Devadas Gandhi

I had long ceased to look upon him as my father During the past few months that he was in Delhi it was the privilege of my three-year old boy to be lovingly fondled by Bapu. I was a complete back number and once recently he told me that he missed Gopu more than me whenever we failed to turn up at Birla House. The little urchin now draws renewed tears from our eyes when he pouts his lips in imitation of the way his grandfather greeted him. And yet Gandhiji's interest in the narrow domestic circle was of the meagrest, and I had long ceased to look upon him as my father in any possessive sense. He was to me a saint as much as to any of you and I feel and see the void exactly as you do.

I, therefore, view the disaster with the detachment of one living in the North Pole and having ties neither of blood nor of race with the Great One of whose loss we are as yet but dimly aware.