Gandhi!

Gandhi is quite the popular man around here. The other day we were able to go and see one of the most important Gandhi related museums in the country. This particular museum was the house Gandhi himself stayed in when in Mumbai and was the site of many important events in his life.  He launched acts here. Gave a call to the country to win independence here. He was arrested here. He met with the Congress Working Party here. This house was a place where Gandhi lived and inspired nations.

The museum was comprised of three separate floors. The first floor housed Gandhi's library. Packed with more than 50,000 books, it is now used by students from the University [It would make studying pretty awesome to be doing it from Gandhi's library, huh?]  The third floor had three really interesting rooms. One was the space where Gandhi worked when he was actually staying in the house.  It has been preserved  to as close to the original setting as possible. The next two rooms housed twenty-eight mini figure depictions of Gandhi's life - from childhood to death. They were pretty impressive.

It was such a cool experience to tour this incredible monument of such an important and influential human being. This was the man who led India to independence and inspired movements for non-violence across the world. Pretty special dude. Amitabah Kant's, Branding India, talked about how oftentimes religious sites have the ability to attract a massive amount of tourists depending on the country and religious beliefs that reside there.  Furthermore, tourists will oftentimes combine religion with tourism in order to receive a more well-rounded vacation. This has the potential to be huge in and around India where the Hindu faith has such a strong presence.  I'm usually not a huge fan of going to museums and reading tiny little plaques with tiny little words telling me what I am looking at, but it was surprisingly interesting. There were still tiny plaques describing what I was reading in 50 words or less, but there were also little figurines to accompany the writing -- for a visual thinker like myself that is extremely helpful. So I'll leave you with some profound words from Gandhi..

He speaks the truth...right ladies :)

Until tomorrow,
Namaste.