By F. M. Britto
Parsahi, Nov 30, 2021: “We have come to be prayed over, Father,” reverently pleaded a strange couple standing at my entrance.
The couple’s sight produced compassion in my heart. The man stood without any footwear, wore worn out clothes, had no money even for a haircut or shave. The thin woman covered her head with a torn towel.
“After recovering from typhoid, I am unable to eat anything,” he spoke with a feeble voice. “I feel liking committing suicide,” he added looking down.
Udai Kumar Gandharwa was laboring in a coal-mine. Due to a long typhoid, he discontinued his manual work. Priti, who was paid a mere 1,500 rupees monthly for cleaning dishes and washing linen in an engineer’s house in the neighboring Akaltara town, had to give up the work, to care her husband and two little kids.
After praying over him in our church, I offered her one of my old towels, since I had no new towel, my pants and shirt would be too long for him, and being a celibate, I had no sari to offer her. “We have prayer service (Mass) on Sundays at 9 a.m. If you are interested, you may come,” I advised that non-Christian rural couple.
On the following Sunday, they were the first ones to arrive the church, walking two kilometers from their Katnai village. After the Mass, I requested one of our doctor parishioners, Lalita Toppo, to prescribe some medicines for him. Since Udai had no money to purchase that medicine, I offered him some money.
Following morning they returned, saying, “We have come to return the balance of the money. Kindly pray over the medicines.”
This was the first time in my 42 years of priestly life that I encountered a poor villager, who came to return the balance.
“Keep it with you. Better purchase for you a chappal (slippers) and have a haircut,” I said, before praying over that medicine.
On the following morning the couple came again. With full of smiles, their little daughter Sania extended towards me a soiled cloth bag filled with the local rural bhaji, which grows by itself in Chhattisgarh and the poor rural folks eat as a vegetable.
Touched by their generosity, I offered them some of my market-purchased vegetables in a decent cloth bag. They were reluctant to accept it.
On the following evening we went to visit them in their house first time. Overjoyed by our unexpected visit, they rushed their seven-year-old son Sameer to the nearby shop to get a small packet of Parle-G biscuit, tea powder and sugar. Since their mud hut had collapsed during the monsoon, they had raised a one room mud wall with their hands, supported on the wall of their mother’s hut. When we peeped inside that kerosene-lamp lit hut, hardly anything was there, except a few basic utensils. “Tears welled-up my eyes,” commented tribal Brother Mathias Kullu, who stays with me.
On Saturday morning I stood upset since my domestic help Bhuvan Patel from the nearby Pandaria village had not turned up again. I had to get the church and the campus cleaned up for the next day’s charismatic prayer retreat which we had been holding every first Sunday of alternative months.
As I lifted up my heart to the Lord, the couple arrived there. “To express our gratitude to Jesus for healing us, we came to clean up the church campus for tomorrow’s program,” they declared.
Thanking the Lord, I told them, “First, prepare our food and then clean-up. You also can eat here.”
“No, we have already eaten and have prepared our lunch too. We will prepare your food and then clean-up,” they said.
On Sunday also they prepared our food, tea and refreshments for the participants, in the absence of Patel. They also brought along many Hindu neighbors from their village to the prayer.
During the prayer they gave witness of their healing. Priti said, “Jesus has healed us. We had only five rupees in our hands after selling half of our free 35 kilos of ration rice. Jesus has given us a new life.”
Though we did not have any Catholics or catechumens in their village, this paved way for us to visit many families there, to empathize with their woes and pray for them.
During the lunch break, Udai came to give me a bunch of rupee notes (about 2,000 rupees) saying, “This was lying down in the dining room.”
Since it didn’t belong to me, I thought it might be of Father Pankaj Shuklal, who had come to preach that day. When I asked him in the evening, the priest searched his many pockets and said smiling, “Yes, Father. Thank you very much.” He praised Udai for his sincerity, in spite of his poverty.
As a gratitude towards their kind services, and since they all wore worn out cloths, I presented them all a set of new clothes. They blushed saying, “Why did you buy for us, Father? We did it only to express our gratitude to the Lord.”
Since my domestic help Patel had found a better pasture, I asked Udai whether he would be interested to serve here.
Very happily the Udai’s family moved in to stay with us in our church campus. While he serves us, his wife works in our school and their kids continue their studies in their government schools, enjoying better food and accommodation. And we have a sense of family life in our campus.
The strange destitute family that came to our campus today has become second in command of our mission campus.
(Father Francis M. Britto is the parish priest of rural Parsahi parish of Raipur archdiocese, Chhattisgarh. He can be contacted: 9826151328; francismbritto@gmail.com)