Give Accident a Chance

Accidents often rattle us. Some accidents though are of strange types, they change the course of our lives. Chancing upon a book and being affected by it is one such accident. The likelihood of being affected by a book has increased manifold ever since books began being published simply because there were more books available that may be read. However a mere availability has not ensured that they are read and increasingly we are finding less and less inclination among people to read books. This lack of inclination may also be responsible for the absence of great leaders in our society on whom young and old alike may look up to and draw inspiration from.

If there were one such man whom books influenced deeply and altered his course of life was Mahatma Gandhi. He not only read a lot but also took his readings seriously. The books that he read shaped his thought and later his philosophy which affected the course of our country. The books that influenced him deeply were On Heroes & Hero Worship by Thomas Carlyle, Unto this Last- Four Essays on First Principles of Political Economy by John Ruskin, Light of Asia by Sir Edwin Arnold, India-What can it teach us by Friederich Max Muller, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau and The Kingdom of God is within you by Leo Tolstoy among several others. Gandhiji acknowledges their contribution in his autobiography and says that the verses of Bible “'But I say unto you, that ye resist no evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man takes away thy coat let him have thy cloak too” delighted him no end and his young mind attempted to unify the ideas of The Gita, The Bible and Light of Asia.

Interestingly another person whose life took a different course after reading a book is Anna Hazare. He is also a person in whose life several accidents took place and he ruminated and later acted upon them and turned the course of life not only his own but also that of countless thousands. For those of us who may not be aware, he was a driver in Indian army. He joined Indian Army at the exhortation of the government when China attacked our country in 1962 and when a bullet passed by his head during 1965 war and when all his fellow soldiers died in the shelling done by Pakistan in Khem Karan sector in Kashmir, he began contemplating the purpose of life.

Interestingly once as he was on the New Delhi railway station, he chanced upon a book by Swami Vivekananda. He liked the photograph of Swamiji on the cover of the book and immediately bought it. As he read the book, he found answers to his questions and resolved that the mission of his life is to serve humanity. He took voluntary retirement from the army and headed back to his native village Ralegaon Siddhi. Through his work in the field of water conservation which enhanced the yield of food grains and made the village self sufficient in food, education for children by constructing schools through cooperative work among villagers and through eradication of alcoholism he transformed Ralegaon Siddhi to a model village.

Today as we are surrounded by news and views about him and his work in the field of corruption, we must not forget that he is a creation of a number of accidents in his life and also because after every accident he saw life in a new light and followed that light.