Ivo Coelho sdb
NASHIK, JUNE 28, 2008: Bro Henry Gaikwad, better known all over the North-East as Prembhai, passed away quite suddenly while on a visit to Sri Lanka, on Saturday, June 28, 2008. Prembhai had taken diksha with Bede Griffiths at Shantivanam Ashram near Trichy in Tamil Nadu, and had exercised his missionary ministry mostly in Arunachal Pradesh. He had an ashram just within the borders of Arunachal Pradesh – it is the very first habitation one meets upon crossing the border into that Indian state from Harmutty in Assam. Prembhai had wandered into hundreds of inaccessible villages of Arunachal over the last twenty five years, witnessing to Christ in his inimitable way and bringing to people the good news. Prembhai was a Salesian novice in 1976-77 at Yercaud; he belonged to my novitiate batch, and had joined us after having passed through the Missionaries of Charity of Mother Teresa, the Pune Diocese, and several other congregations. After a couple of months in Yercaud, he became restless and decided to leave. From the house he asked only for a small mat which could be folded into three. He had decided to go wandering, and that is what he did. Henry had a way of befriending people at station and platform, finding himself a place to sleep and perhaps a meal. He had the charism of total aparigraha: he could wander the length and breadth of the country with hardly any money and hardly any worry or anxiety. The Lord, I believe, showed him the way, and made use of his very special charism for the gospel in Arunachal Pradesh. When I met him in his ashram in Arunachal, he told me quite simply that he was known all over the North-East, that there was a room for him in every Bishop’s house, that he could walk into any place anywhere, that he had touched the lives of at least some 25,000 people in Arunachal. He would come every year to Mumbai at the head of a largish group of boys and girls from the state. It was perhaps not easy for institutional people like us to accommodate him, but I am very glad many of us did. It was our very small way of sharing in the charism of this extraordinary man. Henry Gaikwad alias Prembhai is related to our own Bro Damodar Gaikwad-Wankhede, and we offer our condolences to the family, and more especially to the large family of the Church in Arunachal that he leaves behind. I hope one day the story of Prembhai will be written. I have the feeling it is an exciting story, a latter day adventure, of a man who simply trusted in God and whom God used to do marvelous things.