Gandhi, my roommate

Updated On: 03 October, 2021 07:11 AM IST | Mumbai | Jane Borges

Living with a still-growing personal collection of Gandhi artefacts for a decade has changed the way a Mumbai-based photographer and Goan painter approach Gandhian philosophy

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Photographer Chirodeep Chaudhuri, whose Mumbai home houses nearly 55 tiny figurines of Gandhi, began to collect 12 years ago, when he first picked up a plaster of Paris piece from a roadside vendor at Sonepur Mela in Bihar. Pic/Sameer Markande

Painter-sculptor Subodh Kerkar was only seven, when his father, also an artist, was commissioned by the Goa government to create a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi for the assembly. Kerkar’s family then lived in a Madgaon chawl, a row of housing settlements surrounded by coconut groves and fields. He vividly remembers his father bringing the painting out in the common verandah, after he had completed it. “He got all the kids in the neighbourhood to stand in front of the portrait, and asked us to fold our hands, and pray to him,” Kerkar tells us, over a video call. Thinking about it now, Kerkar, who is the founder of Museum of Goa, wonders if any of the modern-day leaders would elicit such veneration. “I don’t think so,” he feels. Over the years, he continued to engage with Gandhi and his teachings through his autobiography and other related texts. “I wasn’t a Gandhian,” he admits, “Gandhi is not easy to understand or follow. He was a very complex person.”

Subodh Kerkar