Gandhism

How does it feel to share ones birthday with as great a personality as Mahatma Gandhi? It may be a heady feeling and it may well be a responsibility also as I discovered soon after I reached an age of understanding my surroundings and perceiving the happenings with more clarity .Or may be there is something in that date(2nd October) itself which makes one behave in a particular fashion.
First time when I realized it, I was a seven years old, class two student. Usually, I was considered a good student by my teachers, both in academics and extra curricular .I always found books very fascinating but for one…yes I could never get myself to like Mathematics specially the tables. Nonetheless, I tried hard to get at least as much marks as was required to come in top three positions and more or less always managed to get as much. My final exam was approaching but this time it seemed to be going haywire and I got apprehensive and anxious about the Math paper and in my anxiety did something which I felt would help me score good marks. I wrote the tables on the back of my exam board! The question paper was distributed and everyone started writing the paper in silence. That day our Principal was in our classroom. I did the sums which I knew and then needed the help of that table written behind the board Meanwhile the Principal kept on taking his rounds .when I felt confident that I was out of his sight I slowly tried to turn the board.
“Any problem”?, reverberated the voice of the Principal .I looked up. He was standing overhead and his hand was advancing towards my exam board! I gathered all my guts and said, “Oh no, everything is fine…was just stabilizing the board.”
He looked in to my eyes…“I know, you can’t do anything wrong”, he said and left. I heaved a sigh of relief but the words he spoke kept drumming in my mind… “you can’t do anything wrong”…Yes, I left the sums which required me to refer to the table and came home. The result was announced after a few days. I stood second by a narrow margin but still felt like a winner. Surely I had overcome the temptation to cheat and it was enough a reason for me to feel like a conqueror!
It has been about twenty five years since then and even now when I am on the verge of committing anything which is considered not in sync with society norms or established virtues, a voice seems to echo somewhere, “you can’t do anything wrong ”!!!!
At times I have spoken the truth even at the cost of my own self-esteem and have suffered the embarrassment and awkwardness too but honestly it was nothing if compared to the contentment and gratification I felt afterward.
I may not fight for masses as Gandhi did but still feel a sense of accomplishment by simply standing by the truth…ALWAYS.