remembers the time he spent with Baba Amte during the Yatra. My association with Baba Amte began two decades ago when, as a twenty something, just out of college, I read about him and, on a whim, visited Anandvan. At our first meeting, I read out a piece of prose, we both shed tears and a lifetime bond was formed.
It was 1988, India was at the crossroads. There was unrest everywhere. Khalistan, Gorkhaland, Bodoland, JMM, ULFA, Karbi Anglong, Tripura, Mizoram.
A powder keg just waiting to be ignited. And then he gave the call "" Bharat Jodo. I, along with hundreds of young people got on bicycles and followed him across the country.
As part of my education with Baba, every morning on that yatra, I would visit him early at 4 a.m. as he wrote out his thoughts in his umpteen notebooks. He would allow me and two others to read these notebooks containing his experiences for a couple of hours each, we'd ask questions and he would answer. It was a priceless education about human nature.
Each day of that yatra was a priceless experience, full of laughter and hope. Like the time in Manipur, where he was mistaken for a Karate expert because he would be in plain shorts and a shirt, and wear a belt to support his back due to acute spondylitis. Or when students in Assam would want to touch him to convince themselves that it was really him, coming alive from the pages of their social sciences textbook.
His sense of humour and the way he indulged the people was amazing. When he talked about the response his yatra was receiving, I told him that the crowds came to meet any Baba or religious leader.
For effect I dressed as a sadhu and passed myself off as Baba Amte, soon enough a crowd gathered around me, Baba laughed and took the point.
Baba was like the Russian doll his mother gave him as a child "" broken at many places, held together by plaster, but try as hard as you could to make it fall, it would spring up and stand erect again.
Hard work, back breaking journeys and accidents took its toll and he was bed-ridden with a painful back for 45 years but it never deterred him or slowed him down. An impish smile, glistening eyes, a booming guttural voice, sharp intellect, childlike enthusiasm and reassuring grasp will never fade from my memory.
When I met him a little before his ninety-fourth birthday, he said his task was unfinished. He wanted a movement to be undertaken from Gujarat to Bengal, planting trees along the coastline, giving India a green garland.
He wanted the youth to start a Youth Emergency Service (YES) to tackle disasters and he wanted me to roll out hospitals on trailers to treat the rural brethren. His greatest message to me was that there was no point being overwhelmed in trying to help the teeming millions, even helping one person can transform that life.
The author is the Mumbai-based managing director of healthcare company Emergent Meditech and a long time associate of Baba Amte
