Objects of Our Desire

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During the last years of his life, Gandhi was well-known around the world. Everyone wanted to see him. Ever inventive, Gandhi found a way to accommodate them by doing his paperwork while sitting in his front yard.

One day the secretary opened an envelope. Two sheets of paper, attached to each other by a paper clip, came out. Quickly, he crumpled the sheets of paper and threw them in the wastebasket. Gandhi asked him the reason for this and was told that the letter contained obscenities directed at him. Gandhi insisted upon reading the letter himself. Once he had finished, he took the paper clip out and threw the two sheets of paper away. His secretary was amazed that he did not look upset at all. "Bapu, has the hatred in this letter not hurt you?" Gandhi smiled and said that he was not affected because he was certain that the epithets and curses in the letter had no application to him at all. He added that the man who wrote the letter perhaps knew this too and, to make up for his assault, had sent along the gift of a paper clip. It was as important to not let the hatred contaminate oneself as it was to enjoy the gift of this paper clip.

. . . in the midst of the inevitable suffering of life, solace and even joy often come to us in the form, so to speak, of a paper clip.

Prologue to Objects of Our Desire, Salman Akhtar

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Jacqueline

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