number that has since swelled to a billion and a half, was the priceless gift of freedom from the yoke of colonialism.

Born into a freedom fighter family, she early joined the struggle for Independence and was jailed at the age of 13 for three years, chanting defiance at her captors.

The years in prison forged the mettle of her character to withstand the tumult and upheavals attendant on a long, fulfilled, and fulfilling life, which she recently departed with the same unobtrusive quietness as she would her son’s get-togethers.

The legacy of a Swaraj she helped to win endures for us, along with our responsibility to live up to it and preserve and protect it. That would be the best tribute we could pay to Dadi.

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