Dr Assumpta

Dr Assumpta Casanovas had practised as an ENT specialist in Spain for 19 years, and it was in that professional capacity that I first met her. I had a minor ear infection. Wordlessly she shone light, probed, wrote a prescription and then, as an apparent afterthought, told me I should avoid swimming. “This month?” I enquired, lightly. “For ever.” “For ever!?” I looked up, expecting a conspiratorial wink. But one look convinced me that this was a lady not given to joking...

“She was very straight, very clear and had very strong ideas,” remembers Albert, who co-managed the Auroville Health Centre. “As such, she was not a lady with whom you could have an easy contact. I’d never worked with someone like that before – someone who knows what she wants and doesn’t easily listen to other opinions – but I learned to appreciate her straightness, her honesty and, by the end, we were very close.”

Those who did get close to her knew another Assumpta. One whose no-nonsense nature veiled deep compassion and caring. One who read poetry, wrote novels...

For many years Dr Assumpta, together with Dr Lucas, looked after the management and organization of the Health Centre. She also became a very active and effective fund-raiser. However, her real love was for the extension work in the villages. “The villages were everything to her,” recalls Albert. “To build sub-centres, construct toilets, improve the water supply, train health workers and make educational videos with Srinivasan – that was her aim, that was where she was most alive. She never really enjoyed treating Aurovilians. She found them too difficult!”

Some years ago she was diagnosed with bone cancer, a disease which can be agonizing and drawn-out. As a doctor she would have understood all the implications. “Yet to me she was amazing,” recalls Peter, who was in charge of the X-ray equipment and organizes the Health Centre together with Albert, “in that you never felt you were in front of a terminally ill person. She never made anything of it, never had the slightest feeling of self-pity, so much so that even when she was bedridden you always felt that at any moment she would just get up and walk away.”

Even when partially paralyzed she continued working at the computer and discussing and advising upon the work in the villages. “However, the last year was very difficult for her,” says Albert, “because she’d been such an independent person yet now she needed help with everything. We had long talks together about many things but still she was not able to express something. Then, just two hours before she died, she called me over and said, ‘I love you. Thanks.’ It was the first time.”

Dr Assumpta died on 3rd March. Her sister and close friends were beside her. “She had no fear, was very peaceful at the end,” said Albert, “because she had a very strong belief in reincarnation. I’m hoping she’ll keep helping us...”

— Alan

Dr Assumpta: Soft - Edges of Truth, Or ..... the Pulsations of Psychic

I never met Dr Assumpta. In fact, I am not even sure exactly which person at the Health Centre was called Dr Assumpta. But if I have to take an account of the most precious and memorable moments in my life, the following incident will certainly form a part of it. 

Some 4 - 5 years ago, one morning I was seated outside a physician's room at the Health Center, for a purpose I can't exactly recall. Surrounding me were patients mostly from Auroville villages. The door of the physician's room, which was closed from inside, opened and, passing near me, a lady doctor in gentle steps walked away. Three seconds! But what Inoticed in the lady doctor in those three seconds was a rare boon of life. Something so subtle, pure, soft that Satprem calls it "like air that slips through the fingers', so delicate that "it vanishes if you look at it little too longer" was there in the air about her. 

Reading in the last AV News the account and tributes of those who worked with her or knew her, ("..friends whom she embraced before consciously and peacefully withdrawing ... it was a very special moment ... a very serene day ... so beautiful and full of peace, and love ... ) Ithink, I can safely assume that that lady doctor was none else but Dr Assumpta. 

No big deal, 

Life flows freely - 

Hard - Edges gone. 

This is how Anu describes in one of her short poems in that divine banquet Light Matter the state of mind and consciousness when they live in the psychic consciousness. Hard - Edges, yes, that is the word to describe our ordinary state of mind and consciousness. On that morning at the Health Centre, I noticed in Dr Assumpta the opposites of Hard - Edges, the Soft - Edges, the Soft - Edges of Truth Or ... rather, the pulsations of Psychic. Isn't that the most cherished aim of our collective life in Auroville?

Dr Assumpta had touched it, lived it.

 ---- Aryadeep