Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, a child of mid-19th century Porbander in India, student of law in London qualifying as a barrister of the Inner Temple, fighter for minority rights in South Africa, canny politician, social reformer, insatiable soul ever in quest of the truth, speaker, writer and soldier extraordinaire in the fight for India's freedom from foreign rule, was in his 78th year in most of 1947. He would enter his 79th year on October 2.

Mahatma Gandhi had believed that he would live to be 125. In a life packed with crowded events and noted for its ceaseless toil, struggle, and self-denial, he took reasonably good care of his health with a combination of diet, physical exercise, meditation, religious devotion and nature-cure methods. His zest for life and energy were remarkable for a man of his age, but not surprising in one given over so strongly to rigorous self-discipline.

When India was on the verge of attaining freedom, but at the cost of being separated into India and Pakistan, some of Gandhiji's irrepressible zest for living seemed to come down. The flare-up of fratricidal communal violence in parts of India, where the prospect of Partition unleashed bestial violence in the name of religion, had him ceaselessly toiling to contain the spreading contagion, often at peril to his safety about which he was completely unconcerned. But even as he thought, prayed, wrote, travelled and spoke, appealing everywhere to the conscience of his fellow-citizens, his thoughts were taking on a note almost of resignation. He expressed, at times, a horror of living long if it was only to see more and more of the human tragedies that were unfolding all around.

The story of the last 200 days of the life of this great apostle is packed with a spirit of drama. Those days marked what few at the time realised was to be the rendering of the swan-song of a great life of our times.

We commence this diary of events starting on the 15th of July 1947.

One month remained for India to attain the freedom for which he had fought for so long. Two hundred days remained to be played out in the life of the man who had been christened Mohandas Karamchand long years ago, in 1869, in the Kathiawad region of British India. It was a nation ruled by the most powerful Empress of her time, the grand Queen Victoria. That rule by Britain was drawing to its close in July 1947.