25. A Laugh at Himself

During his visit to Santiniketan in December 1940, Gandhiji was shown one of the photographs wherein he was sitting with Rabindranath in front of the room in which the world-famous Gitanjali was written.

When Gandhiji was seeing this photograph, someone remarked, "Bapuji, when this photograph was taken you were eating something." Gandhiji took the photograph in his hands, saw it for some time and gave a hearty laughter and remarked: "Whether it is Gurudeva¹ or anybody, my eating goes on."

[1] In the first edition of this book, Gandhiji had been made to say, "Whether it is my Gurudev or anybody". As pointed out by Shri Kakasaheb in his Foreword, it appears to be unlikely that Gandhiji referred to Dr. Tagore as 'my Gurudeva', and, therefore, the word 'my' before 'Gurudeva' has been omitted in the present edition.