I was having tea at home on the evening of 30th January , 1948 , when I was called to Birla house by an urgent telephone . Gandhiji had been shot on his way to a prayer meeting . I was numb with shock as I got into the car .
At the Birla house , Gandhiji's relatives and followers had gathered round his body . There was silence in the room as Gandhiji breathed his last . Words of Bapuji's death had spread through Delhi like a flame fanned by wind . Sad groups of man and woman had collected around Birla House. Out of every window one could see a brown blue of faces . They did not make a sound . There was an unnatural silence . It was as if time stood still for those few minutes.
The prople were too stunned to speak in the beginning . Later they clamoured wildly , shouting and crying . They jostled one another in a stampede to break into the house . They calmed a little when it was announced that they would be allowed to see Gandhiji before the funeral .
When one is faced with the shock of a loved one's death , one whimpers : "What will become of me now that he has left me ?" This was surely the question uppermost in the mind of the mourning people . They looked like lost children . It was the question in many of our hearts as we sat , still shocked and unbelieving . We listened to the broadcast telling the people of India that their Bapu was no more .