which Gandhi indicated, two removed from him. Between us was the asthmatic Narendra Dev, a leader of the Indian Socialist Party which is affiliated with Congress. I sat down on a strip of matting about a foot wide. Gandhi sat on a pillow. To his left was his toothless wife, Kasturba. She is seventy. He is seventy-three.
The dining hall has two long walls connected by a third back wall. Where one enters, it is open to the elements. Near the entrance is a table covered with jars and trays of food. The women sit apart. I watched some bright-eyed, brown-faced children, some of them three, five or eight years old, the children of the members of the ashram. Soon every person had a brass tray in front of him, and several waiters were moving noiselessly on bare feet, depositing food on the trays. Several pots and pans were placed before Gandhi. He opened them and started dishing out food to his neighbors. I had been given a metal tumbler full of water. Gandhi handed me a bronze bowl filled with a vegetable mush in which I thought I discerned chopped spinach leaves and pieces of squash. Then he uncovered a metal container and gave me one hard, paper-thin wheat-cake. A woman poured some salt into my tray and handed me a bowl of hot milk. Soon she came back with two boiled potatoes in their jackets and some soft, flat wheat cakes baked brown. Gandhi turned to me and said,
