For peace in our time

Johannesburg home of Gandhi is now an intimate guesthouse-museum, writes Tania Levy

REASON TO VISIT

TO RETREAT from grabbing, grasping city life. The Satyagraha House is a block away from bustling Louis Botha Avenue but a world away in atmosphere and spirit.

ALL ABOUT IT

The house was built by Lithuanian-born architect Hermann Kallenbach, who called it The Kraal for its rondavel-like features.

In the early 1900s, Kallenbach and Mohandas Gandhi, then a young lawyer, began a lifelong friendship and Gandhi went to stay at The Kraal. During the few years he lived there he started developing the lifestyle and ideas he would become famous for: humility, non-violence, simplicity, vegetarianism.

These values have informed the conversion of The Kraal into The Satyagraha House by French travel company Voyageurs du Monde (in collaboration with South African Gandhi experts, a South African architect and French interior decorators). Meals are vegetarian, there are no television sets, radios or alcohol, and the decor is unfussy.

The beds are low, as was Gandhi's, to show humility and identification with the less privileged and the oppressed.

Curtains are made of the khadi cloth that Gandhi learnt to hand-spin while in South Africa and took to wearing instead of western clothes, as a political statement.

But spartan and ascetic The Satyagraha House is not. The bed linen is Indian cotton, there are fresh flowers in my room and if it had been winter, I could have curled up before a fireplace to dip into one of the books on Gandhi that are everywhere in the house.

Meals may be vegetarian, but they are hearty and generous. The three hot courses for supper are no small reason I am asleep earlier - and longer - than usual.

Next morning I stroll through the garden, in which a meditation corner has been created. Large concrete slabs are engraved, in Gandhi's handwriting, with quotes such as "My life is my message".

One section of the house has been turned into a formal museum, with time lines of Gandhi's and Kallenbach's lives. But really the whole house is a museum. On most of the walls are photographs, stories and quotes from the Indian leader.

I am amused by a photo of Kallenbach with a lovely old car which, a caption tells me, he bought to surprise Gandhi with when he fetched him from one of his stints in prison. But Gandhi was furious at the extravagance.

I marvel at a sepia photo showing the area I am in, in the early 1900s - little more than veld and an occasional dirt track.

There is a photo of 2000 Indians marching from Newcastle in Natal to the Transvaal in non-violent protest against regulations discriminating against Indians. I read more about Gandhi's battle with Jan Smuts over these laws. Actually, "battle" is the wrong word because it was non-violence Gandhi and his followers adopted to resist the laws.

This was when Gandhi coined the term Satyagraha, from the Sanskrit satya (truth) and agraha (force or holding firmly to), the repudiation of violence even when threatened with violence. Far from being passive capitulation, Gandhi explained, Satyagraha was powerful from a moral base (adherence to the truth) rather than a physical one.

THINGS TO DO

Slow down. Relax. Reflect. As The Satyagraha House director Didier Bayeye says, this is not an entertainment destination , but an inspiration destination. Beginner-level yoga and meditation sessions can be arranged.

•  Levy was a guest of The Satyagraha House

DETAILS:

• Contact: 011-485-5928
• Website: www.satyagrahahouse.com
• Rates for the South African public, per person per night (breakfast included), are from R1050
• The house is open for visits by the public, free of charge, but only by prior arrangement
• Further reading: Gandhi's Johannesburg by Eric Itzkin