HER MISSION, BEYOND HER LIFE
Missionaries of Charity may miss Mother’s charismatic presence, but her Sisters carry on the work she began
It’s about 1pm on a muggy August afternoon in Kolkata, when a young girl from Japan knocks hesitantly at the door of 54A AJC Bose Road in the city. Popularly known as Mother House, the building that was Mother Teresa’s residence from the 1950s till her death in 1997, and where she was buried after her death, attracts many visitors daily from across the world – pilgrims as well as volunteers, like the young girl from Japan, keen to work with the Mission. It is also the global headquarters of the Missionaries of Charity (MC), started by Mother Teresa in 1950.
“Many press people used to ask her and me, what will happen to Missionaries of Charity after her. And she used to say it will grow further and that the same work and care will carry on,” recalls Missionaries of Charity spokesperson and Mother Teresa’s long-time associate, Sunita Kumar. “Missionaries of Charity has grown tremendously (since her death) and at an enormous speed. I think she (Mother Teresa) is working from up there,” she says. From 605 homes in 120-125 countries when Mother Teresa died, the Missionaries of Charity today has 745 homes in 135140 countries. There are 200 novices currently attached to the MC and over 6,000 sisters. Then there are the chapters of MC Brothers and Fathers, says Kumar.
IN MOTHER’S FOOTSTEPS
Almost everything is as Mother left it. At Nirmal Hriday in Kolkata’s Kalighat area, the first MC centre opened by Mother Teresa, sisters and volunteers work in tandem on a Sunday morning. Devotional music plays in the background. One volunteer gives the male inmates a shave, another distributes tea and biscuits. The number of volunteers has tripled in the years since Mother’s death, says Kumar. Many are from abroad. A Sister at Nirmal Hriday points to the volunteer who is giving a shave to the male inmates and says, “He has been coming for years.”
Some sisters are busy dressing wounds. There were 54 male and 48 women inmates at Nirmal Hriday when HT visited the facility earlier this month. “Most of them have been picked up from stations and streets. When they come in, they have big wounds, often maggot-infested. After they have been bathed and cleaned and given primary nursing, they undergo a medical examination to check whether they have any serious ailments,” explains a Sister.
At almost all the homes, the work system is the same. Nirmala Shishu Bhavan, a shelter for children in Kolkata, the second home started by Mother, has two wings, one for normal children and the other for those with special needs. There were 33 children with special needs living there at the time of the HT visit.
In the other wing, the staff is feeding and playing with the infants, two of whom are being fed through tubes since they have a problem eating normally. A group of toddlers run out to make their way to the kindergarten school on the campus. Another group is being taught nursery rhymes inside. “Most of the children are severely malnourished when they are brought in. Care and nourishment is what they most require,” says the Sister in charge of this section. It’s not a permanent shelter and children leave once they are well enough to do so, she says. Also unlike in the initial years when the Sisters would pick up orphans from the streets and take care of them at the shelter, now the children have to come in through the Child Welfare Committee (CWC). “If the volunteers or Sisters do find a child who needs care, we have to first inform the CWC. Legalities are very strict now,” says the Sister.
A FEEL OF HOME
The same adherence to legalities can be seen at the facilities for the grown-ups. At Prem Dan, another shelter for the old and the destitute, a Sister informs us that every time they take in a new inmate they have to inform the police. “Most of them are old and infirm. Some have lost their mental stability or their memories. After receiving care here, if they are able to tell us anything about their families, we try to reconnect them, but at times the families don’t want them back,” she says. At the time of HT’s visit, there were 197 male and over 140 women inmates being cared for at Prem Daan. One of the inmates, Teresa Fernandes’s life has come full circle at Missionaries of Charity. She got married at Shishu Bhavan, to an orphan who had been brought up there. Now after the death of her husband and children, in the twilight of her life, with no one to take care of her, she is back at Missionaries of Charity.
At Nirmal Hriday and Prem Dan, the women are dressed in identical maxis, their hair shaved off, or cut brutally short, possibly for ease of care. A young inmate at Prem Daan repeatedly requests this journalist to write him a gate pass. A life of freedom beckons him, even when it is one too hard for him to bear. In most cases the Sisters are reluctant to let journalists interact with inmates, “since they are often not in a condition to talk coherently”, they say.
IN CHOPPY WATERS
While the dedication of the Sisters and the work done by the MC is widely appreciated, the years have not been without some rough times. After Mother Teresa’s death, during Sister Nirmala’s time, there were allegations of physical abuse in the children’s home. “There was a Sister who had accidentally hurt a boy. The boy had been stealing in the home. The case went to court. Sister Nirmala told the judge yes, my Sister has made this mistake in a temper. The spoon she was holding was hot, it touched the child’s hand, it’s not that she did it intentionally,” explains Kumar. More recently, the MC was in the eye of a controversy when it closed its adoption centres last year. Speculation was rife as to whether the decision was taken because the guidelines allowed single individuals and those with alternate sexuality to adopt children, or because prospective parents were allowed to choose from four to six children. That decision saddened even some of the staunchest supporters of the MC. By and large though, the ethos of the MC remains the same as in Mother’s time. “Mother groomed her Sisters in her way, her style, they have grown like that. It’s like a mother teaching her children,” says Kumar. There is no denying, however, that Mother Teresa left a gap when she breathed her last on September 5, 1997. As Father Felix Raj says, “She had charisma, she drew people, every Sister may not have that.”