Dr Mithra Gandham Augustine, 95, was the Madras Christian College's (MCC) principal from 1981 to 1989. He succumbed to pneumonia at a Chennai hospital in the early hours of February 18, 2025.
The funeral service will be held at 2pm on February 20, Thursday, at the Bishop Heber Chapel, MCC, and the burial thereafter at the West Tambaram CSI cemetery.
The WhatsApp message from his children read thus: “Our father Dr Mithra G. Augustine passed away peacefully early this morning. We are grateful for his wonderful life… Melita & Michael.”
While most MCCians dream of a life not too far away from the lush, 365-acre campus—aka the woods—very few get that wish. Augustine got that and more. He enjoyed the campus as a student, warden of Bishop Heber Hall, professor and head of the zoology department, before eventually becoming the principal who oversaw the college’s landmark 150th anniversary in 1987. He also met his wife, Beulah Vasantha, on campus.
Despite his stints abroad as a Fulbright & Smith-Mundt scholar, a Danforth scholar, and a doctoral candidate at Ohio State University in 1962, Augustine returned to MCC and Tambaram as he had left his heart in the woods. Even after retirement in 1989, he lived in Gandham House in nearby Camp Road.
A student remembers
In keeping with his legendary status among his students at the MCC, Augustine’s death has evoked an outpouring of memories and mourning. P.A. Mathew, a favourite student and currently principal of Grace International Academy, Punalur, shared this telling anecdote about when he and his friends were summoned to Augustine’s office. Edited excerpt:
“It was not an imposing room. Simple furniture. Bookshelf in the corner. Rectangular glass paperweight on the corner of the table. Three folders in the middle of the table, with our application forms and passport-size photographs. The names on the folders read Eapen John, Somalingam and P.A. Mathew.
‘Please come, gentlemen. Please take your seat.’
“As I was sitting, I noticed that Eapen was clean-shaven in the photo. He had a freshness to him, an innocence. After we sat down in front of the bespectacled man, he said, ‘Thank you gentlemen for coming to meet me. Do you have any idea why you are here?’
“I looked at Eapen, who was nervously tugging at the black beard he had assiduously nursed for the last two months. He was the senior and like everything here, seniority is not only respected but also valued on occasions such as this. Surely, the senior must answer.
“Looking at the surface of table, Eapen mumbled: ‘Drinking, sir.’
The bespectacled man asked, ‘Is it for drinking coffee, tea, or lime soda with sugar, salt?’
Eapen again, ‘No, sir. Drinking alcohol.’
The bespectacled man in his late 50s opened a small booklet, which said ‘Rules and Regulations of Halls. Madras Christian College. Academic year 1988-89.’ He read out from page 16, ‘Consumption of alcohol and all intoxicants are prohibited in the halls.’ Then, he delivered a monologue. At the end of it, you are exhausted. You are made to feel small. So small that you want the earth to open and gobble you. You feel sorry for the party held in the special room #131, Selaiyur Hall, on Friday, October 21, 1989. When we left the room 15 minutes later, we did not want to break the rules ever again.”
Mathew said that it was Augustine’s inherent belief in human dignity and in the goodness in every individual that made him address three truant students as gentlemen. The principal treated the three with dignity, and in return he received their abiding respect, obedience and undying affection.
Augustine is survived by his wife, Beulah Vasantha, and their two children: Michael ‘Mike’ Gandham, global director (systems engineering) at BorgWarner, Michigan, and Dr Melita M. Theyagaraj, assistant professor (neurology) and director of multi-trauma rehabilitation unit, University of Maryland School of Medicine.
Tailpiece: Reporter’s diary
This reporter was in the woods from 2002 to 2004, 13 years after the Augustines had left the campus. But I have lost count of the times I have visited Gandham House, because their love for students transcended generations. And every visit has left a special memory in me.
In 2004, when a bunch of us visited them for high tea, Beulah aunty brought out her special placemats—the ones with the handprints of all her grandchildren. Once before that, I wanted to sit on sir’s rocking chair—the one he had bought from K. Dhastagir & Brother, next to the MCC main gate—and I did so secretly when he popped into the kitchen. After an instant in it, I jumped out to see sir and aunty laughing their hearts out, leaning against the doorway. All the time they knew “that I was coveting the throne”, and that I would never ask his permission out of respect. So, they baited the trap and waited!
In 2006, when Sandip G., MCCian and sports writer with The Indian Express, and I visited them, sir was struggling to open the file of his latest book sent by his publisher. The format was all awry. “Christy (Prof. Christopher Chandran) said he will take a look in the evening,” he said. “Meanwhile, do you two journalists want to take a crack?”
I balked as I did not want to let him down, and he read me like an open book. “You are afraid that you will fail, Mathew?” he asked. “If you cannot be fearless in a home where you are loved, how will you be so in an unkind and strange world?” What followed was a pep talk, and suddenly I felt like I was 10ft tall, in armour and charging into battle astride a warhorse. Sandip and I had the files ready for him in half an hour.
Last November, I tried hard to meet him, but could not as Beulah aunty was hospitalised. I will miss not shaking your hand one last time, sir. But, sometimes, one should be content to have walked in the shadows of giants.