Page:Fischer - A Week with Gandhi.pdf/123

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and walked that distance under the broiling Indian afternoon sun. When he reached the hostel he was triumphant, and commented on the unreliability of these “new-fangled technical achievements of the industrial age.”

Within a few minutes, Gandhi was closeted with Azad and Nehru. I walked into the room through the open door, but they were talking Hindustani, and so I left. Later Grover, the young Associated Press correspondent in India, arrived for an interview. Gandhi said to him that India now was a corpse and as a corpse it could not help much in winning the war. He wanted India to be free from British political domination and then India would rise in her strength to defend herself.

I left Wardha at nine-thirty P.M. Gandhi shook me firmly by the hand as I said goodbye and asked me to visit him again.


I flew back from India to New York in seven days. Shortly after my return, a reporter interviewed me and asked if I had written Gandhi a bread-and-butter letter. It had not occurred to me to do so.