So I was talking on the phone to a friend earlier today and unexpectedly and the conversation turned, I'm not entirely sure how, to Mahatma Gandhi. I happened to mention that today is the anniversary of the execution of Nathuram Godse, the man who shot him at point blank range as he was on his way to a prayer meeting.
This was of little interest to my friend and also of little interest, though he humoured me through it, was that when Nathuram was sentenced to death among those who protested were the first Prime Minister of India, who in large part owed his position to the work of Gandhi, and Gandhi's own two sons. This may sound strange, but it was because the death penalty was something the Mahatma was staunchly opposed to, but it lead to a rather unusual situation whereby those closest to the deceased were asking for the killer's life to be spared while others pushed for his death.
I finished explaining how this situation (despite the terrible crime, the effect it must have had on those involved and its long term repercussions for India and Pakistan) is interesting to me because of the irony of the children of a man who was killed in a political assassination asking for the death penalty to be stayed because it goes against the victim's political ideals. The response from my friend was something along the lines of "you know you think about these things far too much, and you're weird" which made me think I should probably record it here (which makes this the first time I've posted about thinking about the blog in real life).
The other thing he said was "you are full of these strange facts, next time I'm at one of those pub quiz trivia nights I want you on my team!" Which is fine, just don't expect me to be any help whatsoever in the sports round.
Still, I guess I can't be too weird, I had to look up the spelling of Nathuram Godse.
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