After the Holy Mass, a small statue of the Child Jesus was set out on a table, and among the faithful were a group of Goan sailors, members of the ship’s crew, who filed by it and kissed it reverently. This was the Salesians’ first experience of Indian devotion.
The journey through the Suez Canal and across the Indian Ocean was peaceful and uneventful: it was mostly out of sight of land except when the ship was negotiating the canal. Fr. Louis Mathias had time to sit down and leisurely write letters, some to the superiors in Turin in which he gave details of almost every knot of the way!
The Salesians docked in Bombay port on 06th January 1922 and went in search of the Jesuit College of St. Xavier’s, the address of which someone had given them. They found it all right, though not without difficulty. The Jesuits were kind and very helpful: they discussed plans of how the new missionaries would get to the railway station to travel to Calcutta. When this was fixed, one of the Jesuits gave the Salesians a guided tour through Bombay city. Bombay, at that time, was the most westernized town in India and for strangers it was a good introduction to the subcontinent, for here one could find all sorts of languages, races, and customs. It is as if one is stepping into an amazing dream-world of colours, action, and noises. The streets are wide; here and there were mission-like houses; there were squares, a lovely sea- front, and a hill where rose the big homes of English people and wealthy Indians.
For the Salesians, Bombay was a new world. They went to visit the famed Tower of Silence, the burial ground of the Parsees, but could not enter inside. They saw the vultures that sat around the rim of the tower and were told how corpses were laid out in rows on the ground inside the cylinder to be devoured by the birds! The Parsees, followers of Zoroaster, fled to India when their country was invaded by the Arabs: to them both earth and fire were sacred, hence their “fire temples” and their custom of not burying their dead.
St. Xavier’s College did not have a sufficient number of rooms to house so many extra guests, so some Salesians had to pass their first night in India in a hotel. This experience was part of their introduction to their new, absolutely new, life! There were no clean sheets on the beds and the place was crawling with bedbugs!
The British had built a good network of railway lines throughout the country but because of the hard wooden carriages, the burning sunshine, the dust, and the long kilometers of travelling, the journey was monotonous. The Jesuits had begged the Salesians to reserve two carriages with sleeping accommodation. This went some way to relieve the monotony. As the train sped eastwards, the newcomers saw plains, paddy-fields aplenty, and hills: they also saw an abundance of exotic trees like mango, coconut palms, palmyras, papayas, bamboo clusters...herds of buffalo crowded into the shade afforded by trees or wallowed in pools of water or rivers, for all the world like hippopotamuses. When the train stopped at a station along the way, there was always a crowd of people, some boarding the train, others jumping off it and making for exits. There were plenty of vendors shouting their wares all along the platforms.
One of the Salesian Brothers took a fancy to a banana or two: he leaned out of the window and proffered a rupee to a hawker indicating that he wanted bananas. The hawker registered surprise on his face, but he placed the basket of bananas into the brother’s hands and went off to get some more! The Brother realized what had happened: he motioned the man to keep the coin and he would keep some of the fruit and, after receiving his basket back, the Indian ran shouting happily along the platform. That was another experience to chalk up – the monetary system.
Besides the vendors there were hordes of beggars who kept their hands outstretched as they continuously cried for baksheesh. The poor creatures were clad in little more than rags and looked so emaciated! Fr. Louis Mathias wrote: “We gave them a few coins – not as much as we would have liked, for we too had not much money. Then again we did not know the value of the coins”.
The train arrived in Calcutta on 09th January 1922 at 11 a.m., after some 46 hours’ journey! Here again the Salesians found a welcome home in the house of the Jesuits. Just at that time the Archbishop of Calcutta, who was also looking after Assam, was absent, but his Auxiliary, Bishop Peter SJ, welcomed them and gave Fr. Mathias a run-down of the situation in Assam. He was most courteous and from that time on he became a good and valued friend of the Salesians, especially after he became archbishop of Calcutta.
As in Bombay so too in Calcutta, the Jesuits were kind and friendly and took the newcomers to see the sights of the city. Then on 11th January 1922, they boarded the train for the long journey northwards. There was not much change in the scenery except for more and more hills on the horizon. The following day they were at the mighty Brahmaputra River where the rails stopped. In those days there were no bridges: crossings had to be made on a ferry.
When they reached the far bank, they were met by Fr. Paul Lefebvre SJ, the Administrator of the Prefecture of Assam. He embraced the new missionaries and then with their luggage piled into a large motorcar, they made their way to Guwahati. Because it was too late to continue their journey, they slept that night in Guwahati. Their destination was the town on the mountains, Shillong, and to reach it they had to drive up a road which was open at certain times of the day: ghats (that is, mountain roads) were usually narrow so that up-traffic had their appointed hour so as not to conflict with down-traffic. The bus that carried the travelers had wooden benches for seats and solid rubber tyres: and with roads that were neither macadamized nor levelled the ride was no picnic!
The trip up brought the missionaries in among the jungles where the wild beasts they had often read about roamed at will – elephants, tigers, snakes, and others. Sometimes they saw one or two on the very road they were travelling! As a matter of fact, the bus stopped at one point: the driver got out of the driving seat and began lighting a fire under a huge snake that was coiled around a sheep!
Shillong is the capital of Assam: in those days they called it the “flower town”; it looked like a vast park with lovely bungalows here and there. These houses were usually of one storey, made of wood and with red sheet-iron roofs.
In a report about their arrival in Assam, Fr. Louis Mathias wrote to Father Philip Rinaldi then the Rector Major: “At the foot of a long slope that led to the Church, Fr. Van Lamberghe SJ, Brother Brisson and a dozen or so children stood waiting for us. They greeted us in Italian of a sort, ‘Buon giorno, Padre!’. It was a pleasant surprise which we enjoyed.” “We entered the Church.” He continued, “and were standing beside the main altar which had been made by a Salvatorian brother, when one of us exclaimed, ‘Look! There’s Mary Help of Christians!’ We turned our eyes to the point he indicated and there on an altar in the left-hand aisle we saw indeed a statue of Mary Help of Christians! Our Joy can best be imagined that described.” The Salesians had come home.
On 22nd December they were in Marseilles and the same evening they stepped aboard the Kaiser-i-Hind, a P. and O. steamer of 11,000 tons. The night was calm and the sky spangled with stars. Helped by an Irish Carmelite who spoke French, the Salesians prepared for Christmas Holy Mass in the second-class dining-room, with the kind permission of the captain. The Carmelite sang the Holy Mass, the Salesians sang Missa de Angelis, Fr. Louis Mathias accompanied them on the piano, and a Maltese gentleman played the violin. After the Holy Mass, a small statue of the Child Jesus was set out on a table, and among the faithful were a group of Goan sailors, members of the ship’s crew, who filed by it and kissed it reverently. This was the Salesians’ first experience of Indian devotion.
The journey through the Suez Canal and across the Indian Ocean was peaceful and uneventful: it was mostly out of sight of land except when the ship was negotiating the canal. Fr. Louis Mathias had time to sit down and leisurely write letters, some to the superiors in Turin in which he gave details of almost every knot of the way!
The Salesians docked in Bombay port on 06th January 1922 and went in search of the Jesuit College of St. Xavier’s, the address of which someone had given them. They found it all right, though not without difficulty. The Jesuits were kind and very helpful: they discussed plans of how the new missionaries would get to the railway station to travel to Calcutta. When this was fixed, one of the Jesuits gave the Salesians a guided tour through Bombay city. Bombay, at that time, was the most westernized town in India and for strangers it was a good introduction to the subcontinent, for here one could find all sorts of languages, races, and customs. It is as if one is stepping into an amazing dream-world of colours, action, and noises. The streets are wide; here and there were mission-like houses; there were squares, a lovely sea- front, and a hill where rose the big homes of English people and wealthy Indians.
For the Salesians, Bombay was a new world. They went to visit the famed Tower of Silence, the burial ground of the Parsees, but could not enter inside. They saw the vultures that sat around the rim of the tower and were told how corpses were laid out in rows on the ground inside the cylinder to be devoured by the birds! The Parsees, followers of Zoroaster, fled to India when their country was invaded by the Arabs: to them both earth and fire were sacred, hence their “fire temples” and their custom of not burying their dead.
St. Xavier’s College did not have a sufficient number of rooms to house so many extra guests, so some Salesians had to pass their first night in India in a hotel. This experience was part of their introduction to their new, absolutely new, life! There were no clean sheets on the beds and the place was crawling with bedbugs!
