Icon unravelled

We are fast running out of icons and role models who are not busy endorsing cold drinks and ceiling fans in television commercials. The 90-year-old Baba Amte might at first glance seem to have passed his ‘prime’ as a role model.

As the author of Wisdom Song: The Life of Baba Amte, Neesha Mirchandani says of her subject, “He is alive because of a pacemaker. His back is broken, his legs wobble, and he has lost all his teeth and most of his gums. He coughs all night, hardly eats, and doesn’t get much sleep. But his mind is alert and his heart is open. As always, his spirit soars — unencumbered by his battered body — ever ready to embrace another dream.”

Despite his controversial role in the anti-big dam Narmada agitation, Bharat Jodo cross-country cycle trips, Punjab and Kashmir peace missions, Baba Amte will forever be identified with his Herculean work with leprosy patients and the building of Anandwan at Warora.

Mirchandani traces the history of Anandwan, from its genesis in 1951 on fifty acres of rocky, quarry land that was a "hostile landscape overgrown by brush and snakes and scorpions". Baba later spread his work to the Madia tribals and remarkably, unlike the children of other such 'dedicated' personalities, his two sons, Vikas and Prakash, grew up to develop their father's efforts further.

Son of rich Brahmin landowners of Nagpur, Baba grew up to be an obsessive movie-goer, hunter of wild animals, lover of good clothes, fond of horse riding and driver of fashionable cars. But he was also forcefully aware of the immense gulf between his circumstances and that of the lower castes he was not allowed to mingle with.

The story of Baba’s metamorphosis into the Baba Amte as we know him is the stuff legends are made of. Forced to study law by his father, he soon realised that he did not want to defend unrepentant criminals. Seeking a deeper purpose to life, and fed up of the persistent nagging at home to get married, he took a vow of celibacy.

That vow, however, crumbled in the face of the attraction he felt for the intelligent and socially conscious Sadhana Ghuleshastri, whom he married after an eventful courtship.

The plight of the lower castes had always disturbed him and led him to form the Sweepers Union, waking up at three every morning to empty the human waste from the town’s (Warora) latrines and carry it away in wicker baskets. But he felt the call to work with lepers one night when he saw “something” in a ditch.

“‘It’ was a “rotting mass of human flesh with two holes in place of a nose, without toes or fingers, with worms and sores (instead of) eyes.” Terrified he fled. “That is why I took up leprosy work…I did it to overcome fear,” he says.
Baba’s tribute to his mentally ill mother, especially his account of how she shaped him, is truly poignant, as is the author’s line that “his mother gave him permission to paint outside the lines.”

Having said all this, Mirchandani, to her credit, admits that this book was written not with the dispassionate pen of a journalist or an academic, but out of a desire to explore Baba’s humanity. She confesses, too, to the difficulty of retracing the journey of a living legend.

Surely enough, while the book reads like a paean, all mention of the criticism Baba has faced seems forced and superficial. All those who praise him are named and introduced, but his critics are dismissed as “a Gandhian”, “a journalist” and so on. Why not name them as well?

Mirchandani has spoken to a large number of people, and she captures his genius in handling people and the impact he has had on their lives and character. She also brings out the poet and humorist in Baba’s personality, and the near-ideal relationship he shares with Sadhana tai.

After you close the book, if there is one thought that continues to linger in your mind, it is Baba’s explanation of ‘mental leprosy’, wherein he says that while physical leprosy is loss of sensation and thickening of nerves, mental leprosy is unfeeling hearts and dulled minds and is incurable.