How should we treat icons? The success of Gandhi Virudh Gandhi - a play on the Mahatma's troubled relationship with his son - and the recent banning of a play on Nathuram Godse has suddenly turned the spotlight on the greatest icon of all, Mahatma Gandhi. Should a great leader's life be opened to examination and perhaps criticism? The question needs a bit of soul searching, particularly in a country which has shown itself to be remarkably touchy about revered names. On the other hand, what we need to consider is whether our time-favoured practice of honouring leaders: renaming roads, airports and putting up statues, has actually served the purpose it was meant for.As far as Gandhi is concerned, there are Gandhi statues and Gandhi parks everywhere and probably the most ubiquitous thing you are likely to encounter anywhere you go in India is a road named after the father of the nation. Calcutta, Chennai, Bangalore, Pune, Lucknow, Porbundar - all have their Mahatma Gandhi Roads, as of course, doesMumbai. Have these helped perpetuate the ideals of Gandhism? I took a walk down Mumbai's very own M G Road to see how it has served the memory of this century's greatest leader.Hutatma Chowk seemed an appropriate point to begin. A memorial to martyrs engaged in the struggle for an independent state of Maharashtra and an elaborate colonial fountain has provided an unlikely but popular setting in the recent past for dharnas by parties as varied as striking bank staffers, blue collar workers and students.Crossing over, after negotiating my way through the car park and the traffic, I came to the Fountain Dry Fruit store, famed for its selection of salted cashew nuts, dry snacks and malai peda. Black robed advocates flocked past on their way to the High Court across the street. The Hongkong Bank, Grindlays and the Bank of India stood next to it, cheek by jowl in regal splendour.I walked on, past the shops selling denim goods (stretch, stonewashed, coloured, blue), workday shirts andphotographic equipment. I passed a tobacconist and a beer bar or two. On the other side of the pavement the hawkers had set out their wares: toy watches, rexine bags, and cheap phones, shavers and alarm clocks with dubious foreign labels. I peeked into the marble foyer of the New India Assurance Company building where a few men were standing about with apparently little to do. I stepped into the cool, silent, computer-linked interiors of the Bank of Hyderabad for a minute and wondered if the same transformation had taken place in the maddeningly slow nationalised bank down the street.A blackboard outside the Rasraj restaurant advertised its menu for the day: Mushroom Pizza, Cheese Pizza, 3 Men In A Boat, Dahi Bhel. A few feet away a budding entrepreneur had set up shop in an upturned umbrella selling gaudy stickers of gods and goddesses. Music filled on air emerging from stalls where cassettes of film music and bhajans jostled with the latest party mix. Across the street were the bleak wallsof the university, long relocated to the distant suburbs.Water had collected in the gaping holes on the pavement and gunny sacks were strewn here and there to soak up the water that splashed periodically from the canvas sheets covering the stalls. Under transparent plastic cheap copies of Deepak Chopra and Chicken Soup vied for attention competing with the cigarette and panwallah stalls.Up ahead on the left was Kala Ghoda named after the state (King Edward VII on a black horse) that once stood there. The statue now languishes in the Byculla Zoo. Efforts to reinstate it have been mired in controversy. Should free Indians reinstate a memorial to a colonial ruler? And if a statue must be put up, says the Congress, it should be of their own former leader, Rajiv Gandhi! Directly opposite the Kala Ghoda circle used to be a street charmingly called Hope street. Had the renaming zeal hit it as well. I don't know. I didn't have the heart to check.
