THE MOTHER EXPRESS

Maverick Mamta will launch the Mother Express to commemorate the birth centenary of Mother Teresa on the coming 26th August. She has decided that the train will have the blue and white colours of Mother Teresa’s sari. What she has not decided is where the train will go!

Sounds funny, but I am sad and disturbed. Because I see Mother Teresa going the way of other icons like Mahatma Gandhi, or for that matter Jesus too. The Government of India plans to mint a special coin in Mother Teresa’s memory. There will be seminars, celebrations and platitudes. Like Jesus, and the Mahatma, Mother Teresa too will be pedestallised, with garish plaster of paris statues. She will be “up there”, and we will be “down here”. She will become inaccessible, beyond our reach. Then we will only adulate, not emulate her. This is the great danger of pedestallisation, iconoclasm and adulation. There will be nobody to emulate her, to walk in her footsteps.

Yesterday a journalist friend phoned me. He had taken a destitute girl to one of Mother Teresa’s homes. The sister in charge declined, saying that there “was no room”. Shades of Bethlehem? Would Mother Teresa have given the same answer? Was this one more sign of a more portent decline in the spirit of the congregation begun by the Mother?

I first met Mother Teresa in 1967, while still a teenager. My mother had invited her to establish a home for the destitute in our home town Kanpur (the same home that now had no room). As I drove her around town I noticed her praying with great intensity. I didn’t understand it then, but in later years I would recall that she was then in direct communication with God. Another experience with Mother Teresa was when my mother complained to her about a girl who I had fallen for. Mother Teresa had some very practical advice for me. She said, “Holy Week is about to begin. If you really love the girl, make a small sacrifice, and wait till Easter to meet her”. She was a woman of deep insight and practical wisdom. My third encounter with her was when I drove her to address a Rotary Club meeting. She had suddenly decided to transfer the local superior, to which I objected as I did not think that was the way to do things. Mother Teresa glared at me in anger. Her way was different. Later that night we were at the railway station. The “Superior” was reduced to a blue cotton bag and plastic bucket in a stuffed compartment.

I was away from Kanpur for many years. When I returned in 1982 I discovered to my dismay that the plot of land that we had obtained 15 years earlier for the home for the destitute was still lying vacant. I wrote to Mother, but she replied saying that she had no sisters to spare. I did not take her “No” for an answer. Ultimately the home was built, the same one which now had no room.

I have also had enriching experiences with destitutes. My first “encounter” was at Lucknow railway station. I found an old man on the platform. I got a stretcher and coolie, put him on a rickshaw in pouring rain and took him to the home. It was 11 pm. The Superior knew me and welcomed me. There was no room at that hour, so she asked me to sleep in the parlour with the old man. She gave him some food and water. When I woke in the morning, that poor soul had already gone to his maker.

Another morning when walking to Mass I saw a bedraggled figure lying on the railway tracks. I “prayed” for him at Mass, hoping he would be gone on my return! He was still there, so I had to respond. I put him on a rickshaw and brought him home. His head was shaven and wore just a dirty shirt. I thought of washing him with the garden hose before the sisters came, and tried to tear of the filthy shirt. To my consternation I discovered that “he” was a woman. My wife and I covered her, spoon-fed water and milk through her clenched teeth, and handed her over to the Missionaries of Charity.

On another occasion I had picked up a young man covered in blood and dust beside the highway. I put him into my car and took him to the home. He recovered. I was able to contact his family of the Pakistan border in Punjab, and reunite him with them. They wrote me a letter of thanks, which I received on my birthday. It was the most precious birthday gift I ever received. There have been several other similar instances.

The sisters also had an orphanage. Most of the inmates were girls. My wife tutored many of them. My younger brother and I were godfathers to most of these girls, and stood by their sides when they got married. Pleasant memories.

Now the orphanage doesn’t have any orphans, only little children awaiting adoption, after fulfilling Government formalities. The children have adivasi girls as their attendants. Perhaps the sisters need more time to pray! Even for the destitute, I found that the attendants did the really dirty work of cleaning them up. There is no more room in the home because many of the inmates have no where to go after being rescued. Obviously the sisters cannot rehabilitate them. But it is not enough to feed them and make them pray before the grotto. They need rehabilitation and reunion with their families, and even recreational facilities. The time has come to take one more step.

The charism of Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity was to go to the poorest of the poor. Once they are rescued they should be handed over to another organisation or congregation that has the requisite skills for rehabilitation. The same goes for the children. Those who are adopted are fine. But the adoption process again is more legal than charitable. Here too I feel that abandoned children, once stabilised, should be handed over to another group for adoption work. It is not for them to be filling up Government forms and attending court hearings.

I have another early memory of the Missionaries. They had just blue cloth bags and cycled everywhere. Now they travel around in vans and several are overweight. Have they, with the passage of time, accumulated extra baggage, besides extra kilos?

As we approach Mother Teresa’s birth centenary it should be an occasion for the Missionaries of Charity to go back to their true charism, of attending to the poorest of the poor; and leave other related services to those better qualified to do so. Otherwise there is grave danger of there being “no room” for those in need. It will be like Mamta’s blue line express to nowhere.

* The writer has been associated with Mother Teresa and her sisters for the last 43 years

August 2010