Commonplace: No Pressing Engagements

THE COURTHOUSE BALCONY.

Gandhi steps from the courtroom to the balcony. A huge cheer comes up from the massed peasants below. As he smiles down at them, he is turned by

A voice: Gandhiji!—Gandhiji! Mr. Gandhi!

Four young Indians—elegantly dressed in English clothes —are following him, having plunged through the crowd in the courtroom. A beat—and the first young man addresses him over the chaos.

FIRST YOUNG MAN (his accent is as refined as his clothes): Gandhiji—we are from Bihar. We received a cable this morning from an old friend who was at Cambridge with us. (A smile.) His name is Nehru and I believe you know him.

Gandhi reacts—with surprise and caution.

GANDHI: Indeed.

FIRST YOUNG MAN: He tells us you need help. And we have come to give it.

Again Gandhi is surprised—but even more cautious. Behind him, the crowd begins to chant “Gandhi—Gandhi.”

GANDHI: I want to document, coldly, rationally, what is being done here. It may take months—many, many months.

FIRST YOUNG MAN (they’re eager, impressed): We have no pressing engagements.

It sounds casually ironic, but they look determined, even angry.

GANDHI: You will have to live with the peasants. (They nod.) I have nothing to pay you. (They only smile.) Hmm.

He is looking at them with a soupçon of scepticism but he is beginning to smell victory. His name echoes around him and is taken up even louder as the news spreads to the street.

John Briley, Gandhi: The Screenplay (Grove Press, 1983), 87-88.