Short Stories For Everyone
Inspiring incidents from Gandhiji's Life: Selected from the book Everyone's Gandhi
(For the children in the age group of 10 to 15 years)


Gandhiji writing

SHORT STORIES FOR EVERYONE

Gandhi's inspiring short stories selected from the book Everyone's Gandhi

Editor by : Rita Roy


Table of Contents

  1. All for A Stone
  2. A Car And A Pair of Binoculars
  3. My Master's Master
  4. Enter The Monkeys
  5. Premchand Quits His Job
  6. Returning His Medals
  7. Basic Pen
  8. Prisoner No. 1739
  9. Gandhi's White Brother
  10. Who Saw Gandhi?
  11. An Early School
  12. An Unusual March
  13. Spiritual Heir
  14. The Less You Have The More You Are
  15. An Old Goat Talks
  16. The Phoenix Settlement
  17. Gandhi in Amsterdam
  18. Something To Be Shy About?
  19. Gandhiji The Matchmaker
  20. Gandhi's Army
  21. Dandi Snippet
  22. Hiding Something
  23. The Image Maker
  24. Creative Reader
  25. Postcards To The Rescue
  26. A Non-violent Satyagraha 214 Years Ago
  27. Gandhi And Delhi
  28. Gandhiji's Constructive Programme
  29. Gandhi Looks At Leprosy
  30. Baba Amte
  31. They Gave Peace A Chance
  32. From Mahatma To God
  33. Customs Are Out of Fashion
  34. The Man 'Charlie' Wanted To Meet
  35. It Came Naturally To Him
  36. Crossing The Sea of Narrow-Mindedness
  37. Wear Clothes As They Should Be Worn
  38. Education: For Life, Through Life
  39. The Abode of Joy
  40. To Cling to A Belief
  41. The Fruit of A Child's Labour
  42. An Ideal Prisoner
  43. How A Film Became Something More
  44. Gandhi: Beyond India
  45. Gandhi's Life-Saving Medicine
  46. Understanding The Mechanics of Life With Gandhi
  47. The Lokmanya and The Mahatma
  48. Man's Gift To Nature
  49. Gurudev And His Mahatma
  50. One-man Boundary Force
  51. What Does Mahatma Gandhi's Message Mean To Me?
  52. Let's Play Together
  53. Children's Response To Conflict
  54. Beggar By Choice
  55. The Better Half
  56. Uncle Gandhi
  57. The Watch: An Instrument For Regulating Life
  58. Light The Lamp of Your Mind
  59. Gandhi's Bet!
  60. Gandhi Feeling At Home In The Kitchen
  61. What Is Simplicity?
  62. Bapu And The Sardar
  63. The Power of Quality
  64. Gandhi: The Teenager!

Chapter 23: The Image Maker

Every month Gandhi faced a host of meetings, a barrage of visitors, a flood of letters. How on earth was he to manage his time? How was he to decide from among these hundreds of visitors and meetings which really needed his time and which did not?
If Gandhi was able to find his way through this maze of appointments successfully, it was largely because of one man: Mahadev Desai. Mahadev was officially his secretary, but he was much more than that.
A highly educated man, Mahadev had a B.A. and L.L.B in days when it was not so common. It was at the time of the Champaran Satyagraha in 1918 that he threw in his lot with Gandhi. Soon he was at home in the office, the guest house and the kitchen. He looked after the many guests and, at the same time, must have saved ten years of Gandhi's time by diverting from him unwanted visitors.
In all this, he also found time to write week after week in papers such as Young India and the Harijan. His writings showed the people something of what the freedom struggle really meant. Few writers can have commanded so many regular readers of Mahadev's stories that made Gandhi real to millions. In them, readers all over the world came to see Gandhi as a lovable human being.
Perhaps the affection showered on Gandhi owes much to this portrayal. Mahadev always stressed on the human, witty personality of Gandhi. He depicted the Mahatma as one who reached out effectively to common people from all parts of the country and even the world.
But then, as Verrier Elwin questioned himself while writing on Mahadev, "Was the Gandhi that Mahadev showed us week by week the true Gandhi, or was he a Gandhi sentimentalized, romanticized, tidied-up as it were for presentation to the public?" Elwin, of course, goes ahead to answer this question. But in the meantime, what do you think?