Good Morning messages: Gift of borrowed time

By Jose Kavi

New Delhi, Dec 19, 2023: When Jesuit Father George Hilarion Thakkur did not respond to my usual “Good Morning” WhatsApp greeting on December 16, I did not find anything amiss. Either he or I would often delay our response for a few hours. But we did greet each other daily – a practice for the past several years.

But at 9:59 am that day, our mutual friend Father Moben Michael, parish priest of Mother Teresa Church in Delhi’s Indraprastha Extension and George’s first cousin, sent me a forwarded Hindi message, saying that George Hilarion died at 5 am. He died of a massive heart attack, apparently. I was shocked, to say the least. The previous day, he had sent a message saying, “May your day overflow with blessings.”

I met George in November 1971 at Xavier Hall, the Jesuit candidate house attached to St Xavier’s School in Patna, Bihar. He was one of the four candidates from Bettiah, Bihar’s oldest Catholic center, that year. We became friends soon as he was mild mannered and helpful to a teenager from Kerala suffering from cultural shock of being first time in northern India.

We were together in the candidate house and then in the novitiate and juniorate, the early stages of Jesuit training. We had to go different ways because of college studies. We could not keep in touch for years until Father Moben came as our parish priest. He gave me George’s latest mobile number — thus began our morning greetings.

George was buried on December 17 at the Jesuit cemetery in Patna’ Digha Ghat, situated in the campus of our novitiate, which has now become a reputed college of management.

He lies close to Father Susai Raj, another Patna Jesuit priest who was my Xavier Hall and novitiate companion. Susai too died of a heart attack on September 9, 2023.

Losing friends in quick succession reminds me of my impeding departure from this earth. As they say, man lives on borrowed time after 60.

As I am on a borrowed time, I developed the habit of sending WhatsApp greetings to friends and family members early in the morning to just remind them that I am alive. All have appreciated the gesture, except one in his 70s who reacted angrily saying, he has no time for such frivolous things.

But to the rest, I keep sending the greeting, typing the words with my fingers, not copy and paste, to assure myself that I am alive. When a response comes from the other side, I say a prayer of gratitude to the Almighty, the Lord of life and death.