I was a student of St Thomas College, Kozhencherry, in the early seventies when the private colleges in Kerala went on a strike. The organisation under whose auspices the strike was organised was led by Bishop Benedict Mar Gregorios of Thiruvananthapuram. I wrote a letter to the editor of The Hindu, questioning his moral authority to close down colleges. I argued that he should have found other ways of protest, certainly not at the cost of the students' right to education.

Prompt came the reply in The Hindu from Fr John Vallamattam, who was the secretary of the private college management association. He was the principal of a Catholic college. He argued that the strike was resorted to after all other attempts failed. Many years later, Justice Cyriac Joseph of the Supreme Court told me that it was he who wrote that reply to my letter. He was a young practising lawyer at Kottayam.

Two decades later, I met Fr Vallamattam in Delhi when he gave me a copy of Indian Currents, which he was editing at that time. The past episode of letter writing strengthened our friendship. We organised a club called The Quill Club, essentially of Christians in journalism, and we met once a month at Archbishop Alan Basil de Lastic's house. I remember the meetings more for the chicken samosas the Archbishop served than for our discussions.

Fr Vallamattam's fiery ideals were not matched by the contents of the magazine he edited. It was a poorly produced weekly with little to inspire readers. I invited him to the annual day celebration of the Karol Bagh Mar Thoma Church. He spoke about his belief in the secular ideals of the nation without realising that in distant Ayodhya, the karsevaks were busy destroying the centuries-old Babri Masjid.

He preferred to be sent back by a DTC bus rather than by a taxi. As we were waiting for the bus, we heard the rumour that the masjid was almost demolished. It was a shock for both of us. When the Hindustan Times sent me to Germany to study and report on the unification of East and West Germany, I borrowed an overcoat from Fr Vallamattam.

A little later, I heard that Indian Currents was about to be folded up. As a journalist, I felt bad but could not do anything about it. One day, I had a surprise visitor at the HT House on Kasturba Gandhi Marg. It was Fr Xavier Vadakkekara who told me that the Capuchins had taken over Indian Currents from the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India. He was full of enthusiasm. He said he wanted to make the magazine a mass-circulation journal.

He had done my background check before meeting me. He knew that I used to write a long column titled In Retrospect in the Hindustan Times, Patna. He wanted me to start a column in the newly relaunched Indian Currents. I was a full-time employee of HT.

Column writing was a passion, and I fell for it. I did not even ask for remuneration when I started writing under the pseudonym Bharat Putra. He gave me so much freedom that I began writing even on controversial religious issues. For instance, when the Archbishop died in an accident in Poland, I wrote a column attacking the CBCI leadership for rushing to meet the Union Home Minister and seeking his help to bring the body. I wrote that the Church was resourceful enough to transport the body to Delhi and did not need any government help.

I learned that he was both praised and criticised for the stand I took. Someone even warned me that it was the end of the column. The editor did not even mention to me the attack he had to encounter. He also gave me the liberty to send the column at the eleventh hour and shared with me the comments, both positive and negative, that he received on my columns. Once, I casually asked him about the Capuchin order to which he belonged.

I knew that the priests wore dark brown cassocks and were known for their frugal life. He told me a joke about the Capuchins. They usually had only one cassock and would wear it for months together. "Capuchins would be recognised by the smell they emitted, even from a long distance," he said as he laughed. It is easy to laugh at others and difficult to laugh at oneself. Only a person like Fr. Xavier could do it.

To let me know more about Capuchins, he sent me the book The Bell of Lhasa by Fr Fulgentius Vannini, published on the occasion of the 750th death anniversary of St. Francis of Assisi in 1976. It was a fascinating account of the Vatican sending several missions in search of the Christians, believed to be thriving in Tibet, called the Roof of the World. Many of the missionaries died on the way. Finally, when they reached Lhasa, they realised that the Tibetan religion had little to do with Christianity.

On the way, they spent some time at Bettiah in Bihar, where the ruler converted to Christianity when the missionaries cured him of an ailment. Bettiah hit the headlines in the press in the mid-eighties when a Catholic priest, Thomas Chakkalackal, was kidnapped by dacoits. The intrepid priest told them they could kill him, but they would not get any ransom money. Disappointed, they released him after a few days.

Of course, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's intervention and the police bandobast made by Chief Minister Chandra Shekhar Singh also played a part. I had visited Bettiah soon after the priest's release. He received a hero's welcome in Kerala. I was struck by the large Christian community at Bettiah, with a big church, a large school, and other infrastructure. I wrote about it in HT at that time.

Instead of reviewing the book, I wrote about the strategy of the early missionaries to convert the ruler and thereby convert his subjects, as happened in the case of the Roman Empire after the baptism of Constantine, the Gauls after the conversion of Clovis, or Hungary under its king, St Stephen. That explained why Bettiah had a large Christian community in the early 18th century.

Around that time, he gave me a book to review. It was a history of the Syrian Christians of Kerala. I knew a little bit about such history but from a non-Catholic perspective. The book was an eye-opener, demolishing, brick by brick, the argument that St Thomas never visited India, let alone converted people in what is now Kerala.

It was only after the review was published in Indian Currents that Fr Xavier told me the author was his elder brother, who held an academic post in Rome. When my wife and I visited the Vatican to report on the Great Jubilee for The Indian Express in 2000, it was Fr Benedict Vadakkekara who took me around the city, where every stone tells a story he already knew.

One week, I could not write my column as my laptop had conked out. When I called him to express my regrets, he offered to assemble a computer for me at half the cost of a branded one. I was planning to buy an HP 386 computer for Rs 35,000 when, one day, he came home with a boy and a large basket containing dozens of computer parts. From early morning till late evening, they worked to assemble the computer. I feared it would explode. Instead, the Windows logo appeared, and I could write a few lines in Microsoft Word.

When I narrated this anecdote in The Tribune, many thought it was a cock-and-bull story, as he was 70-80 percent blind. Incidentally, he started a computer course for poor students. He excelled at using computers and mobile phones to overcome his disability. He had a large desktop computer on which he would read letters in 144 or 288 points. The screen displayed only one or two words at a time. Imagine how much he had to struggle to read.

He knew how to use a mobile phone. For instance, he had set different ringtones for different callers, allowing him to identify them. He never allowed his semi-blindness to hinder his work. It was a genetic problem he and his siblings faced, losing their eyesight after a certain age.

Fr Xavier was the youngest of nine siblings, only one of whom became a householder. Another chose priesthood but withdrew from it after some time. Seven remained priests or nuns. More gloriously, two of his nephews also became priests, one of whom proposed a vote of thanks at the funeral service in NCR early this week.

For all his humility, he was also a hard taskmaster. Nonagenarian Omchery NN Pillai, who wrote his autobiography Aakasmikam, which won the Kendriya Sahitya Akademi Prize, might never have written it but for Fr Xavier's persistent encouragement. When he urged me to translate the book for Media House under the title It So Happened, he, in his characteristic way, pressured me to meet the deadline.

Publishing was in his blood. I know how he would visit Omchery's house with our common friend and theatre personality Ajith G Maniyan to search for all his published writings, aiming to compile a two-volume Complete Works. I remember how excited he was when he published a book about a Catholic priest and sculptor. He had a good command of English but loved his mother tongue, Malayalam, in which he published many books.

Fr Xavier was truly a lover of mankind. He had a large circle of friends across all castes and communities. When the trailblazing Micro Drama Festival was organised in Delhi, he was at the forefront. And when a drama on the life of VP Menon, who integrated over 500 native states into the Indian Union, was staged, he published the multilingual drama in a beautifully designed book.

I used to tell him that the Catholic Church had more PhDs in communication than the secular world. He also had a doctorate but never flaunted it. When I invited him as the Chief Guest at the Christmas celebrations at Deepalaya Senior Secondary School, he could not see the programme, but he thoroughly enjoyed it. His message came from the heart, and he could instantly connect with the children.

I have written elsewhere about his accidental meeting with a friend whose marriage he had conducted. He was happy to learn that my friend and his family—wife, son, and daughter—were doing well. He would occasionally inquire about them.

Fr Xavier believed that his karmabhoomi was Delhi, though he worked for many years in Kerala. It was providential that he breathed his last in the Capital. I was glad I could meet him four times at the hospital. I spoke to him only once, and he asked about my wife and mentioned that his brother and sister, a medical doctor, were also at the hospital.

I met his brother, Fr Benedict Vadakkekara, who told me he had nearly completed writing the history of Capuchins in India, based solely on primary sources. I hope he includes a chapter on Fr Xavier Vadakkekara, about whom I wrote that people would scarcely believe a person so wedded to poverty and love for all had lived on earth in flesh and blood.

If ever he is beatified or canonised, his miracle of assembling a computer, nut by nut and solder by solder, should stand him in good stead. And his ultimate sacrifice—donating his body for medical studies and research—was the truest testament to his character. He was, indeed, an unbelievable person. When I got a poster prepared, I told the designer to use a black border. He did not follow my instructions but used heavenly features to depict him. Yes, he is with God in heaven!