A CLASS ACT

The Undying Light : A Personal History of Independent India

- Gopalkrishna Gandhi

How does one write a nation's history while juxtaposing it alongside one's memoirs? It requires a high degree of finesse, dexterity, an ability to take oneself lightly and a certain detachment to observe and comment on things dispassionately. On a score of ten, Gopalkrishna Gandhi would easily notch an eight for the elegance, and impeccably impartial manner in which he has combined India's arch since independence with his own story.

But how did this personal history happen, it's a delectable story that he lays out right at the beginning of his prelude: “David Davidar, Aleph Book Company's initiator, has a sharp eye for new books. Towards the close of 2022, he came by Fintan O'Toole's We Don't Know Ourselves, which described itself as A Personal History of Modern Ireland. He sent it to me, saying I might like reading it, and if I did, would I be interested in attempting something on its lines for post-independence India?

The book's title held two keywords and thoughts: 'personal' and 'history'. The first was appealing, the second scary. Describing vignettes of independent India as I had seen or heard of them in the way of an extended adda was an attractive idea. And there were around me, at home, things to encourage exactly that: fading photographs and ageing letters, some of them laminated and protected from oblivion by a vintage home remedy-pouches of tobacco leaves placed at intervals between them. This bric-a-brac from the past, growing old with me, urged: 'Say yes!'”

And so was born The Undying Light for which Davidar deserves equal credit—for seeing an opportunity and getting the right man for the job and gently persuading him to say 'yes'.