Servant of God

I was reading an article about a saint who was described as a servant of God. The article reminded me of someone from my past. Let me narrate his story.

I must have been fourteen then. One day, on my way back from school, I saw my father standing at the gate. A colonel, still in his uniform, he never waited for me.

“Is everything okay?” I asked, a bit alarmed. “Why are you standing here? Is Mummy fine?”

I fired off a few more questions, but he interrupted me.

“There’s someone here to see you.”

At fourteen, nobody ever came to see me. My curiosity piqued, I followed him.

Our house was an old Army bungalow with massive rooms, wide verandahs, and gardens all around. Behind the house stood a small hut, a remnant from the British Raj, once the servants’ quarters but now a storeroom.

Near the storeroom entrance, I noticed a frail old man standing in the shade, trying to escape the afternoon sun. He was well-dressed in a white, long-sleeved shirt, black trousers, and even a bow tiean odd sight. His rickety old bicycle leaned against the wall.

“Go and say hello,” Father said, gently nudging me forward.

I hesitated but dared not disobey.

The man stood there, looking down at his frayed shoes, lost in thought. As I approached, he looked up. His eyes rested on me for a moment before he spoke.

“Good afternoon, baba! You’ve grown quite tall!”

The crisp English accent triggered a flood of memories. It was Maria Das. He used to work at our house back in the seventies, his job being to drag me to school every morning at seven-forty sharp. The school was just a few hundred meters away, but I’d cry every step of the way. Two hours later, I’d be trying to run back home, and he’d have to hold me back.

“Come on, baba!” Maria Das would say, “Don’t you want to grow up to be a sahib like your father?”

Maria Das was a waiter at the Army Officer’s Mess, having spent part of his life serving British sahibs and memsahibs. After Indian Independence, when the British left, the Indian Army took over. Maria Das was one of the few who had served both armies. My father, a captain then, was the mess in charge. Maria Das, looking to earn a little extra, offered to help with our housework. Dragging me to school became one of his duties.

My fear of school lasted for a year. By then, I’d made some friends and didn’t need to be dragged anymore. Maria Das switched to other tasks around the housemaintaining the garden, helping in the kitchen. When free, he would tell me stories about the British officers he had served. I loved his stories, especially the ones about the hot Indian summers and the sahibs swatting at mosquitoes. He also nurtured in me a love for reading.

One day, he told me the meaning of his name.

“Maria Das means servant of Mary,” he said, and then told me the story of a baby born in a manger far, far away.

Maria Das was a bachelor and lived alone in a small room near the Army mess.

“I cannot afford a family,” he’d say. “You, Sahib, and Memsahib are the only family I have in this world.”

As I stood there watching him, sheltering from the sun, those memories flooded back. My mother invited him to have food with us, but he declined to sit at our table. Instead, he chose to eat in the servants’ quarters.

I wanted to go talk to him, to thank him for everything he had done for me all those years ago, but the awkwardness of my youth held me back. After lunch, he thanked us and left on his bicycle, the same way he had come.

The next day, we were having lunch when the phone rang. It was one of my father’s colleagues. Father listened for a minute, then hung up.

“Maria Das passed away in his sleep last night,” Father said quietly.

Das had never been late in his life. When he didn’t show up for morning roll call, someone went to his room to check. They found him in bed, peacefully gone. They laid him to rest in the old cemetery behind the church. His grave is only a few hundred meters from the school he used to lead me to all those years ago. I’m sure he’s serving somewhere high up in the clouds.