I wanted time to think about Atmananda's thousands of lessons,
some of which I sensed were valid and some of which I knew were not.
There was another reason: I wanted to do something distinctly
*me*. Bicycling across a continent against the prevailing winds
with all my possessions and a Siberian husky--that was *me*.
"Why?" she asked later.
I tempered my answer with the knowledge that I was being interviewed
by a journalist and not a shrink. At one point I told her that I
was traveling with a book on Gandhi.
"Do you like it?" she asked.
While reading the book I felt proud that Gandhi had been deeply
influenced by Thoreau's essay "Civil Disobedience," proud that a
thinker and experimenter from the United States had had an effect
on one from India whose thoughts and experiments affected humankind.
But it was more than pride which attracted me to Shirer's Gandhi:
A Memoir. Gandhi's dream of helping the masses reminded me of
Atmananda's seeming interest in making millions of people happy.
While Gandhi wielded influence over two-thirds of a billion people
as he helped India secure independence, never did he grow twisted
by the enormity of his own power, never did he betray the public trust.
Though Atmananda eloquently described the balance between the spiritual
and the mundane, I knew from years of firsthand experience--
yet found it difficult to admit--that a Mahatma Gandhi he
was not.
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