Gandhi in Malleswaram

Was passing by the Gandhi Bhavan in Malleswaram on an evening walk with my wife and noticed a notice outside of some lecture going on inside. I’d sort of taken for granted that any lecture there was probably for old people who had nothing else to do, but Vijetha went over and had a look at the board – it was a talk on naturapathy and the nature of vegetables and was interested. I somehow reluctantly followed… and we walked into the small hall housing around 30 people and saw the speaker giving a highly technical yet simple and humorous talk (in Kannada) on different vegetables and the qualities in them, and also how we sometimes lose their vitality by ignorantly processing them, etc. Some points I remember was that he recommended just grating raddish and soaking it in curds and eating it as a salad with chapathi. Not to rub a sliced cucumber to remove the bitterness in it from its outer skin – as it contains some valuable elements which come up through the vegetable itself (through osmosis). He talked a lot about different vegetables, and it turns out that he was an allopathic doctor for a few decades before he changed to a naturopathy doctor.

At the end of it I was really invigorated with the satisfaction of learning somethig new! We looked at the timetable and found that there was a series of talks the whole of this week in the light of Gandhi Jayanth.

So that’s how we ended up attending today’s talk as well, it was by Srinivasayya, a retired mechanical engineer from Gandhi’s times – on living a natural lifestyle. He highlighted the fact that Gandhi was a scientist, who did a lot of practical experiments, and never told anyone else anything without first having tried it on himself! I will try and recollect what he said when time permits, but the main point I started off with this post is that one of the things he said which really surprised me was that Gandhi had been in Malleswaram in particular, and in Bangalore several times. He has made a chronology of Gandhi’s visits to Karanataka, and also has photographs.

I have mixed views about Gandhi, hard to put it all in writing though I’ve mentioned here and there. However its quite cool to know that he’d been around right here at some point in time! 8)

Sri. Srinivasayya was more than happy for me to be putting them up here, which I’ll do whenenever he provides them and then I digitise them.

I asked him about fasting (which he’d touched upon during his talk) he said he’d give me a book on it Fasting Can Save Your Life by a Herbert Shelton. He said they had a great collection of books recommended I become a member (Rs. 500 a year).

Anyway, if you stay in Malleswaram, try to make it to atleast one of the talks (the building is near 8th cross, Margosa Road corner). There’s a series for the next 8 days or so – they typically start at around 6 PM and go on to 8 PM. Tomorrow’s talk is by two satyaagrahis about their experience. I hope to make it back home by then!