Darpan letter · No. 132 October 2026

The ambulance, the convoy, and Gandhi’s mother

On Gandhi Jayanti, an ambulance stopped for a convoy, the Gītā that Gandhi called his mother, the thunder’s three syllables in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka, Tulsīdās’s king whose people suffer, and the talisman that turns a verse into a ten-second test

प्रिय साथी,

Today is Gandhi Jayanti, and I want to begin not with the Mahatma of the statues but with a man who, like you, had doubts. He once put plainly what the Gītā was to him: “The Gita is not only my Bible and my Koran, it is more than that, it is my mother.” And in Young India on 6 August 1925 he told his readers what a mother is for: “when doubt haunts me, when disappointments stare me in the face, and when I see not one ray of light on the horizon, I turn to the Bhagavadgita, and find a verse to comfort me; and I immediately begin to smile in the midst of overwhelming sorrow.” He translated it into Gujarati as Anāsaktiyoga, so that ordinary people could carry it. Today’s case card gives you exactly such a moment, and it lasts about ten seconds.

Read the second case card after this letter. The Hindu reports that Assam’s Chief Minister said stopping an ambulance to let his convoy pass was “not related” to the death of the patient, who was being shifted to Silchar Medical College Hospital on Wednesday and died on Thursday morning. He cited a critical liver ailment, and he also said that “no inconvenience should be caused to people due to his or any Minister’s movement.” The Indian Express separately reports four ambulances stuck on Delhi’s Barapullah Phase 3 flyover. The card then puts you in the Superintendent of Police’s chair. The pilot vehicle radios that an ambulance with a patient is on the route. The Minister’s office says the schedule is tight and five minutes will make him miss a function. Your escort commander says, “Protocol says clear the road.” Whether those minutes in Assam changed the outcome no letter can know, and the card rightly calls it beside the point. And the Chief Minister’s own sentence is the right one; take him at his word. The question is what happens to that sentence on a flyover, at speed, when an officer with a radio must turn it into an order in ten seconds.

For that, go back to one of the oldest scenes in our literature. In the fifth chapter of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, three kinds of children of Prajāpati live with their father as students: the devas, human beings and the asuras. When their studies end, each asks him for a final teaching, and to each he says a single syllable: “da”. Then the Upaniṣad says that the divine voice of the thunder still repeats it: तदेतदेवैषा दैवी वागनुवदति स्तनयित्नुर्द द द इति दाम्यत दत्त दयध्वमिति। तदेतत्त्रयं शिक्षेद्दमं दानं दयामिति॥ — tad etad evaiṣā daivī vāg anuvadati stanayitnur da da da iti dāmyata datta dayadhvam iti, tad etat trayaṃ śikṣed damaṃ dānaṃ dayām iti — this is what the divine voice, the thunder, repeats: da, da, da — restrain yourselves, give, be compassionate. One should learn these three: self-restraint, giving and compassion (5.2.1–5.2.3).

Look at who receives which lesson. The devas, the ones with the most power and pleasure, are told to restrain themselves. Human beings, inclined to hold on to what they have, are told to give. The asuras, inclined to cruelty, are told to be compassionate. The tradition does not tell the powerful to be kind as a favour. It tells them that their first discipline is dama, restraint, precisely because they are powerful. A convoy is power in motion. It exists for good reasons of security, but the thunder’s first syllable is addressed to it. Power that cannot slow down for a stretcher has forgotten the lesson the gods were given first.

The other two syllables belong to the rest of the road. Datta, give: what is asked of the Minister’s office is a gift of five minutes, which costs one function its punctuality and may give a family back the person it is waiting for. Dayadhvam, be compassionate: the escort commander is not a cruel man, and that is exactly the danger. Cruelty in a modern state rarely looks like an asura. It looks like a sentence repeated without thought — “protocol says clear the road” — while the person the road was built for waits behind a barricade. Dayā is the habit of seeing that person before the sentence finishes.

Now open the book Gandhi called his mother, at a verse he would have known by heart. In the fifth chapter Kṛṣṇa describes those who reach the peace of brahman: लभन्ते ब्रह्मनिर्वाणमृषयः क्षीणकल्मषाः। छिन्नद्वैधा यतात्मानः सर्वभूतहिते रताः॥ — labhante brahmanirvāṇam ṛṣayaḥ kṣīṇakalmaṣāḥ, chinnadvaidhā yatātmānaḥ sarvabhūtahite ratāḥ — the sages whose impurities are worn away, whose doubts are cut, who are self-controlled and who delight in the welfare of all beings, attain the peace of brahman (Bhagavad Gītā 5.25). Chinnadvaidhāḥ, the doubt is cut. Yatātmānaḥ, the self is held in check, the same dama the thunder taught. And the doubt is cut not by cleverness but by where the heart is turned: sarvabhūtahite ratāḥ, delighting in the good of all beings.

Place beside that verse the note Gandhi left near the end of his life, which Pyarelal published in Mahatma Gandhi: The Last Phase, and which the case card also ends with: “I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him.” And he ends: “Then you will find your doubts and your self melt away.” I do not claim he drew it from this verse; only that the two make the same movement. Doubt, and the self that is too much with you, are cut by turning towards the good of the weakest. The Gītā gives it as a description of the sage. Gandhi gave it as a test you can apply on a flyover. In the ambulance on your route lies the poorest and weakest person on that road at that moment, whatever their means. Your step is the one that serves him.

Gandhi had a second book he loved. In his Autobiography he wrote, “Today I regard the Ramayana of Tulsidas as the greatest book in all devotional literature.” Turn to the Ayodhyā Kāṇḍ, to the hour when Rāma is leaving for the forest and Lakṣmaṇa wants to follow him. Rāma asks him to stay. With Bharata away and the king old, Ayodhyā would be orphaned. Then he gives the reason in one line: जासु राज प्रिय प्रजा दुखारी। सो नृपु अवसि नरक अधिकारी॥ — jāsu rāja priya prajā dukhārī, so nṛpu avasi naraka adhikārī — the king in whose rule his beloved subjects suffer surely earns hell (Rāmcharitmānas, Ayodhyā Kāṇḍ, Dohā 71, Chaupāī 3). Notice the word priya. The people are beloved. And notice the moment: Rāma has just lost a throne, and the first thing he thinks of is not his loss but whether the people will suffer. That is the standard Tulsīdās sets for anyone who moves through a kingdom with authority. It is not a curse on anyone in today’s news; it is a measure for every office, including the one you will hold.

Be fair to the escort, as the card is. Threats to public figures are real, and a Superintendent who weakens security for the sake of a gesture is not being virtuous; he is being careless. The card asks you to decide well once, and then build a system so that the choice need not be made in ten seconds again: ambulance-priority standing orders, a live route plan shared with hospitals and the control room, and convoys trimmed to what security really needs. Restraint written into the standing order is dama that no longer depends on one officer’s courage.

And when it does depend on you, the card is clear. Order the escort to give way at once. Record the time and the reason in the log. Tell the Minister’s office the facts, without apology and without blame, and offer a safe alternative for the rest of the route. Do not hand the displeasure to the junior officer at the barricade; it is yours to carry. The Supreme Court in Parmanand Katara (1989) held that preserving life is the first duty of the State, within Article 21.

Let this make you proud. The thunder’s three syllables were heard by our ancestors before any state in the modern sense existed. The Gītā described a doer whose doubts are cut by love for the good of all beings. Tulsīdās made a prince in the hour of his own loss think first of the people’s grief. And in the twentieth century, a man from Porbandar took these old books into public life and showed the world that they could guide a political struggle. Since 2007 the United Nations has marked his birthday as the International Day of Non-Violence. Through him, the world remembers a conversation India has been having with itself for three thousand years. You are inheriting that conversation, not borrowing it.

For your preparation, three things. In GS4, the talisman and Gītā 5.25 together make a strong frame for any question on compassion towards the weaker sections, or on resolving a dilemma under time pressure; the da-da-da passage is an elegant opening for any question on the ethics of power, because it says that restraint is the first virtue of the strong. In GS2, the convoy case gives you Article 21 and Parmanand Katara. In the essay paper, “jāsu rāja priya prajā dukhārī” can carry a paragraph on why good governance is judged by the suffering it prevents, not the ceremonies it completes.

And now something about you. You also travel with a convoy: a timetable, a target, a plan for the week that must not be delayed. And sometimes an ambulance appears on your route — a parent who needs you for an afternoon, a friend who is falling apart, a younger student who asks for an hour. The thunder speaks to you too. Dāmyata: restrain the part of you that thinks only the schedule matters. Datta: give the hour. Dayadhvam: and keep a little compassion for yourself on the days the plan breaks. When doubt haunts you and you see no ray of light, do what Gandhi did. Go back to the mother. Find one verse, and let it steady you.

Somewhere on a road next year, or the year after, a pilot vehicle will radio you about an ambulance. Nobody will be watching, and there will be no time to look anything up. Let the thunder’s first syllable already be in you, and the face of the weakest person already in front of your eyes. Then your doubts and your self will melt away, and the road will open.

— आपका साथी, दर्पण

Sources: Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 5.2.1–5.2.3 · Bhagavad Gītā 5.25 · Rāmcharitmānas, Ayodhyā Kāṇḍ, Dohā 71, Chaupāī 3 · M. K. Gandhi, Young India, 6 August 1925 · M. K. Gandhi, An Autobiography, Part I, Ch. 10 · M. K. Gandhi’s talisman, in Pyarelal, Mahatma Gandhi: The Last Phase, Vol. II