Short take
Into the heart of the Saint of the Gutters
Jaswant Singh

Mother Teresa: The Apostle of Love
by Gautam Ghosh; Rupa , New Delhi Rs 95 Pages 66.

ASK anyone if he knows a woman called Gonxha Bojaxhiu, and he will think you are up to some kind of a joke, but as soon as you mention Mother Teresa, his face will light up with reverence for this embodiment of love and compassion. But this was the name given to her by her Macedonian parents when she was born in Skopje on August 16, 1910, and was baptised as Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu.

In this book, you read about her childhood spent with her parents, who imbibed in her the spirit of ‘love thy neighbour as you would love me’. You also read how she lost her father when she was only nine, and how her mother brought up her three children stitching wedding dresses and doing embroidery.

While in school, she felt that she was required to spend her life in God’s work, helping the poor. She made up her mind to become a nun and left Skopje to enter the Order of the Sisters of Our Lady Loreto in Ireland, which was doing missionary work in India. She chose Therese of Listeux as her patron saint but another sister of the order had already adopted that name. So the spelling "Teresa" was adopted.

You also read about her journey to Calcutta (now Kolkata), her training in Darjeeling, her return to Calcutta to teach in a girls’ school where she rose to be its Principal. All the time she knew that she had to work among the sick, the dying, the hungry and the poorest of the poor. In August 1948, the Vetican granted her permission to leave the Sisters of Loreto and pursue her calling. She started living in a slum and visiting the homes of the sick to treat them.

We also learn how she started teaching slum children, how some of her former pupils joined her order, how a congregation — the Missionaries of Charity — was formed and how within five years, the congregation was recognised as a pontifical congregation under the direct jurisdiction of Rome. A Muslim leaving for Pakistan sold his mansion to the Missionaries of Charity at a low price and that became the famous ‘Mother House’.

Nirmal Hriday (pure heart), a home for dying destitutes, was set up as the first of about 50 projects of the Missionaries of Charity. Mother Teresa and her nuns would pick up dying persons from the streets of Calcutta, clean them, take care of them and give them either health or death with dignity. Then came up ‘Shishu Bhavan’, a home for abandoned children and ‘Shanti Nagar’, a colony where lepers could live and work in peace. Like Swami Vivekanand who found God in all beings, she found Jesus in the dying, the cripple, the unwanted and the unloved.

Pope Paul VI honoured her with Pope John XXII Peace Prize, the President of India presented her the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding. We get to know how she accepted the Nobel Prize for peace in the name of the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the cripple, the lepers and all those who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared.

This amazing woman whose spirit of selfless service made her a legend in her lifetime, is now after her death on her way to being recognised as a saint. When the process is completed, she will be known to the world as St Teresa, but to the millions of Indians who have seen and felt her magical touch of compassion, she will be just MOTHER.

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