Skip to main content

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.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Country where humour died

Humour died a thousand deaths in India after May 2014. The reason – let me put it as someone put it on X.  The stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra called a politician some names like ‘traitor’ which made his audience laugh because they misunderstood it as a joke. Kunal Kamra has to explain the joke now in a court of justice. I hope his judge won’t be caught with crores of rupees of black money in his store room . India itself is the biggest joke now. Our courts of justice are huge jokes. Our universities are. Our temples, our textbooks, even our markets. Let alone our Parliament. I’m studying the Ramayana these days in detail because I’ve joined an A-to-Z blog challenge and my theme is Ramayana, as I wrote already in an earlier post . In order to understand the culture behind Ramayana, I even took the trouble to brush up my little knowledge of Sanskrit by attending a brief course. For proof, here’s part of a lesson in my handwriting.  The last day taught me some subhashit...

Lucifer and some reflections

Let me start with a disclaimer: this is not a review of the Malayalam movie, Lucifer . These are some thoughts that came to my mind as I watched the movie today. However, just to give an idea about the movie: it’s a good entertainer with an engaging plot, Bollywood style settings, superman type violence in which the hero decimates the villains with pomp and show, and a spicy dance that is neatly tucked into the terribly orgasmic climax of the plot. The theme is highly relevant and that is what engaged me more. The role of certain mafia gangs in political governance is a theme that deserves to be examined in a good movie. In the movie, the mafia-politician nexus is busted and, like in our great myths, virtue triumphs over vice. Such a triumph is an artistic requirement. Real life, however, follows the principle of entropy: chaos flourishes with vengeance. Lucifer is the real winner in real life. The title of the movie as well as a final dialogue from the eponymous hero sugg...

56-Inch Self-Image

The cover story of the latest issue of The Caravan [March 2025] is titled The Balakot Misdirection: How the Modi government drew political mileage out of military failure . The essay that runs to over 20 pages is a bold slap on the glowing cheek of India’s Prime Minister. The entire series of military actions taken by Narendra Modi against Pakistan, right from the surgical strike of 2016, turns out to be mere sham in this essay. War was used by all inefficient kings in the past in order to augment the patriotism of the citizens, particularly in times of trouble. For example, the Controller of the Exchequer taxed the citizens as much as he thought they could bear without violent protest and when he was wrong the King declared a war against a neighbouring country. Patriotism, nationalism, and religion – the best thing about these is that a king can use them all very effectively to control the citizens’ sentiments. Nowadays a lot of leaders emulate the ancient kings’ examples enviabl...

Abdullah’s Religion

O Abdulla Renowned Malayalam movie actor Mohanlal recently offered special prayers for Mammootty, another equally renowned actor of Kerala. The ritual was performed at Sabarimala temple, one of the supreme Hindu pilgrimage centres in Kerala. No one in Kerala found anything wrong in Mohanlal, a Hindu, praying for Mammootty, a Muslim, to a Hindu deity. Malayalis were concerned about Mammootty’s wellbeing and were relieved to know that the actor wasn’t suffering from anything as serious as it appeared. Except O Abdulla. Who is this Abdulla? I had never heard of him until he created an unsavoury controversy about a Hindu praying for a Muslim. This man’s Facebook profile describes him as: “Former Professor Islahiaya, Media Critic, Ex-Interpreter of Indian Ambassador, Founder Member MADHYAMAM.” He has 108K followers on FB. As I was reading Malayalam weekly this morning, I came to know that this Abdulla is a former member of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Kerala , a fundamentalist organisation. ...

Violence and Leaders

The latest issue of India Today magazine studies what it calls India’s Gross Domestic Behaviour (GDB). India is all poised to be an economic superpower. But what about its civic sense? Very poor, that’s what the study has found. Can GDP numbers and infrastructure projects alone determine a country’s development? Obviously, no. Will India be a really ‘developed’ country by 2030 although it may be $7-trillion economy by then? Again, no is the answer. India’s civic behaviour leaves a lot, lot to be desired. Ironically, the brand ambassador state of the country, Uttar Pradesh, is the worst on most parameters: civic behaviour, public safety, gender attitudes, and discrimination of various types. And UP is governed by a monk!  India Today Is there any correlation between the behaviour of a people and the values and principles displayed by their leaders? This is the question that arose in my mind as I read the India Today story. I put the question to ChatGPT. “Yes,” pat came the ...