R.K. RADHAKRISHNAN
 rariyam@yahoo.com

Standing at the head of the table, beer glass in hand, raised for a toast, I wondered if the words I was about to utter would be appropriate. Not that I stand on propriety when I want to make a point. But this time it was different. I thought of the man to whom I was raising a toast. 

“What would he think of me?”

Spoken words, unlike the written, are not amenable to amendments.

Maybe he would dismiss it with a wave of his left hand — that is if he bothered to lift an arm at all. Or he would just sit there and look amused.

But then the man, Gerhard Fischer, was no longer there.

Earlier this year, he died in Germany. We, a few of his friends, were at the rooftop of Hotel Ranjith to celebrate the man who had taught all of us a few things just by being himself. He loved the place. Gerhard did not like air-conditioning and there were few places in town that did not have air-conditioning and served liquor. After all, Chennai’s weather demands that even the slightly up-market places are air-conditioned. So each time he was in Chennai, a few dinners on the rooftop would always be part of the agenda.

“To the man who taught us that the best way to beat the Banyan Standard Time was to follow it,” I remember having said to cackles around.

Banyan Standard Time had serious differences with the Indian Standard Time. Anyone who interacts with The Banyan will have a few experiences to narrate on the delays they encountered. Often, this happened because everyone at The Banyan took on much more than they could possibly deliver in a day. Sometimes this was because of difficult people who made The Banyan’s representative wait for hours on end to get something done. (More often than not, to collect a cheque that was long overdue.)

I have often been upset about the manner (very callous, I used to think) in which I was made to wait hours on end when my job was supposed to have been done in a flash. But I do not remember seeing Gerhard angry or upset over BST. He simply worked around BST and ensured that he got other work done during the time he was supposed to be waiting. Copycat me, I too began carrying work to The Banyan whenever I was asked to be there for some meeting or the other. The only problem though: I never had enough of work to carry!!! You see, we journalists get away pretending that we have loads of work and that the world will collapse if we did not get to point A or B within the designated time

I am trying to recall the second line of my three-line toast. My memory fails me. May be it’s because of the weather. May be it is the early onset of dementia. Will know soon enough. In a couple of years, perhaps.

My third line was something like this: “To the man who democratised care- giving at a time when it was monopolised by Christian charities.” It is sad that Gerhard’s contribution to redefining care-giving in the third world went virtually unnoticed in the media. It was hardly seen in the right perspective.

Even after he was awarded the Gandhi Peace Prize in 1997.

Picture this: A man with not much money to give away was helping run anti-leprosy projects across India, in Nepal and Vietnam. He was a little disillusioned with the experience in Vietnam and Nepal, but his dozen-or-so stations in India were doing very well. And depended on him for carrying out their work.

I asked him once how he managed to find funds for supporting the causes he believed in.

“I talk,” he said.

“Where,” I asked.

“Anywhere. To whoever would pay me. Churches, parks, schools, colleges, welfare associations…anywhere,” he said. “Of course, no big money. I do not want big money.”

Fischer spent close to 3 months each year travelling across Europe speaking to various groups of people and telling them why they should support projects in India. He once tied up with a local Parent Teacher Association close to his hometown in Ubersee, south of Munich. The deal: Each parent would give one euro for each mile that their child ran! It worked. The children - motivated by the towering old man, kept alive by three pacemakers and mobile thanks to a few steel plates - ran. The whole school ran.

“We had to call off the marathon because of the searing heat,” said Gerhard. But not before collecting enough money to build a school in Salem. Much later, I think it was about a year later, one student from the school came to visit the now-ready building. It was her first trip outside Germany. I met her at Gerhard’s favourite hotel — the Taj Connemara — and could make out that she was not too comfortable in the open-air restaurant. But she told me in halting English that she had never experienced anything like what she had been through in Salem before. “Life altering,” Gerhard corrected.

That was Gerhard. A one-man institution who found a cause, kicked his job as a diplomat (I wonder how he fared as one since he always preferred speaking his mind), supported it with funds he generated, and gave the confidence to the people who ran the projects that money would come. He also audited all projects and went back with black-and-white results for his donors to see.

“When I take money from someone,” he once told me, “I always tell them where it went.” It is a very difficult task when the money is small and donor base is large. But for a man who woke up at 4 a.m. and slept around mid-night, there was enough time in every single day to communicate with each one of his donors.

How did Gerhard get to The Banyan? I don’t know. But I do remember that even he — who always believed in doing the impossible — thought that building Adaikalam in the land donated by the government in Mogappair within the time frame that The Banyan had set for itself, was out of the question.

“These girls must be crazy,” I remember him telling me.

“They are,” I agreed.

“You too think so,” he asked. “You think they will be able to do this in a year? No, no.”

I think that conversation was around the time when the bhoomi puja was happening. Saptharishi, now with Headlines Today, took the role of a hindu purohit and performed poojas. There were representatives from all religions and also from among the residents. I think Sheela, a resident who has been in and out of The Banyan and many other institutions including the Institute of Mental Health, Kilpauk, was part of the foundation stone ceremony.

For those of you not in the loop, the story is like this: Rasheeda Bhagat, now Senior Associate Editor, The Hindu BusinessLine, who was at that point (early nineties) Bureau Chief, The Indian Express, wrote an article, saying that The Banyan wanted land to locate its project — to look after the mentally ill destitute women.

The then Chief Minister Dr. J Jayalalithaa, who read the article, called The Banyan’s Founder Trustees, Vandana and Vaishnavi for a meeting. She asked them how much land they wanted. I think Vandana said she wanted 20 grounds or so. Dr. Jayalalithaa said that so much land was not available within the city. She asked Vandana if she knew how many grounds made an acre. Vandana, the fantastic mathematician, said something like 16 - 20 grounds. That possibly was the only time officials laughed out in Jayalalithaa’s chamber. To cut the story short, The Banyan got 6 and half grounds at Mogappair. Governments changed in 1996 and The Banyan had serious problems getting hold of the land. But with help from a lot of people around, the transfer finally did take place. And, the Banyan decided to complete construction in a year. Something, many thought, was impossible. The cost was more than Rs. 2 Crore.

One year later, Gerhard and I stood at the same place. “Unbelievable,” he said, looking at the magnificent structure that Devi Prasad had built for The Banyan. “I have been around, you know,” he was telling no one in particular. “But this is amazing. I have not seen anything like this. How did this happen?” He really did not think it was possible to get everything in place in a year. He had not been able to do it.

I believe that The Banyan went up in his esteem then. May be - I get the feeling - he began taking The Banyan much more seriously from then on. He made it a point to spend time at The Banyan each time he was here in Chennai.