“We found your number in Gandhi’s diary. He was hit by a car near the highway and he died,” B. Krishnaiah, a ration shop owner and political activist, told me on the phone around 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, December 9.
I last met Gangappa – or ‘Gandhi’ – walking on that Bangalore-Hyderabad highway on November 24. It was around 10:30 a.m. He was on his way to Anantapur town to start his day in his Gandhi costume. He was staying at a roadside eatery in Raptadu village, roughly eight kilometres from Anantapur. “Around two months ago, someone told me there is an old man who needs a place, so I let him stay here. I even gave him food sometimes,” says Venkatrami Reddy, the owner of the eatery. Krishnaiah, who phoned me, often drank tea here and occasionally chatted with Gangappa.
I had written a story about Gangappa for PARI in May 2017. He was around 83 years old then. After 70 years as an agricultural labourer, he had refashioned himself as the Mahatma – dressing up as Gandhi and positioning himself in public places across Anantapur town in western Andhra Pradesh. The alms he received amounted to a better income than what he had earned from agricultural labour.
Gangappa had retired as a labourer in 2016 after he fainted while working in the fields. Then he started braiding ropes for money, but his old man’s dexterity didn’t pay much. That was when he decided to dress up as Gandhi.
His do-it-yourself costume was improvised using everyday objects. He used Pond’s powder from a 10-rupee plastic box to make himself “shine” like the Mahatma. Cheap sunglasses purchased from a roadside shop were his Gandhi spectacles. A 10-rupee cane from the local market was his walking stick. He used a motorbike’s rear-view mirror, which he had found somewhere, to check his make-up and costume.
