(23.9.1903 - 2.7.1950)

The first time I met Yusuf Meherally was in the May of 1953 in the hospital compound of Yeravada Central Prison. I was a ‘C’ class prisoner and Meherally was an ‘A’ class prisoner. I was arrested while demonstrating in support of a fast undertaken by Gandhiji who was held in confinement at the Aga Khan‘s palace in Pune, and sentenced to three months’ hard labour. Though we were political prisoners, by virtue of our being classified as ‘C’ class prisoners we were put along with convicted criminals. We would be taken inside the prison barracks after a day’s hard work and locked up for the night after a head count. We lived in a room admeasuring 8ft by 10ft. with one toilet seat to be shared with 5 to 10 convicts. The food supplied to us was terrible. It was so bad that we the political prisoners went on hunger strike. The prison authorities were unmoved; and, to our utter disgust, even the ‘A’ class prisoners among whom were such stalwarts Mr. Morarji Desai, Mr. B. G. Kher, Mr. S. K. Patil, Mr. Asoka Mehta and Mr. Yusuf Meherally were unmoved. The strike collapsed on the fourth day.

Disappointed by this total lack of concern by our ‘A’ class leaders we decided to convey our disappointment by writing to them. The task of writing the letter fell on me. The letter was delivered to Mr. Kher by an obliging warder. Mr. Kher promptly conveyed his reply which was that it was Gandhiji’s directive that the satyagrahis should follow prison rules when in prison. Kher tore the letter without showing it to any of his fellow ‘A’ class prisoners. We, the ‘C’ class prisoners, took this rejection to mean that individuals who claimed to be our leaders were content to enjoy the better facilities they had leaving the rank and file to their fate.

Yusuf Meherally came to know afterwards that the letter from the ‘C’ class prisoners was addressed to him too. He went to Mr. Kher who informed him on the action he had taken of conveying Gandhiji’s directive to the letter writer. He also told Meherally that the letter was signed by one Kisan. That was enough for him to start hunting for that Kisan who had addressed the letter to him. He got his warder to trace me and was able to meet me in the prison hospital a few days later. It had to be the hospital, as prisoners were not allowed to visit one another. Meherally so managed things that I was able to be in the hospital.

I still recall that meeting. On entering the hospital compound I spotted Meherally in the crowd and proceeded towards him. and before I could fully introduce myself, he caught me by my hand and pressed me closely as if he was meeting a long lost friend. The feeling of warmth that Yusufbhai passed on to me that moment reverberated like an electric current. He apologised profusely for the lapse of the top leaders to support our demands and additionally conveyed his feeling of guilt as if he alone was response for this lapse. All my anger melted away. Meherally became my Yusufbhai from that minute on. Visiting the hospital became an eagerly awaited rendezvous. In fact I had known Yusufbhai from the time I was possibly fourteen. We had participated in Prabhat pheries, processions and demonstrations since the time we were kids. We served as errand boys for ‘Desh Sevikas’ who were picketing in front of wine shops in Cavel Street now called Kolbhat Lane. I have seen Yusubhai sob on seeing a volunteer crushed down for having dared to stop a truck carrying foreign textiles. We had seen Meherally’s gumastas ( he was then leader of the gumastas union) parading demanding minimum service condition. Kalbadevi-Bhuleshwar-Hanuman Galli were Meherally’s arena for fighting social oppression, injustice and inequality as well as for vanquishing the orthodox within the Congress. Meherally had exhorted me “to live dangerously” and to keep hopes high expectations low” while signing my autograph book. For me the meeting in Yeravada prison in my eighteenth year was his discovering me.

Yusufbhai’s daily routine in Yeravada prison as an outpatient was to reach out to each and every ailing inpatient, to utter soothing words and give sometimes a quarter of a soap cake, a pinch of tooth powder and, if available, a book. It was exhilarating to watch him face the patients, not always friendly, and see them cooling down in the waves of love that Yusufbhai directed at all who met him.

The time spent in the prison hospital was a godsend as it provided me the opportunity to observe very closely a highly sensitive soul. But this rare privilege of being with Yusufbhai couldn’t last for ever. I was a convict with a set sentence and he was a detenu with an unspecified period of detention and we never knew as to when and in what circumstances we would meet again. He told me one day “Kisan, you will be free soon and I will not be seeing you as frequently as we do now. You should write letters to me but your letters signed as Kisan will never reach me. I can receive letters from my relations hence you should sign as Kasam in your letters. I will also address you as Kasam”. I realized instantly that there was absolutely no difference between Kisan and Kasam or between a Hindu and a Muslim. Both were human beings capable equally of showering love on other living beings. It was Yusufbhai who implanted this capability of developing love into me and many others who came to know him.

One day a post card from Yusufbhai informed me that he was being brought to Bombay for medical treatment. He asked me to get into his second class compartment at Dadar and to be with him upto Byculla railway station where the prison guards would detrain him for handing over to the Arthur Road Central prison guards. I located him at Dadar encircled by prison guards. However I was shocked to see him totally broken in health. He could not stand up or move without support.

I knew from the time of our Yeravada meetings that Yusufbhai was keeping indifferent health however I was not prepared for a total collapse in the intervening period. He informed me that the government had decided to transfer him to Bombay as Poona did not have proper facilities for treating his ailment. Before I could respond he said that his younger brother Ahmed was to meet us at Byculla station however no hint on the seriousness of his ailment should be given to him. “Tell Ahmed that I am suffering from backache or some sort of sciatica” he instructed me. Much against my conscience I helped him to maintain this unreal façade only to support Yusufbhai in his plan of not wishing to hurt his family members.

His condition took a turn for the worse and he was rushed to Bombay’s municipal hospital the KEM Hospital. Even in his delirium we could hear him describing the beauty of the snow clad peaks of the Himalayas sustaining the sub-continent; the grandeur of the thousand year old temples and mosques; the serenity of the rivers that nurtured the life and majesty of the seas that washed the country’s shores for millions of years. The masterpieces of Ajanta and Ellora, Belur and Halebid, Barhat and Bagh were being described in a running commentary as if the beholder was viewing the exhibits along with the listeners.

As part of the freedom struggle I conceived the idea of an Indian National Exhibition to depict the exploitation by an alien ruler of different aspects of Indian life. The office of the Indian National Congress had just been reopened at Jinnah Hall. S. K. Patil asked me to present the exhibition comprising 23 sections including the political uprising of the Indian people beginning with the 1857 war of independence. Everything was progressing very smoothly when things changed all of a sudden. Patil, during a visit to the Exhibition office found posters depicting Jayaprakash Narayan and Achyut Patwardhan and with this his interest in the exhibition vanished because they were socialists. My explanation to him that these leaders had been included because of their role in the Quit India movement which had inspired thousands of youngsters did not impress him. He managed to have the exhibition deferred indefinitely.

From his sick bed Yusufbhai heard of this and got together a few friends who contributed funds to hold the exhibition elsewhere. He persuaded Raja Rao and Dixit who owned the Chetana Restaurant to host the exhibition. Chetana Restaurant had by then become a haunt for progressive thinkers and writers. It was a place where Jayaprakash Narayan, Achyut Patwardhan and other socialists met whenever they were in Bombay. The exhibition was inaugurated by Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay. She opened a packet gifted by Yusufbhai and it was a catalogue of the exhibition - a four page publication carrying the Konarak wheel, an introduction by Yusufbhai and a list of pictorial being exhibited. He explained the genesis of the exhibition and ended by saying that that the exhibition was the creation of a young college student Kisan Mehta who felt during his stay in the Yeravada Central Prison that the glorious history if India’s struggle for freedom needed to be presented to the people in the correct perspective. And all this he did from his sick bed. I had no inkling that he was preparing such a catalogue. Nowhere in the catalogue was there any reference to Yusufbhai’s own role in ensuring that the exhibition was held. This was typical of his habit of extolling his friends while keeping himself in the background.

This was the man that we lost on that sad day in 1950 when he breathed his last!

Mr. Kisan Mehta, former Municipal Corporator and founder of the Save Bombay Committee.