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NICOLE VILLALPANDO RAISING AUSTIN

Lessons from Gandhi from grandson, Austin writerPosted: 12:00 a.m. Friday, April 18, 2014

BY NICOLE VILLALPANDO - AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Austin children’s author Bethany Hegedus had watched the World Trade Center tragedy from a building

across the street just a month earlier when she heard Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, speak at a

town hall meeting. He shared the stories of nonviolence his grandfather told him.

She remembers turning to friends and telling them she felt these stories could be a picture book. “There was

something important there,” she says.

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4/18/2014 Lessons from Gandhi from grandson, Austin writer | www.mystatesman.com

http://www.mystatesman.com/news/lifestyles/parenting/lessons-from-gandhi-from-grandson-austin-writer/nfbgX/?icid=statesman_internallink_mystatesmaninvit… 2/10

Arun Gandhi spent two years living with his grandfather in India.

A few months went by and finally, in January 2002, she wrote an email to Arun Gandhi and explained that she

had never been published but was going to be starting a writing program to get her master’s degree.

In her head she went over the reasons why she shouldn’t be the one to write about Arun Gandhi’s childhood

experiences with his grandfather: She wasn’t a Gandhi scholar, she had never been to India, she was a white

woman.

To her surprise, he said yes.

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SIMON AND SCHUSTER

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4/18/2014 Lessons from Gandhi from grandson, Austin writer | www.mystatesman.com

http://www.mystatesman.com/news/lifestyles/parenting/lessons-from-gandhi-from-grandson-austin-writer/nfbgX/?icid=statesman_internallink_mystatesmaninvit… 3/10

Austin writer Bethany Hegedus took a chance and sent an email to Arun Gandhi, pitching him a children’s book based on ...Read More

SIMON AND SCHUSTER

4/18/2014 Lessons from Gandhi from grandson, Austin writer | www.mystatesman.com

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The book, “Grandfather Gandhi,” came out last month and is expected to be part of a curriculum project

between BookPeople and the Austin Independent School District this fall. In Austin, they will kick off summer

reading at BookPeople on June 7.

“I was very keen on sharing the lessons,” Arun Gandhi says. “It made a difference in my life. (Hegedus) was

young and enthusiastic.”

Arun Gandhi has spent the last 30 years as an activist in the United States — he now lives in Rochester, N.Y.

Before that he was an activist in India. Many of his grandfather’s 14 grandchildren are involved in some kind of

activism, he says.

4/18/2014 Lessons from Gandhi from grandson, Austin writer | www.mystatesman.com

http://www.mystatesman.com/news/lifestyles/parenting/lessons-from-gandhi-from-grandson-austin-writer/nfbgX/?icid=statesman_internallink_mystatesmaninvit… 5/10

“Grandfather Gandhi” is written by Gandhi’s grandson Arun Gandhi and Austin writer Bethany Hegedus.

Arun Gandhi, who is now 80, spent most of his childhood in South Africa, where he says he was too dark to fit

in with whites and too light to fit in with Zulus. When he was 12, he went to his grandfather’s ashram and

stayed there until just before his grandfather’s death two years later.

He came to the ashram with a lot of anger and isolation. His grandfather would devote an hour a day to him,

despite his busy schedule.

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SIMON AND SCHUSTER

4/18/2014 Lessons from Gandhi from grandson, Austin writer | www.mystatesman.com

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One of his grandfather’s lessons is in the book. On the soccer field, young Arun gets pushed down accidentally.

He picks up a rock to throw it at the boy who pushed him and finds everyone staring at him. He runs to his

grandfather’s hut, thinking he’s the only one who gets angry.

Then his grandfather says, “Have I not told you how anger is like electricity? … It is. Anger can strike like

lightening and split a living tree in two. … Or it can be channeled, transformed. A switch can be flipped and it

can shed light like a lamp.”

That lesson has turned into a pledge that kids can sign on the website grandfathergandhi.com: “I pledge to

listen to my anger, to see what it has to teach me. I pledge to not bully or cause harm, with words or with

weapons. I pledge to look for the light, to see it in every situation. I pledge to find my own unique tools and

talents. I pledge to forgive myself and others. I pledge to live my life as light.”

Arun Gandhi says his grandfather was always calm. “It doesn’t mean he doesn’t get angry. He didn’t express

anger the way we do. He channeled his anger into something constructive.”

Hegedus says she has learned so much from Arun Gandhi. When she first started working on the book, she

says she felt very respectful and reserved toward him. Now, she says he feels more like a grandfather who has

put a great deal of trust in her.

One of the things she wanted to make sure the book didn’t do was to talk down to kids or to hit them over the

head with a message. What appealed to Hegedus about the story was that it was relatable. Of course, she says,

“A lot of kids won’t have a grandfather who is a world renowned peace leader.”

They can relate to feeling shame about the expectation to live up to other people’s wishes, and to feeling

angry. “When you get shoved, you want to shove back,” she says.

Hegedus has taken the book on tour to different schools around the country. Often, kids have little knowledge

of who Gandhi was. Or they might know that Martin Luther King Jr. was influenced by him and that’s it. She

sees the book as one way to keep Gandhi’s principles alive, and adds that she and Arun Gandhi hope to do

another book about his time with his grandfather.

“It was more than a book,” she says. “We believed it into being.”

“Grandfather Gandhi”

Arun Gandhi and Bethany Hegedus, illustrated by Evan Turk

$17.99, Simon and Schuster

Book reading and signing with music by Ustad Nizami, Indian treats and a special video hello from Arun

4/18/2014 Lessons from Gandhi from grandson, Austin writer | www.mystatesman.com

http://www.mystatesman.com/news/lifestyles/parenting/lessons-from-gandhi-from-grandson-austin-writer/nfbgX/?icid=statesman_internallink_mystatesmaninvit… 7/10

Gandhi

When: 4 p.m. June 7

Where: BookPeople, 603 N. Lamar Blvd.

Information: bookpeople.com

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