Rather than taking the easy route and using the typical teabag, Father Augustine Palimattam takes the time every morning to make his tea from scratch.
For him, it’s a labor of love. “My tea and my prayer goes together,” Palimattam said. His hot tea, a recipe native to his Indian home, calls for cubed ginger root, a mixture of spice and herb, loose tea, boiling water, milk and sugar. Palimattam says the foam of the tea is what really gives it flavor.
For this big-hearted, fun-loving, energetic priest from India, the tea is also a ministry – a small way of warmly giving back to the community that so readily adopted such a different stranger.
Palimattam has been making his tea in Philadelphia and pastoring at the Holy Cross Catholic Church for four years. He arrived to a certain amount of culture shock.
He had to remember to drive on the right side of the street and his clipped accent sometimes made it hard for local folks to understand him. On the other hand, he said people couldn’t sleep during mass.
They had to pay close attention to understand. Now, he says with a big grin, he speaks more like local people and people can sleep in church again. Tucked away in a little blue house with a red door on Wilson Street next to the church, Palimattam has made himself a home.
Pictures and keepsakes are displayed throughout the entire house. The first one is a picture of his family in India. His parents are in the center surrounded by him and his four siblings. Palimattam is the baby of the family. Next to that is a picture of Palimattam and two American bishops.
On the wall across the room, Palimattam has a frame labeled, “My greatest achievement as a priest.” Inside the frame is a handwritten paragraph by second grader Avery Kate Holland, a member of his parish. Avery Kate was asked to write about a leader and she chose Father A, a nickname the town affectionately calls him. “I felt so happy about it, especially when the children do that,” Palimattam said. “She was not instructed to write my name, she just wrote. Her way of understanding is totally different, but she thought about me. I thought, ‘Oh, I am one of the family here.’”
Upon his arrival in Philadelphia, Palimattam was very nervous. One of the first things he said to the bishop was that he needed time to learn. The culture was different, the language was different, everything was different.
“In the beginning I was always thinking what made me to come but as the days passed I realized God had a plan,” Palimattam said. “God has invited me here. I love here.”
Palimattam was surprised by the hospitality of Mississippians. He said his first time in Wal-Mart everyone was smiling and asking how he was. In India a stranger is a stranger but here that was not true.
“I would not have survived if they would not have been good,” he said. “The people here are really good. They were ready to help me whatever way they could. All I had to do was tell them.” The people do help.
With open arms, the community has taken Palimattam in and shown him the ropes. They’ve taught him the Southern slang he couldn’t have learned elsewhere like “dog gone it” and “pulling your leg.” Palimattam said there are many differences between the British English he learned in India and the English used in the States.
He used to watch news and television shows all the time to help hear the difference, especially with pronunciation. “I’m OK now. I don’t claim that I can 100 percent understand but I feel that I am better,” Palimattam said.
Sometimes things still get mixed up, though. One of Palimattam’s good friends, José, offered to take him on a hunting trip. Hunting is illegal in India so Palimattam had never been but agreed to give it a try. After waiting quietly in the stand for hours, a deer finally appeared. José whispered to Palimattam to shoot behind the leg. “It’s a far distance you know, then working with the scope and everything, it was difficult,” Palimattam said. “I wanted to ask him how do you kill a deer if you shoot behind the leg but he kept saying it.” Palimattam aimed and shot exactly where José told him to. “Father, you shot the butt of the deer,” José said. “I meant the heart behind the front leg. Father, where in the world does a deer have a heart on its butt?” Palimattam laughs and said he’ll try most things at least once but he hasn’t been hunting again.
He has made many friends since moving across the world in 2012. A lot of families have an open door policy where he can visit for dinner anytime since Palimattam claims his tea is the only expertise he has in the kitchen.
He also plays racquetball and ping pong with ministers at other churches and with his church family. Free time is not something Palimattam comes by often but he typically spends it volunteering – helping coach a soccer team and working at the schools.
Palimattam seems to always be smiling. He said God has given him many reasons to. “I have the best people but I don’t know whether they have the best pastor because they are all so good to me,” Palimattam said. “They are my family.”
(Lana Ferguson is a journalism student at the University of Mississippi. She was in Philadelphia working on special projects. This appeared in The Neshoba Democrat)