On any given day, Khimjibhai Prajapati would be an inconspicuous presence in a town throbbing with political and public cacophony of another kind. Mehsana district of Gujarat can boast of a number of luminaries – the legion led by none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Gujarat CM Anandiben Patel. Nevertheless, 66-year-old Prajapati, who has lived all his life begging for alms at temple doorsteps, is in an extraordinary league of his own.

The unpretentious Khimjibhai, an erstwhile tea stall owner, dressed in rags but donning spiritual riches far supreme is inadvertently earning a veritable reputation as a great benefactor known for self-effacing, charitable giving to children, especially girl students, for the cause of education. Lately, his expansive spirit of generosity benefited the Ghela Vasahat School, Mehsana. Unfettered by both his own modest countenance and the look of happy surprise on the students’ visage as he walked in, Khimjibhai distributed notebooks and pens to nearly 150 children from the Re. 5000 he had been carefully accruing. Prajapati – himself an emaciated, unkempt figure leaning on crutches for support – believes that the only way India can truly prosper as a nation is by way of education. Therefore, notwithstanding the cyclical vicissitudes of the nature of his own scanty earnings, his deeds of stunning philanthropy are neither few nor far between. Only a year back, he had donated uniforms to 11 underprivileged, impaired girls at the Shrimati Kesarbai Kilachand School for the Deaf.

For years a devout who himself lives on charity, he has been begging outside the temples of Mehsana. Aside from his own meager meals and money for the treatment for his wife’s illness, he has relentlessly been giving back to society. While almost every second man he encounters – his benefactor – can ‘afford’ an act of charity bigger than alms to Khimjibhai; it is this unassuming man who limps on fragile crutches that has shown that towering stature can only be earned when the archetype of ‘affordability’ is fluid, refined, magnanimous. The virtues of Deeksha (sanctified religious initiation) and Shiksha (education) reside in a heart that truly understands Bhiksha – not just the alms, but the act of giving itself. Not so long ago the PM had said, “To run Gujarat you need a 56-inch chest” – looking at Khimjibhai Prajapati you would say, to run anything, from a tea stall to a country, all you need is an incorruptible heart, a progressive, illumined mind and a spirit of illimitable generosity…