Veterans

At present I am staying in the community where veterans are living. Fr.George Hess, the founder of De Nobili Schools, Dhanbad, and Fr. Ed McGrath, one of the founding fathers of XLRI. Age catches up with everyone, whether you have done something monumental or just floated through life, lived like a spectator as his life passed through.

What surprises me is that students, who were taught by them 30 or 40 years back, remember them rather clearly and now and then come and visit them. It is not the subjects taught by them is being remembered, it is invariably the interactions they had with them.

They had accompanied them unconditionally, they had taken corrective actions whenever something wrong taken place, but never out of anger. They loved the work they did, and performed to their best. I am not saying they were without any faults, they had their share of frailties but when it came to students, they always placed them first.

Both are in their nineties, the common thread that one can see in them even now is the sense of humor. You can say anything to Ed McGrath, primarily because he has hearing problem and secondarily he can take anything as a joke. Very rarely I see him in a negative frame of mind. Though he is in constant pain, due to the old age his waist bones are weak and a source of continuous pain, he manages his life well.

They were happy when they were exceedingly busy and doing magnificent work, and they are happy when they are weak, old and doing nothing. The point I always believed that happiness is not a result, it is the cause. Happiness is a state of existence where one is grateful for all one has and hasn’t, and for all one is and isn’t.