In 1921-22 Bapuji was sent to Indian jail at
Yerawada, for the first time. During his stay there he had asked for a lot
of books from the jail library and read them. He liked two of them
especially, ‘The Seekers After God’ and Sir Rudiyard Kipling’s ‘Jungle
book’. He asked me to read them this time. Fortunately, this jail library
had both of them. ‘Seekers After God’ contains three elaborate essays about
the life of three Romans, Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. During
those initial days of the sentence I had sent him the book ‘Decline And Fall
Of The Roman Empire’, and Bapuji remembered it. He told me, ‘Seekers After
God’ contains the essence of Gibbon. A person like you must read it.’ During
those few months Gandhiji got a lot of books. I still remember him reading
two of them.
One of them was Upton Sinclar’s ‘Goose steps’.
In that book he had described, with instances, the decaying education system
in contemporary America. Another was an inspirational book ‘Midstream’,
which was the biography of blind Helen Keller. Bapuji had formerly read the
story of her early life, ‘The Story of My Life’ and had praised it too. So,
while in the jail, I read ‘Midstream’ first and after my release I read ‘The
Story Of My Life’. Shri Bhagwanbhai Desai has translated it into Gujarati as
‘Apangani Pratibha’. My favourite pastime in the jail was doing errands for
Bapuji and discussion with him various topics. Doing errands also consumed a
lot of time. The ones I enjoyed most were washing the dishes, keeping them
in place, making his bed, arranging his things properly, giving him whatever
he needed, cooking food for him, making preparations for carding and
spinning the yarn, reading letters to him etc. The day would be over doing
all these things. The remaining time would be utilised for reading.