Remembering Vijayan Pavamani

Just after receiving an SMS that Rev. Vijayan Pavamani was dead, I typed his name in Google and nine pages of entries came out. That is how well he was known – in the world of substance abuse, HIV&AIDS, street children and the many destitute of Kolkata who called him father. I left Kolkata for reasons of studies and employment in 1992 and yet till the last month, every Sunday I was ever in Kolkata, I worshipped in his church and if he was in church and saw me, he would call me to the pulpit to speak or give a word of greeting. He would give a highly flattering introduction alluding to my many supposed accomplishments. He would also hype up the very limited role I played in his ministry when I worked with him in 1990. Afterwards, he would always ask about my family. He had a right to perhaps more than any one else – he was among those who married me , he baptized my wife when she wanted adult baptism , he officiated at my engagement , his wife did the church decorations , one of his daughters was the bridesmaid --- and in the social sector of which I am now a part for the last 15 years , it was Rev. Vijayan Pavamani who gave my first break. It is hard to think of such a man as dead.

It was 1989 and I was leaving the Indian Air Force after close to six years of service with an uncertain future. I knew that the Lord wanted me to work in the social sector and yet with the contours and the geography unclear , it was a shaky step of faith. In those days it seems I was far closer to the Lord than I am today and wanted God alone to sort out these issues and refrained from talking about these things with others. But Vijayan got to know some how and offered us a job. With little funding at that time to accommodate me and my wife , he none the less took us in and gave us a kind of security that we still remember with gratitude. More importantly , he was the one who provided a platform for us to eventually launch ourselves , though eventually when we did choose to leave, he let us go with a lot of regret.

It is not easy for those coming from non Christian people like me to organize church weddings. Our families are often confused and uncertain of the rituals and formalities. In Kolkata there were a few whom God used to help us. Some friends from the Circular Road Baptist Chapel where I then worshipped , the EU & EGF family in Kolkata, especially and Rev. Vijayan and his family. It was often difficult to define our relationship to Vijayan – was he our boss, our pastor or a family friend – or all of these. I remember the time just before our wedding riding with him and speculating about where we would live after the marriage. A Godly woman was keeping my fiancée , who was from Philippines and had no home in India for some time but we needed to find a place to stay and fast and the options on my limited budget were not much.

After listening to this litany for a while, Vijayan stopped the car, looked at me and said that I should stop worrying because he had an idea. Deadly serious , he looked at me and said that he lived in a 3 bed room house and his four daughters occupied two of them. He said that it was a simple matter for all 4 girls to share one bed room with bunk beds or some thing , free up one bed room which we could use for as long as he liked. The problem solved as per his thinking, he started the car and moved on switching the conversation to a new topic. Though it never came to that and the Lord eventually provided other accommodation , the gesture stayed with us for years , though we still wonder how the action would have been taken by his twin daughters who were proposed to be evacuated to accommodate us!

Because of the kind of work he did with those involved with substance abuse and street children and destitute and subsequently with those living with HIV& AIDS he kept interesting company with people whom main stream society would perhaps call quirky. But he was a great risk taker and his home , offices and most importantly his heart was always open to the underdogs of society. At least on one occasion that I know of and I am sure that there are many other occasions that I don’t , he got into trouble with the law because he placed people and their concerns above systems and procedures. But as far as I know he was never any less open and caring because of his mis adventures. Vijayan had his frailties like any one else but in all my life I am yet to meet a man with a heart as big his. Rev . Vijayan Pavamai has to be with his maker and yet this side of heaven , he leaves behind blessed memories in the many lives whom he touched and redeemed for God.

An evening in Pune

It was about 4.30 in the afternoon and teatime. I got up from hostel room at AFMC, Pune and ventured down to the mess below for a cup of hot and sugared tea that the mess served up at this time. It was a lazy afternoon ritual and most students would idle over their cup and chat and talk among themselves. Unlike dinnertime, when many students would have guests over, teatime was a tame affair. So I was surprised to hear the sounds of animated conversation coming from one of the tables. I picked up my cup of tea and sat down alone and tried to pick up strands of the conversation. There was a young man with a shoulder bag and some literature engaged in energetic conversation with one of the students and they were talking about Jesus Christ. I tried to listen a little more intensely.

A year or more ago, after reading a second hand Bible with its cover torn off, the Lord had spoken to me through His Word and I had accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord. But thereafter, unsure of how to proceed further, I had withdrawn in to a shell and kept my faith to myself. No one in the close-knit community of the campus knew about my faith and I was happy to keep it that way. So I was hesitant when as I listened to the conversation I discerned the Lord telling me to go and meet the young man with the shoulder bag. It was an awkward but before I knew what was happening, I was ambling and shuffling across to the table and joining the conversation going on. The discussion soon broke off and I found myself alone with the young man who introduced himself as some one from a group called Operation Mobilization. They were involved in a evangelistic campaign throughout the state of Maharashtra and some of them were reaching out to students through a group called the Evngelical Union. The names of these organizations meant nothing to me and our gawky, and haphazard talk ended quickly.

The man from OM was having difficulty placing me – was I a student to be evangelized or a brother to be encouraged? I had introduced myself as a Christian, but my name did figure in the list of Christian students in the hostel that the EU had supplied him with and I did not show any familiarity with Christian terminology or the names of evangelical icons like OM and EU. He was understandably confused.

Shortly after this, I was confronted in the hostel aisle by one of the “brothers”, who in the campus was known as a pious type of person. He was the kind of person I had been avoiding all year --- I wanted to savor my faith and internalize it slowly and not get swamped away by anyone or any thing. But I realized that the young man from OM after leaving had talked and in a closed campus like AFMC, once some news had leaked, there was not much to be done about it. So I blankly followed the “brother” to his room. Not that he had much to say. After a few awkward moments, he gulped and said that there was a students’ meeting in a certain church every Saturday and if I would like to come. Now, church and Christian meetings were events I had diligently avoided all this while, but running low on excuses, I vaguely agreed to come on one Saturday. Even so, I ensured that I did not have to accompany him or any of the others attending the meeting, and chose to land up alone.

The gathering was not large but it was the first time that I was attending a Christian meeting of any size (I was to learn later that this was an EU meeting) and I was sweaty and nervous. The meeting began with a couple of Christian songs, then some one preached a while with some discussion and then there were prayers. Amazingly enough, I perpetually shy and retiring, found myself participating – whether it was the supernatural working of God or the body language of the group that made me feel welcome or both, it is difficult to say today. After the meeting, nobody seemed to want to leave in a hurry, neither surprisingly did I – there was a certain kind of bonding in the group that was not easily explainable. Some faces were familiar- from my own college, others were not, but all shared an easy companionship. I, who had cautiously agreed to attend one meeting – and that too out of politeness would be back—on many Saturdays and many occasions.

The small EU group in Pune, perhaps not even necessarily representative of UESI culture nationwide, would nonetheless shape me in many, many ways. It was there that I first learnt to pray publicly, to intercede for others, to make my own needs and vulnerabilities known to others - never an easy task and it was here that I would learn to receive and give Christian love and concern and sharing. As I continued to come for meetings and was accepted into the group, I was given new responsibilities - and with each new task, I would learn some thing fresh. More importantly, I found the freedom to think through and apply my mind to the Word of God and arrive at my own conclusions on faith and spirituality. Today, I look back with wonder at how a meeting over a cup of tea with a man from OM I have never met again – Sunny Varghese was his name if I remember correctly, and an encounter in the hostel with a brother who would be part of my life decades later – (though we hardly knew it then) and a motley crowd of boys and girls who called themselves the Pune EU would forever shape my spirituality and help me look at life through heaven’s eyes.