Dedication: Dr Chris Thiagarajan - Mick Mooney

Tiger: Dr Thiagarajan

The recent death of Dr Chris Thiagarajan, better known as Tiger, has shocked and saddened us all at Development in Action. Tiger was the founder of DEEDS, a development education NGO in and around Bangalore. DEEDS is one of DiA’s partner organisations and many of our volunteers have worked with Tiger and been inspired by him over the years. In this dedication two volunteers and friends of Tiger reflect on the life of this exceptional man, who was the driver of key development work and a great friend of DiA.

Mick Mooney writes:

Let’s say none of us volunteers knew Tiger quite intimately, as he was a reserved man. But there was something intimate about Tiger, he was so good and so plain in his manner, and such men have always an indistinct but certain quality of intimacy around them. It’s part the simple smile, and part an openness and willingness to listen, a curiosity which never would turn you away. He loved to spoil us, taking volunteers for lovely meals and nice chats, because Tiger believed that was what life could and should be about. We should spoil each other, we have enough in wealth if we have enough in spirit, and he had that spirit. That was the spirit making him the affectionate father figure he so loved and enjoyed being.

One of my favourite memories of Tiger is after a row we had one night, eating that Manchurian flavoured cauliflower stuff, washed down by lots of good beer. Next morning Tiger was not speaking with me. I went over to apologise to him, sitting ramrod straight with his elbow perched on the jeep window sill, waiting to go back to Bangalore. I almost leaned in the window to speak with him, and still he wouldn’t turn to me, yet suppressing a smile. We soon made up and only looked back with pleasure, and a sense of good fun. It was good fun falling out with Tiger.

Plainly the great love of Tiger’s life was his family, and especially the father he venerated. I often think how good it was to see the picture of his father and mother together - Tiger’s mother must have been a fabulous woman. Given the traditional dominance of the man, it was wonderful how Tiger advanced the position of women and made the women central to every concern and plan for development. His mother must have had a great role in his imagination, saying to him there is no development without the full participation of woman in society. How many people have really absorbed what it means for the women to be punished and excluded from their share of the joys of life, for that to be ‘normal’? This is a huge step to take, everywhere, not merely in India, and Tiger was capable.In the UK, the ‘role model’ is an old fashioned term and idea. We may even have forgotten what it means to have a public-minded role model – the concept has not only lost currency, but potency.

But Tiger was a man as real as those forces which would strip the people of their dignity. Here was a man who gathered his personal force and made himself as real as the forces oppressing the people. Tiger’s was not personal development, it was the enduring development of the other, the outsiders, the ones left behind by the system and let down or abused by the system. Think on how much effort, imagination and courage it takes to summon that dedication and make it endure in the body and mind. Think of the painful courage it takes for a person to stake a life against that neglect, and worse, the targetting of the weak and the powerless, and imagine out of it, a personal sense of providence.

Seeing such suffering and torment can fracture the self, the self so ready to feel sympathy, yet in Tiger, having to travel beyond sympathy, to go on. Think how much division the soul has to endure seeing others suffer, but must remain consistent, to go on. That is the difference between Tiger and the rest – while others are captured by worry about development, Tiger simplified development and made it his own personal providence. Think of the difficult and awful faith you have to have in yourself. Think of the agony of doing that – think of Gesthemane. Think of picking up a cup and never putting it down. Then think of working and smiling.

Tiger turned his life into a gift, a gift in which he privately kept faith. That was the order of his work and his life, keeping faith in the turmoil, always keeping going, with a plain man’s simple, and heartfelt, providence. I’ll miss him very much.

And a brief thought from Tom Grundy:

I was lucky enough to have worked with Tiger for a few months in 2003 and I have never seen such tireless dedication to the plight of other people. His passion, wisdom and hard-work was – and still is – inspiring, rubbing off on so many others, motivating them to follow in his footsteps. He had immeasurable success in improving the lives of countless of men, women and children in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. It cannot be overstated; Tiger understood more than anyone how actions speak louder than words, and he touched and changed the lives of thousands.