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Throw Gandhi from the Train

By Kristy Smith

I have a set of “Chicken Soup for the Soul” videos that contain heart-warming stories of people doing the right thing. Watching them is supposed to encourage the viewer to do the right thing. Cinematherapy for hardened hearts.

One of the featured “Chicken Soup” stories involves famed Indian political leader Mahatma Gandhi. While nearly every Gandhi story reveals super-human levels of integrity, this particular one gets to me more than all the others. It involves Gandhi allegedly losing one of his shoes while jumping aboard a crowded passenger train as it moved away from the station.

This scene is hard for me to picture in an era where train jumping is not only frowned upon, but downright illegal, not to mention dangerous. Even harder to fathom is what Gandhi did next.

He reached down, plucked off his remaining shoe, and tossed it in the direction of its mate. So whoever found his first shoe would have the complete pair.

That would never occur to me. Even after having been exposed to Gandhi’s example. The nicest thing I have ever done was to return an accidentally abandoned case of soda.

I was eight month’s pregnant for my daughter when I found a forgotten case of Pepsi under a cart in the cart return area of a supermarket during a blizzard. I had just transferred my year-old son into his car seat and my groceries into the car trunk when I spotted the soda. Cart, kid, Pepsi, my big belly and I trudged back into the store, cursing the slushy December parking lot and my inability to ignore that darned case of pop.

“I can’t believe your honesty, especially under these weather conditions and in your condition,” said the customer service desk manager, clearly fearing pre-term, Pepsi-induced labor possibilities.

What she didn’t know is that I wouldn’t have been standing before her had it been diet Pepsi left in that cart. I hate regular soda, which made it easier to be honest. But I pretended along with her that my ethics were steadfast, not situational. Far be it for me to shake someone’s mistaken faith in humanity just before Christmas.

Back to the shoe dilemma. What would I have done if I’d found myself in Gandhi’s shoes or should I say “shoe?” That’s easy: Broken both legs jumping off the train to retrieve the dropped shoe. It no doubt matched some special outfit and had been purchased on sale, so I would need it back at all costs. Retrieval would have been reflexive. I’m a woman. A shoe’s a shoe. That’s that.

Perhaps that’s why Gandhi was a great spiritual leader and I am not. Well, ONE of the reasons.

I am the person who still has the mate to an earring she lost several years ago while visiting a friend in Ontario. Why? In case the lost bauble somehow manages to look me up using the on-line White Pages, obtains a passport, then hitches a ride back to my jewelry box.

Hey, it could happen. Dogs have been known to track down their families cross-country. Given current technology and a little ambition, there’s no reason costume jewelry couldn’t master international travel.

My husband says a man would risk neither life nor limb jumping off a train for a shoe.  Of course, this comes from the guy who owns one brown and one black pair of shoes.

He also pointed out a man would be wearing sensible shoes that would not come off so easily. Except that Gandhi was a vegetarian, hippie-type. In my mind, he was wearing Jesusy sandals, clogs or Krocs that day. Had to be.

My husband says if he lost one shoe, he would just hop on one foot to the nearest shoe store, buy a replacement pair and call it good. No big deal, just a minor inconvenience.

Inconvenience?! I made him promise that when I die jumping off the train retrieving my shoe, he’d make sure I was buried wearing both shoes.

And don’t forget to coordinate them with my burial outfit. I’m a firm believer your survivors’ handling of your death should parallel your handling of life.

Even though no one else would see my feet, I would know. And so would Saint Peter.