Gentle Woman

Within the prison walls of the Aga Khan's shabby villa at Poona death came to Kasturbai Gandhi. On the funeral day the guarded gates opened, briefly, to let aged, withered Mohandas Gandhi follow the body of his wife and co-prisoner to its pyre.

The widower held an unsteady umbrella against India's brilliant sun. About his shawled figure pressed kinsfolk and friends, chanting Hindu, Moslem, Parsi and Christian prayers. Intently he looked upon the burning ghat.

Kasturbai had been Mohandas Gandhi's child-bride of three-score years ago, when he was a boy to whom marriage meant "good clothes to wear, drum beating . . .processions, rich dinners, and a strange girl to play with." She had been the child-mother who bore him four sons, suffered his youthful, jealous rages, stayed behind when he journeyed to London schooling. She had been the gentle, illiterate, aging woman who became his "sister" and lesser disciple, shed her high caste, mingled with untouchables, picketed toddy (palm wine) shops, urged India's fettered women to join "the struggle" for India's freedom. Once she had said that she was happiest in jail, where she held her fasting husband's cup, rubbed his hands, fanned away the insects.

Now the prayers ended. A lonelier Mohandas Gandhi squatted under a tamarind tree, watched the consuming flames, and wept.

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