Sujoy Dhar
KOLKATA, Sep 4 2007 (IPS) – Garishly made-up sex workers hang around the seedy street that leads to Nirmal Hriday , the home for the dying founded by Nobel peace laureate Mother Teresa, in a portion of an abandoned temple to the Hindu demon-slaying goddess Kali.
Volunteers Take a Break at Nirmal Hriday Credit: Sujoy Dhar
Ten years after Mother Teresa #39s own passing, Nirmal Hriday (Pure Heart) presents the same image of both hope and despair an image that is sure to continue as its celebrated founder moves up the fast track to sainthood.
Rows of beds with diseased, deformed and senile men and women keep the benign nuns of the Missionaries of Charity (MoC) busy as they move about the chores of taking care of the dying, transmitting hope for mankind, amid poverty and pain.
On Sep. 5 the MoC, the order of committed, self-effacing nuns, completes ten years without its famous founder. If the Albanian-born Saint of the Gutters could look back, she will doubtless draw satisfaction from the 4,823-strong brigade of sisters, in their trademark blue-bordered white saris, carrying her torch.
It was in 1952 that Mother Teresa and her MoC first began work for orphans, the dying and the ailing after receiving permission from city officials to use a portion of an abandoned temple to Kali, the Hindu goddess of transition and destroyer of demons. The sisters of the MoC would pick up dying people off the streets and bring them to this home to care for them in their last days.
We are devoted to God #39s work and so nothing else matters, said Sister Nirmala, the superior general of MoC, who succeeded Mother Teresa through a secret ballot a few months before the Mother died in September 1997.
We continue to work like before. I know I am compared, but my way of coping is simple just to be myself. I didn #39t try to do the impossible task of filling in Mother #39s shoes. I walked with my little shoes in the footsteps of Mother, following the way of Jesus, Sister Nirmala told IPS in an interview.
People from across the world keep pouring into the spartan headquarters of MoC on A.J.C. Bose Road in central Kolkata- where Mother lies interred many to offer their services at homes run by the MoC and derive spiritual satisfaction in tending to the sick and the destitute.
There is poverty here but there are smiles too, said Susanne Torrano, a 31-year-old teacher, speaking for a group of volunteers from Spain. Mother is hugely popular in Spain. Coming here and working with the MoC is a huge experience. We are overwhelmed and we consider ourselves lucky to be here, added a compatriot, identifying herself as Ada.
Over the past decade, the MoC has opened several new centres, taking the number of its homes to 757 worldwide. We have gone to 14 new countries in the last decade, taking our presence to 134 nations in all, said Sister Nirmala.
The new countries include Bosnia-Herzegovina, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Togo, Djibouti, Mali, Israel, Thailand, Chad, New Zealand, Finland, Kazakhstan, Algeria and Norway, she said. In places like Afghanistan we are working for handicapped people and so far we have not been opposed. There are many difficult places we are going to but people appreciate us.
While Mother was accused during her lifetime, and even after death, of seeking glory by using the poor and dying, the inmates at homes like Nirmal Hriday feel differently.
As Dinanath and Gopal Das, inmates of Nirmal Hriday, play a game of ludo (a board game) they seem happy and sheltered despite prison-like ambience.
We had nobody to look after us, Dinanath said, showing a festering wound in his left leg. Gopal suffers from a malignant tumour in his stomach. We would have been dead by now had we not come here. We can only express our gratitude to the sisters.
I have children but they are so poor themselves that they cannot take care of us, said Gopal Das, one among the 120 inmates of the house.
Krisna Das, 52, who was has made Nirmal Hriday his home since the past 30 years, is all praise. I have seen it all, even met the late Princess Diana when she visited here. I can say that the sisters are as committed and compassionate as they were during the time of Mother, he said.
According to Sister Nirmala, despite the charismatic Mother #39s absence, funds have not been a problem. We are not dependent on any one person for funds. They come. God asked Mother to do her work and took care of us.
It does not matter who is at the helm of affairs as any true MoC nun would be able to shoulder the responsibility if she has truly imbibed the training imparted to her after being accepted in the order, explained Sister Nirmala.
