Strange how death gives life to memories. I hadn’t actively thought of Baba Amte for some time, but he died yesterday at the age of 94. Suddenly, a collage of images starts putting itself together. In 1985, Baba Amte got the Magsaysay award, particularly for his work on leprosy. I don’t remember it clearly, of course, but I do remember, three years later, finding that my Hindi teacher was a cousin of his. I think she was surprised that I knew who he was, though my sense is that it had more to do with the news junkie I had begun to be, and less with any self-proclaimed activist zeal at the age of fourteen.
However, some time while I was in college in Delhi (if I’m not wrong; memories are images without accurate recall dates), I remember Baba Amte fasting in one of the first rounds of protest against the Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada. I remember going to sit on the margins of the crowd that had gathered outside Rajghat, watching this frail man (he was already into his eighties then) on a charpai, surrounded by those who admired him and who were inspired by him. Also surrounded – as usual – by the ubiquitous hangers-on who had come to see the tamasha, the incongruous sight of a brightly coloured pandal sheltering a sombre non-violent protest from the Delhi sun.
Why was I there? I suppose I was a hanger-on too, of a certain kind. Those years in college were signified by a painful, sometimes self-consciously intense need to find heroes for myself. I didn’t succeed; much. I think I came out of those years wiser, less pained, and able to make fun of myself, thankfully. And equally able to recognise that heroes are – in general – ephemeral souls, that inspiration is cut and paste: heroism and heroes are found in unexpected places. Yet there I was, watching Baba Amte, imagining Gandhi, juxtaposing one frail man against the other, one courage against another, one struggle for freedom against another. Somewhere, somehow, the cut and paste obviously turned into a collage. One that came back to me yesterday.
The Hindu’s obit quotes the Dalai Lama, calling him a man of ‘practical compassion’, but the description I like best is that by Baba Amte himself. In an interview to Graham Turner, he reportedly said:
I don’t want to be a great leader. I want to be a man who goes around with a little oil can and when he sees a breakdown offers his help. To me, the man who does that is greater than any holy man in saffron-colored robes.
The mechanic with the oilcan, that is my ideal in life.
Image from the Ramon Magsaysay Award website.