Memories don’t die

Obituary

Father Thomas Augustine

Some memories run in your veins like a soothing feeling. They are left by people who have touched your heart one way or another. A simple gesture, a timely help, or a kind word at the right moment: that’s enough to leave lasting impressions on the palimpsest of our memories.

Today I’m destined to bid farewell to a person who left a few such memories in my being. An automobile accident has brought a tragic end to Father Thomas Augustine’s life. He was a priest in the congregation of the Salesians of Don Bosco. I was 15 when I met him first at a Salesian school in Tirupattur, Tamil Nadu, where I was a trainee for priesthood and he was a teacher. My memoir, Autumn Shadows, recalls how he made a place for himself in my memories. Let me quote the relevant passage:

I cried when I was diagnosed with chicken pox as if it was the most grievous sin on my part not to have protected myself against the disease which had already contracted two other aspirants of my batch.  I was quarantined to a room in the priests’ wing of the seminary where the other two became my instant company.  When those two were declared fit for normal life a week after my arrival, I felt lonely.  I had to stay a week more in solitary confinement, I was told.  But in the first evening of my solitude, someone called my name from the playground in the back of the building. 

“Come out,” the man said standing in the playground.  It was one of the Brothers who looked after the aspirants. 

“Through the door?” I was dismayed.  I had been told in no uncertain terms that I would not cross the threshold of the room until I was certified fit to do so.  I trembled at the thought of breaking the commandment.

“Not through the door,” said the gently smiling Brother.  He was one of the most benign persons I ever came across in my life up to today.  “Jump through the window,” he told me.

I was amused.  I thought it quite funny that an ecclesiastical person was encouraging me to break through the window to my brief freedom.  I was a very small boy then and my body could easily pass through the bars of the window.  I was in the playground with Brother Thomas Augustine in a moment.  We walked in the playground while all other aspirants were engaged in serious studies in their respective study rooms.  This ritual continued every day without fail until I was released from my solitary confinement a week or so later. I don’t remember anything of what we talked during our fairly long walks.  There is one thing that I never forgot in the years that followed: I was walking with an angel, someone who knew only to love. [Emphasis added]

I didn’t have much association with him after that personally. A few years after the above episode, Father Thomas met with a scooter accident and was unconscious for quite many days. I remember writing a highly emotional letter to him wishing him speedy recovery. In those days, I was still a student of priesthood and I offered prayer after prayer for his recovery. He was one of the finest persons I had ever come across, a gentle soul whose very presence was like a fondly caressing breeze.

When I decided to marry in the winter of 1995, exactly 20 years after my evening saunters in his angelic company on the playground of the Salesian school at Tirupattur, I met him personally at Don Bosco, Ernakulam to invite him.  His presence at the wedding added a touch of the divine to the function.

 

At my wedding: he's at extreme right

I didn’t meet him again after that much as I would love to have. But he always remained as a soothing memory in my consciousness.  That memory becomes an ache today.