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ONE is always intrigued by the phenomenon of saintliness when it becomes a transparent, moving reality before one's eyes. Somehow, the stories and kathas about or around such persons, though a part of our religious consciousness in the making, remain, in general, close to fables and myths, what with the modes of narration and the worked-up idiom or style. At the popular level, this kind of hagiography goes down well with the congregations everywhere, and over a period of time, interpolations, embroidery and sentiment make such stories stranger than fiction in most cases. To be sure, some authentic, recorded narratives do survive in nearly all cultures and church or temple sermons, but we tend to be highly sceptical when someone living and known to us is played up as a saint for our times. A Mother Teresa is such a rare example in real life as to compel the imagination of adoration, but it's also a fact of life that small-time, home-grown, street-saints are still there to vindicate our faith in the goodness of man. And, here and there, we do find a godly person working obscurely in some remote place to bring a bit of sweetness and light into the lives of the abandoned and the forsaken, the stricken and the slighted of the earth. And when the recognition comes, slowly but inculcably (as, for instance, in the case of Bhagat Puran Singh) we marvel at the miracle, and bow our heads before the power of the spirit's plenitude.

My story today concerns one such person, Bhagwant Singh Dalawari, whom I have known as an urchin since our days in that winding, narrow, Byzantine street called Anderkot in the timbertown of Jhelum (now in Pakistan). The younger brother of my closest childhood friend and schoolmate, Kartar, he was frequently in my path, and despite the fog of nearly 70 years, he has remained an image of dusky innocence, quietness and affableness. This was in stark contrast to the image wilfully created by Kartar - that of a street brawler, ready to jump into any argument of fray. He too, now gone to his heavenly abode, did turn into a Gandhian recluse in the twilight years of his life, but Bhagwant, who remained out of my vision or view after the partition in 1947 for almost 50 years, emerged from nowhere, as it were, to be styled as "the saint of Tapovan". And I realised the full beauty and truth of his graduation to saintliness when one evening four or five years ago, he suddenly materialised along with a couple of worthy admirers, and surprised me with his presence - a presence that one felt on the pulse, in the blood, and in one's heaving consciousness. I had, I sensed, seen one of God's great souls on a sojourn in the realm of the mortals. I had heard about him and his sewa in a leprosy ashram in a Maharashtra village or town, but it had not dawned on me that our urchin from Anderkot had in his "pilgrim's progress" arrived. He had achieved a kind of earthly, deeply human nirvana while still in worshipful labour. He had heard, whilst in Chandigarh at a seminar, about my obscure and long illness, and he had come like a dove from heaven at my door. Such experiences leave one in some awe.

Dressed in immaculate white from the scarf on his head to the robes below, an image of utter humility and godliness, he touched my feet, his "Bhapa ji", as he called me. I was blessed, and for days and weeks I could hear the flutter of his "wings", so to speak. Later, we exchanged letters and books and articles, and I came to know some parts of his "fairy-tale" transformation.

After the partition, he had moved to New Delhi, and in course of time, joined the External Affairs Ministry at a junior level. His assignments took him and his family to countries abroad, and then in his early forties, when he was holding a responsible position in our Paris Embassy, he had, one morning, an epiphanic experience, a clear, uncoded message from his Maker to get out into the wide world of the suffering poor and the destitute. And right, there and then, he gave up his diplomatic job - and returned home to make Tapovan his last part of call. And there he has lived in the midst of his beloved "lepers" like the famed Father Damien in the Congo, and served them with all the energies of his body and soul till this day. No wonder, he was honoured with the Bhagat Puran Singh Award in Amritsar a couple of years ago.

And I wrote a poem on his visit to my place - "The Ministry of Pain", and dedicated it to that noble missionary. My latest volume of verse, The Aching Vision (WW, Calcutta, 2000) carries this two-page poem, and helps sustain my faith as an "ordained priest" in the service of pain.