Ahmedabad: Every part of the Nirnaynagar home of Santosh Karode, 64, and his wife Aarti, 63, is a bookshelf: books line the kitchen counter, pile up on beds, spread across sofas, and sprawl out on the verandah.One upstairs room is the only space where books have the privilege of a location tag. The Karodes call the room “Mahatma Gandhi Granth Mandir”, and it contains books on Gandhiji in scores of languages.The couple’s collection includes the 82-volume “Akshardeh” and 23 volumes of Mahadev Desai’s diaries, as well as Gandhiji-related works in Gujarati, Marathi, Hindi, Sanskrit, and English.On Oct 2, 2016, the Karodes turned the upstairs room into the Granth Mandir. Neighbourhood children cleaned and decorated it with posters, flowers, and a rangoli shaped like Gandhiji’s spectacles.Natvar Patel, a writer of children’s books, inaugurated the mandir. This year, the library will complete a decade.“Anyone may come, read, make notes, take photographs, or scan pages without paying,” Santosh said. “Books cannot be taken away. Tables, chairs, and writing material are available. We are not the owners of the books; we are merely custodians.”Santosh and Aarti were kids when they entered the Gandhian orbit of compassion and reflection.Aarti’s father worked with a khadi institution and the family lived around Sabarmati Ashram.She studied at Harijan Kanya Vidyalaya from Class II to VII. “We attended interfaith prayers and played around the ashram,” she said. “In 1969, as a schoolgirl, I put a hand-spun cotton garland on Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. I understood the importance of that moment only years later.”Santosh, a retired Class-I govt officer, said, “My father was a teacher, and his life shaped me.” He said, “My reading began with newspapers and magazines at Mansinh Library in my native place, Devgadh Baria.”He added, “I started buying books from Ahmedabad’s Gujari Bazaar, spending Rs 2 a week. Later, I became a life member of MJ Library.”Santosh went on to say, “Drop by drop, a lake formed. Today, even we do not know how many books our home holds.”Aarti was born in Wardha and Santosh in Ahmedabad, two places historically entwined with Gandhi.Santosh would pass Sabarmati Ashram daily by bus on his way to Gandhinagar, curious but never stepping inside. After their marriage in 1990, Aarti took him there.“When she said, ‘We used to attend prayers here,’ I began seeing the place differently,” he recalled. “Then came Gandhiji’s autobiography and Ramnarayan V Pathak’s ‘Mohanmathi Mahatma’. Before long, I had fallen in love with Gandhiji and books related to him.”The couple later visited Gandhian institutions across India.The house also contains around 30-40 books on Sardar Patel and 20-30 on B R Ambedkar. Copies of Gandhiji’s autobiography are given as gifts to those who are keen to know more about the Father of the Nation.“For us, Independence is not only a date to celebrate,” the couple said. “Ideas represented by Independence must be within everyone’s reach.”
Children at the inauguration of Mahatma Gandhi Granth Mandir, Nirnay Nagar, Ahmedabad Screenshot
