Whatever I am, it is because of Gandhi; whatever I have learnt it is through Gandhi, these are the words of legendary and India's most popular broadcaster Ameen Sayani. Sayani, who was speaking at an event held by Mumbai Press Club to commentate the 150th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, remembered how the father of the nation had impacted the broadcaster to switch from English to Hindi. Or to be specific Hindustani language which is a mix of Hindi and Urdu. Sayani says that many of his family members like his dad's uncle and even his maternal grandfather were very close to Gandhi. His mother who was a social worker and worked in the field of educating especially women was inspired by Gandhi. According to Sayani on Gandhiji's advise his mother started a forthrightly newspaper Rehbar that was published from Mumbai in four fonts, Hindu, Urdu, Marathi and Gujarati. This newspaper is from where Sayani learnt the Hindustani language. "I would read Hindi and Urdu poetries that were printed in the newspaper. I started almost like a peon at my mother's office by helping her with folding the papers, sending them via registered post and slowly started reading them and the two cilium a of Hindi and Urdu poetries were my favourite." Gandhi had asked his mother to keep the language simple and easy as he felt that there were many who wanted to have a sanskritised Hindi which he was opposed to. "Some people wanted the usage of Hindi even for words like signal and tie, they wanted to call it Aavam javam suchika and kanth langot respectively. Instead of this Gandhiji was more for Hindustani language," he said. Sayani was an English broadcaster and when he was in school in Gwalior, one day he heard on radio about Gandhiji's killing that impacted him heavily and he decided that he will shift to Hindi broadcasting. The below part is hard to believe, but Sayani failed the Hindi broadcaster's test. "I was allowed to read the script, but then was told, I had an English and Gujarati accent and hence was failed," he said. Sayani was heart broken, but got a job in Hindi on Radio Ceylon and the rest is history. As a child, Sayani would visit prayer meeting of Gandhi and says that at these meetings one could see people, leaders and heads from different religion and Gandhi would always say "God is One", which Sayani believes and to further make his point he went on to quote the Rig veda and even the Quran.

Stay updated with all the Mumbai Latest News headlines here. For more exclusive & live news updates from all around India, stay connected with NYOOOZ.