"Commerce isn't sentimental," said Yoshi this morning at 6:30, crossing Tardeo Road near Mani Bhavan, Gandhi's house in Bombay.
Today is Gandhi's birthday and the schools and government offices are closed; the day is supposed to be dry in this city that loves cocktails and Kingfisher beer, but Nana Chowk--with its mattress shops jumbled next to snack stalls and metal working stands--is bustling already, getting ready for the day. We pass eight men, all in row, squatting on the curb; they drink tea from shot glass-sized cups, emblazoned with the Officer's Choice logo (the worst, the worst, the worst whiskey in the world) and one of them flicks a bidi butt towards me and grimaces an apology.
At Mani Bhavan, the spinning demonstration is sparsely attended and everyone seems weary; the machine looks like it was stolen from a Soviet factory in the 1970s.
The group gathered on the thin mats in the library is old, so old. They are wearing khadi, some of them, but it seems like an exhausted gesture, a habit that lost its oomph over the last 50 years. The womens' saris have yellowed along the folds, indicating a once-a-year outing. The only young people in attendance are kids who have been carted in from a few schools to perform songs; they belt out devotional ragas effortlessly, vacantly staring into space and elbowing half-heartedly for a spot closer to the mikes. In their boredom and their 10-year old superiority over the grey-haired gathering, they remind me of nothing so much as little girls in Kalamazoo getting ready for their Annie tryouts.
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