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SKETCHES
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by using different methods. For this reason, Deshbandhu Das commented that he had never come across in his advocacy of twenty years “a mightier advocate in a frailer frame."77
The scintillating wit of Gandhiji was responsible for spreading joy around him wherever he went. Dilip Roy was one of those fortunate people who had a few precious opportunities to participate in such witty conversations with him. Once, as Roy remembers, during a gathering at Deshbandhu Das's house in Calcutta, a celebrity said that he simply loved to go to the council chambers in his coarse homespun in order to relish the dislike of punctilious Englishmen in the council for homespun. Dilip Roy records:
" "Quite", echoed Mahatmaji, "and do you know whom you remind me of?-A dear friend of mine, who loved to assure me that he stalked into the British councils in khaddar to spite the British and into Congress conclaves in mill-made cloth to spite me."
Some hero-worshippers, however, are profoundly shocked by the faintest suggestion of irreverence against Mahatmas. "But Mahatmaji,” started one of their brood, "that friend of yours couldn't possibly have meant to spite you."
"I know, my friend”, said Mahatmaji with his merry twinkle, “but why grudge me the bliss of imagining it?"
"The staid devotee was forced to smile as the others rollicked with laughter." “78
Such conversations often continued for a long time and the author feels that when such repartees are put down on paper, they lose the actual vitality caused by the background and setting of Mahatmaji's charming personality. Besides, Dilip Roy liked even more "the peals of laughter that rang out at every sally of his."79 Like Nehru, Dilip Roy too considered that nobody had known Gandhiji who hadn't known his laughter. To give the idea of Gandhiji's bewitching smile, the author has used numerous adjectives in these few pages: childlike smile, limpid smile, solvent smile of welcome, the old heart-warming smile, a lovely smile. He writes: "...his crystal laughter kept ringing in my ear like a cadence that lingers.”80 Roy reports at one place, “And he chuckled once more in merriment". Roy writes: "He smiled radiantly."82 Quite long after the death of this great man, Dilip Roy, evaluating the effect of his laughter on his life writes in Six Illuminates of Modern India:
“Yes, his radiant laughter has more than once substantially healed my pain in not a few of my life's dark crises and contretemps like an unexpected boon of manna from heaven."83
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