Champaklal Speaks

“She was Ambitious”

1953-03-31

Yesterday Mother saw the film Julius Caesar at the Playground.

Today she said: “The play is very interesting. In future, some may say about me that I was very ambitious. So I have written something very very interesting. But I won't show it now. I have kept it (showing me her bag which was hanging near her chair) very secret. When people will see it in future, they will find it interesting.”

I have not seen what Mother wrote. But I have found some small slips of paper on which, possibly, she made the original draft which may later have been expanded. Here are those notes:

It will be said of me: “She was ambitious, she wanted to transform the world.” But the world does not want to be transformed except by a very long and slow process, so slow that the change cannot be perceptible from one generation to the other.

I find that Nature delays and wastes. But she finds that I am too much in a hurry and too troublesome and exacting.

Let me write down all I have to say; let me foretell all that will be done, and then, if no one finds that I am doing it properly, I shall retire and leave others to do it.¹

31.3.53