Of Saints & Sinners

“If I ever become a saint, I’ll surely be one of darkness.I will continually be absent from heaven…to light the light of those in darkness on earth”--- Mother Teresa

As a college student, in the mid-eighties in Calcutta, I often visited Shishu Bhavan run by the Missionaries of Charity. I did not do it out of any desire to obtain a social services certificate, as is usually the case these days with youngsters who join NGOs for a very short while in order to flaunt their certificates while securing admission in universities in the US. It serves as a passport to fulfilling the Great American Dream. Those days were different. I started by accompanying a friend who, being an adopted child herself, was instinctively drawn to these children, but gradually I started enjoying the company of these children, singled out by Fate and abandoned by their own.

They were little kids, from a few days old to teenagers, but what always struck us in every group was the one irrevocable fact that most of them were girls. You could see very few boys among them. Obviously, parents or mothers or their relatives were pretty selective about whom to abandon. They craved for love and, therefore, the not-so-shy-ones immediately ran up to you with arms wide open. The others took a while to warm up as most children do. There was this beautiful girl, a cherub who seemed to have come out from one of those Renaissance paintings and live for a while among us, who would just run into your lap the moment she saw you with the most disarming smile. Later, one of the Sisters told us that she was deaf and dumb.

We didn’t contribute much, just played for a while and gave them company .The nuns let us play with the toddlers and the slightly older ones. The infants in the nursery we were allowed to see only through the glass doors from outside. They lay in spotless little cribs, covered with clean pastel sheets. Not a spot on their sheets or a grain on the floor. Every hour they were cleaning and scrubbing and disinfecting. Once we even saw Mother entering Shishu Bhavan, getting off a car and walking inside. Within seconds the Mother was surrounded by her brood.

I remember coming home and telling my people that the nuns kept the babies as well as the older kids far better than what we ever managed to do  in our own homes.

One of the sisters narrated to us how a couple adopted a baby boy and within a few months came to return the baby saying that he was suffering from some developmental abnormality, which had come to light only recently, and therefore they wished to choose another baby in his place. The nuns had asked them what they would have done had he been their biological child. Where would they have gone to return the baby?

Those of us from Calcutta are all too familiar with these Sisters in the white saris with the thin blue borders draped in the Bengali style, the pallu pinned over their heads completely covering the foreheads, feet covered in blue strapped flip-flops, walking through the streets of the city doing what they can for the dying and the abandoned, the diseased and the decayed, the old and the young. What I didn’t know was that all these saris are woven at the Titagarh leprosy centre. We have all gone past Mother House, Shishu Bhavan, Nirmal Hriday on innumerable occasions. Did we ever give a thought to the fact that Mother herself lived in a small room 12ft by 8ft with a cot, a table and small stool? She did not even have a fan in her room.

 Yet , I was taken aback to hear some people even pointing out on the day of Mother’s canonisation that the Sisters of her Order did not lead a life of poverty but moved around in vans donated to them. Can we be so mean as to deny these women that much luxury given to them by someone trying to reach out? How can we forget that these women were once young girls who gave up everything, friends and families, loved ones, the little joys and luxuries of life to help and serve those who had been left to die or perish by their very own flesh and blood? How can we stoop so low? It is not easy to give up everything and serve another. They are cleaning the sick, the diseased, the dead, and the mutilated when we find it difficult to even clean our own children and parents. We hire people to do the same.

On the 4^th of September 2016 these Sisters must have shed tears of joy to see their Mother canonised as Saint Teresa of Calcutta. Not just them, many of us must have felt proud and happy to see one of us, an Indian by choice, and a Calcuttan, rise from the ranks of ordinary men, shrug off the criticisms and barbs being aimed at her by some, and fly out with little wings to take a place in that haloed seat reserved in heaven for the Saints. I am sure it is one of those rare and great moments when, even if for a short while, we pause to think, to feel and to have our faith restored in the goodness of Mankind and greatness of Faith.

However, it is not to be so. Sinners that we are, we choose that particular moment to run our commentary on measuring her true worth. Many of her detractors choose that very day to question her contribution to society. That is the moment we choose to vilify her, denigrate her. Our national TV channels and their anchors, who judge one and all, the wise men that grace their panels and the more vociferous ones who enthrall the social media decide to question whether all that she had done was right or wrong. You may not agree with Mother’s views on all matters- abortion, contraception or mode of treatment meted out to the sick and the dying. Every person is entitled to his views. But that was not the day to question. Also there is no one who can question what she has done for the poor and the destitute and to do that kind of service you had to have unquestioned Faith and more-than-human capabilities. That is exactly what drove her- absolute, unadulterated, unquestionable faith. And that is why we are nobody to question her.

 Not just that, what irked me most that day was that many national TV channels were busy playing and replaying a sleazy video of a debauched politician and his sexual escapade. They were all so concerned about protecting the dignity and identity of the woman in the video that in their urge to do so they continued to repeatedly show that clipping in which she was being dishonoured. Could anything be more hypocritical? Could there be anything more shameful? Could they not have forgotten about their TRP for a few hours and not harped about being the only channel to have in their possession such a recording?

 If nothing, at least, we could have kept quiet for a while and paid our respects due to the dead and the great.

Perhaps, Khushwant Singh once gave it back to one such critic of Mother by saying that if anyone spits at the sky, it’s his face that gets spat down upon.

Yes Mother, even though you are St.Teresa of Calcutta, to many of your most ardent admirers you will always be Mother, the Saint who lived among us even before being canonised.

Whenever I listen to  Debabrata Biswas’s rendition of Tagore’s ‘Boro asha kore eshechhigo, kachhe deke lao….” there is only one face that comes before me and my head bows down in reverence on its own. I can think of no one else.

Tagore’s Original

Boro asha kore eshechhi go kachhe deke lou,

Phirayo na janani||

Deena-heene keho chahe na tumi tare rakhibe jani go|

Aar ami je kichhu chahine charanatale boshe thakibo

Aar ami je kichhu chahine janani bole shudhu dakibo

Tumi na rakhile griha aar paibo kotha, kende kende kotha berabo-

Oi je heri tamasa ghanaghoro gahana rajani||

English Translation:

With a high hope I have come up to you, Hold out your arms,

 O Mother don't you send me back.

 Nobody likes to care for destitutes, You will give refuge I know well I know,

 I have no other desire in me, But to remain seated at your feet,

 I have no other craving in me, But to call you O Mother dear,

 Unless sheltered by you, Where else shall I get a home, Where else shall I go about weeping.

 There behold, there behold,

There's a deep and very thick darkness of the night,

 With a high hope I have come up to you, Hold out your arms,

 O Mother don't you send me back.

DS