Front Yard Garden Today

This morning I drove my friend Prasad from India to Madison to meet with a Gandhi scholar from Mumbai, India. The elderly man and his wife were visiting his daughter in Madison. The three of us had a fascinating discussion about Mahatma Gandhi, his life, thought and work. He told us how Gandhi was an ordinary person, but with a spark of the divine inside that we all have, had worked hard and suffered much to be the great person he is in history. When I called this person a Gandhi scholar he objected. He said Gandhi was too great a person and a saint for anyone to call himself a Gandhi scholar. He said Gandhi was like the Himalayan Mountains, too big, 2000 miles wide and long, for any one person to grasp.

He suggested that a person can only study one aspect of Gandhi and from probing this one element one could gain insight into the whole person. His field of study of Gandhi was politics, and he has written a book on Gandhi’s political struggles in South Africa called “Agony of Arrival.” We came away from our visit with him with a lot to think about.

I told Prasad he was like Johnny Appleseed, spreading the seeds of Gandhi’s life and thought in his travels throughout the USA. He did not know the story of Johnny Appleseed but smiled when I told it to him. When we got back to our house Prasad took a picture of our front yard vegetable garden to take with him on his journeys in the USA and back to India.

After Prasad left I thought if Gandhi was the Himalayas, so large and vast, I could be like my front yard vegetable garden, small but packed with tomatoes, basil and eggplant plants. If I worked hard, listened to my inner voice like Gandhi did, I can hope to be a front yard garden, a symbol of hope and work.

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