MM

| All Saints Company. The Dancing Saints Icons project at Saint Gregory Nyssen Episcopal
Theosebia
San Francisco
Church,
http//www.paulosmargregorios.inNVork_of_Mar_Gregorios/English%20Artlcles/Tributes
.%20M .%2OThomas.htm
/M
first met M. M. in New York. I think it was 1953. He was spending a year reading at
I
Seminary. I was an ordinary B. D. student at Princeton. He was already a Guru,
Union
known in Indian Christian circles, as well as in WSCF circles. I was totally unknown
well
India, having left the country in 1947. My few youthful exploits in Ethiopia and the
in
attached to them were most likely unknown to MM as they were
legends
to many Indian Christians until much later.
unknown
went to see him to learn and to be inspired. But I did it in the typical Indian way. I just
I
in and introduced myself, a procedure MM did not particularly like. He made me
barged
understand clearly that he had come to America to do some reading and did not have
to
time for idle conversation. Anyway there was no idle conversation. I left after
much
I come back to India and became an active, worker in the Student Christian
After
of India, contacts became easier and more frequent. We began sharing
Movement
and traveling to conferences together. I remember the WSCF conference in
platforms
That must have been 30 years ago. I had just joined the staff of Emperor
Rangoon.
M. M. Thomas and Mar Gregorios as depicted in the mural
about 5 minutes, with the satisfaction that I had met the great man face to face.
Haile Sellassie, and had come to Burma from Addis Ababa, via India.
We got to Rangoon at about 4 a.m. and since the conference was in a High School, our