To feel the pain of others, and to help those in misery

Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi, was shot dead on January 30, 1948--only a few months after his successful struggle to boot out the British.

One of Gandhi's favorites among the prayer music is this  While the reference to the Hindu god, Vishnu, might distract a militant atheist, I ignore the Vishnu part and appreciate, and love, the ideas expressed there. For instance, this:

Vaishnav people are those who:
Feel the pain of others,
Help those who are in misery

Wouldn't you want to be friends with such people?  Wouldn't you want to be such a person?  A wonderful ideal to work towards, though a tall order for most of us mortals.

So, yes, it was Gandhi's favorite.

The video below is an instrumental version of that bhajan. The lead musician is Ustad Amjad Ali Khan.  Way back, when I was still an undergraduate student, I spent a few precious rupees from my meager allowance to attend his concert in Madras' Music Academy.  I went alone, because I could not convince anybody from my generation of friends and family to go with me. As exhilarating it was, I felt the lack of companionship that evening. I should have known then it would be a recurring theme in my life :(

But, I digress!  Yes, a Muslim musician and a Hindu bhajan.  How cool is that, and how awesome the music he produces is!



The music below is Ustad Bismillah Khan's powerfully emotional rendering of Gandhi's another favorite "bhajan"--Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram. Yes, another Muslim musician masterfully treating a Hindu bhajan. A few years ago, when talking family stories, I came to know that the shehnai was a favorite of my grandfather's, perhaps a result of his undergraduate studies at Benares, which was also home to Bismillah Khan and many other musicians.



I worry that such coexistence and celebrations in daily life, among the regular folks, have all become a distant and faded memory, as much as Gandhi and his messages have become.