on it. Having made these arrangements, I sat down on the box in the tub and typed my notes of the hour’s talk with Gandhi. At intervals of a few minutes, when I began to perspire, I filled a bronze bowl with water from the tub and poured it over my back and limbs. By that method I was able to type for a whole hour without feeling too tired.
Dinner at five. I arrived earlier than Gandhi, and when he came in he said to me, “That’s better.” This was a reference to my having been late at lunch. I said I didn’t know whether it was more polite to come earlier or later than he did. “Artificial politeness,” he said, “is taboo here. Come whenever you like.”
He again tried to make me take a boiled onion. Again I refused firmly. “You will be famished here,” he said. I told him I cheated between meals and had buttermilk and tea. I said I had improved on his suggestion to sit in a tub and read—I sat in a tub and wrote, and I described my method. He laughed loudly. He apologized because he would not walk this evening; he felt tired.
When he saw that I had finished the meal, he said, “Fischer, you can go whenever you please. Don’t stand on ceremony. As I told you before, we want no artificial politeness here.” I got up, found my hat and shoes, and when I was outside the dining hall he said to me, “Has anyone told you that Jawaharlal is coming here on Sunday?”
