Tatters of the Heart - Narayan Desai

  [Highlights in yellow by Nikhil Desai March 2022) Written for Narayan Desai, Jigarna Chira , 2013   The Last Navigator: A Foreword Ashis Nandy Narayan Mahadev Desai is the name of not only an aging freedom fighter but also that of a vibrant, defiant, walking university. For more than sixty-five years, his journey through India’s freedom struggle and through the rather uneven career of postcolonial India—now trying desperately to shed its Gandhian legacy to emerge as proper, predictable, conventional nation-state—has been that of a defiant, dissenting figure whose rebelliousness did not end with the departure of India’s colonial rulers. Narayanbhai has remained a thorn in the flesh of all bullies, whether they are corrupt politicians vending mass violence in the form of ultra-nationalism or psychopathic scientists selling nuclear reactors in the name of energy security. Throughout his life he has fought for causes that are congruent with the worldview and visi...

  Jigar na chira     So many beautiful dreams of Bapu remained unrealized Tighten your belt and complete the unfinished, you cursed one! 22 The Dreams Unfulfilled Rowing his lifeboat with trust in Ram, Gandhi kept on taking one careful step after another but as he did so his eyes were also set on the distant future. The dream he envisaged in the first decade of the 20 th Century (1909) remained his to the middle of the Century (1948) – although his political “heir” Jawaharlal ignored that dream (as impractical or regressive) , Gandhiji kept that dream before him all throughout. That was his distant dream. That is why he wished for a healthy and active life of 125 years. But he also had more than one dream of the morning tomorrow while feet firmly on today’s land. If destiny had not ruined those dreams by a sudden strike, those dreams could have been brought closer progressing one step after another. The Partition that he strove so hard to stop became know...