One incident occurred when Mahatma Gandhi was travelling in a small train uphill to Darjeeling. Darjeeling is a hill station in India, and you have a small train that goes there. It is a narrow gauge train. When the train was moving up the hill, somewhere, the engine disconnected from the coaches. So the engine went ahead and the coaches and started sliding backward.
Imagine a big hilly terrain with coaches sliding backward. There was huge panic, as people were between life and death. Any moment the coaches could fall off the hill, and one would not even find a trace of a bone. It was the Himalayas.
While there was panic all around, Mahatma Gandhi was dictating letters, and he said to his friend who was taking letters (A guy who taught Mahatma Gandhi the scripture, Bhagavad Gita, when he came back from South Africa. And he was with him for 40 years as his tutor, and also as his writer); he used to call him Bangalori, because he was from Bangalore; ‘Bangalori, take dictation.’
His friend said, ‘Bapu (father, referring to Mahatma Gandhi), do you know what is happening? We may not be alive. We are in-between life and death. The coaches are moving backward with nothing to stop it, and its gaining speed.’
Do you know what Mahatma Gandhi said? He said, ‘Suppose we get saved, we would have wasted all this time. If we die, we die. But if we are saved, we wasted so much time? So, come on, take dictation.’
With trembling hands, his writer was taking dictation.
His friend used to say ‘Look at this old man; he would not waste a moment of his life.
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