Mother Teresa
What a strange sight she would have presented on the streets of Kolkata in 1948. A European not in a familiar western habit, but in a cheap sari similar to what the municipality sweepresses wore, her feet encased in a pair of rough leather sandals: a nun in her belief but not in appearance.
She was alone. She had no helper, no companion and carried no money to speak of. She stepped into a city in which she had taught long years but of which she knew nothing. She taught herself to beg, the ultimate humiliation for one whose life had not been luxurious but it had been secure. In her only diary, which I was privy to, she wrote of her struggle between her faith and the temptation to return to the security with convent walls.
Between occasional bouts of tears and longing to get back to Loreto, she set up her first school in the very slum she saw each morning outside her classroom. It had no classroom, no table, no chair, no blackboard. She picked up a stick and before a group of curious children who had never seen the inside of a school, she began to write the Bengali alphabet on the ground.
Within a few days, some rickety furniture appeared; someone donated a blackboard and chalk. Lay teachers from the Convent soon volunteered to teach. Her little school in Motijhil became reality. And soon there was a school in Entally. A tiny dispensary followed, stocked with a few basic medicines cajoled from chemists. Bengali-speaking Teresa discovered she could multi-task, and her disarming charm and directness moved people to want to help her.
Her early admirers included the legendary Chief Minister B.C. Roy’s family members. In later years the equally legendary Jyoti Basu lent her his shoulder. Till the end she invariably prefixed the words ‘my friend’, whenever she spoke of the latter. In the years in between, the Calcutta Statesman began to follow her activities. Her name became known outside Kolkata when the Indian government awarded her the Padma Shri at a ceremony where she arrived matter-of-factly in a van and at which she moved many to tears.
As a Hindu, armed only with a certain eclecticism, I found it took me longer than most to understand that Mother Teresa was with Christ in each conscious hour, whether at Mass or with each of those whom she tended. It was not a different Christ on her crucifix and a different one who lay dying at her hospice in Kalighat. Neither existed without the other; they were both one. There could be no contradiction in her oft-repeated words that one must reach out to one’s neighbour. For Mother Teresa, to love one’s neighbour was to love God. This was what was essential to her, not the size of her mission or the power others perceived in her. She explained this to me simply but meaningfully when she said, “We are called upon not to be successful, but to be faithful.” In her life, Mother Teresa exemplified that faith: faith in prayer, in love, in service, and in peace.
the occasions / people that bring out goose pimples in me are rare.
reading about The Mother has never failed.
a true incident related by a noted philanthropist on a recent visit to my hometown. he said he used to be just another rich businessman interested in raising his profits and net worth (already quite high) till the day he met Mother Teresa when some friends in Calcutta had taken him to visit one of her clinics. The Mother told him to contribute generously to charity. Her exact words were, "Give till it hurts. And then give some more."
