Noise and peace

The less said about Ahmedabad the better. It was the nosiest, most agressive, ugliest, most unwelcoming town I've seen so far. Its dirt and dust clotted on my skin, choked my nose and blackened every emotion I had with its heavy coating, except sadness and lonlieness. All that could struggle to the surface through the grime was my anxiety, fear and a longing to get out of the place.

I was just passing through the town on my way elsewhere, but all the trains were booked up, which meant I was stuck in the godforsaken place for two days before I could leave. During those elastic days that seemed to stretch out in an endless agony of extended seconds, minutes and hours, I came to loathe it.

I arrived there at 4:30am on a night sleeper. Never a good time to arrive anywhere, my dark luck was further blackened by the fact, unknown to me at the time, that Ahmedabad was hosting some sort of exams for Indian Railways and, as the world's largest employer, this meant people had come from all over India to sit these exams. There was not a room to be had anywhere.

The first three hotels listed in The Bible were full, as I was gruffly told by the succession of receptionists I had to wake to gain this undesired information. After this, I was forced to take the recommendations of the rickshaw driver who'd picke me up from the station, knowing he would gleefully be getting a commission from wherever I stayed, thanks to my misfortune.

At the 8th hotel we asked at, in desperation, I took the only room they had left. I paid twice what I would normally pay for a room that wasn't worth half the price. The walls were smeared with anonymous, greasy swirls and the sheets and pillowcases were patterned with the indelible presence, fluids and secretions of an untold accumulation of bodies. The shower was an icy needle and the traffic noise and dust seeped in through windows it was impossible to fully close. I was too exhausted to care. I thought maybe I'd sleep through the agony of waiting to leave again, but my earplugs blocked barely a decibel of the agitated street outside.

I sought refuge in writing in a dim, cool internet cafe. Even checking emails was too emotional. I cried quietly at a photo my brother sent of my neices smiling and laughing in the back seat of my car, which he and his family are 'fostering' while I'm away. And to cheer me up, Aleks had sent me a beautiful photo of us together, winter-pale but happy, captured on a forgotten night out in Cambridge. It was too much to bear. With all my being I wished I was back there. Home was cold but familiar, there were the faces I loved and who loved me too. Here in this pulsing, throbbing city no-one knew me or cared about my existence. The lure of the exotic in India, felt more like a plughole, drainging me of everything but despair. So I wrote and, fortified by a dose of blogging, I raised my head through the mist of my gloom and went out to wander the streets.

Ahmedabad is not on the tourist trail, with very good reason, and people stared openly. I was a figure of curiosity, like a wet fish flipping, twisting and dying in a box of dusty, hot beetles. I was out of place there and they could see it and I could feel it. Watched, hunted and haunted I returned to my room and fitfully slept away the pain of the day.

But Ahmedabad had one saving, soothing grace which I visited the next day - Gandhi's former ashram. Sabarmati Ashram was a short hot bus rude outside the town. Drenched in sweat and frank appraising stares, the bus dropped me off on a dusty road next to a freshly painted white wall. This was the ashram.

As I entered the gates, a serenity enfolded me, like a fresh sheet. The ashram is a collection of low buildings (formerly living quarters, a farm, school, dairy and weaving room) set in spacious grounds next to a river with Gandhi's house in the centre. These were his headquarters and those of his followers during the struggle for Indian independence. Large trees umbrella it all with a cool green leaf canvas and some miracle of peace somehow dims and muffles the sound of cars outside.

Dotted about the complex, workers bent over wispy brooms carefully sweeping fallen leaves, the quiet rattle of these dead curls and the whisper of the brooms like an aural balm, soothing and comforting. Immediately I loved this place. It breathed back into me a calm and peace that had deserted me the moment I arrived in the town.

Cleanliness is, for me, a sign of respect and places in India that are cared for always find a space in my heart. Sadly much of India does not seem to respect itself and its surroundings. It doesn't seem to see the sea of litter that washes and flows around it, it doesn't notice the stench of rubbish, drains and human and animal waste that chokes my nostrils. So I easily fall in love with India's rare clean places. Peoples' respect shows in a swept path, a watered tree and freshly painted house. But at Sabarmati the workers seemed to toil, not out just out of a duty to keep everything fresh, but out of love for the place and the person who it represents.

For the first time since arriving in Ahmedabad, I could hear the birds singing. In my glass-thin fragility, this alone was enough to bring a lump to my throat.

Then I saw Gandhi's house itself. It was so humble, so simple. Just a single storey building with a small enclosed garden at the front. Just to see it flooded me with emotion. I don't know why. I know shamefully little about the life and work of Gandhi but I know the power of this leader's humility to inspire people, generations after his death. To see in front of me, the clear simplicity of the place where he lived, was too much. I sat on the step outside and cried, I was so moved.

I couldn't even go inside. Behind my sunglasses I sobbed silently, as I watched shoals of schoolchildren, over-excited by being let out of school for an educational trip, ebb and flow around me. They ran excitedly shouting, 'Look, look Gandhiji's room!'

Eventually I composed myself enough to look into the single room he used in the house and I was engulfed in tears again. It was light and airy with a large window overlooking the river, but its bareness was what clutched at my heart. On the vast plain of the flagstoned floor was nothing more than a rush mat with a cushion on it, a desk - still peopled with his neatly stored writing equipment, a low table and a spinning wheel. The only other item in the room was a broom leaning in a corner. There was absolutely nothing else in those minimal quarters.

I found it impossible to comprehend how the greatness, the tenderness, the wisdom of such a man could be distilled into so few possessions. All he needed for his daily tasks were in that room and that was all he owned. His quarters were as pure and simple as the man himself was complex and intelligent.

I was staggered by the sight in a way historical places have never moved me before. Maybe it is the proximity of the man and events he set in train from here: independent India is only 64 years old, still in living memory. And so Gandhi's breath may still linger, his thoughts may still float as dust motes in the air of that space and the dent of his body may still be almost visible in that cusion.

Or maybe it is the survival, intact, of such simplicity that moved me. Over the past few weeks I've seen the legacy of kings, princes and noblemen in palaces and cities, grand and glittering, filled with ostentatious extravaganzas of display, status and riches. They could not let their lives pass unnoticed and unremarked but preserved them in an orgy of dazzling richness and accumulation of possessions.

Here, in Gandhi's room, the essence of a truly great man who achieved so much, touched so many and is known to practically all, is sealed forver, not in gold leaf, mirrors, tiles, flowers and fanfare, but in the mundane, the soulful form of a cushion, a desk and a spinning wheel. Gandhi's humility was his greatness and the tools he used to bring about his ends couldn't be more fitting.