Take me to the Mother House

This afternoon, I went to visit the Mother House of the Missionaries of Charity. This is where Mother Teresa is buried and where her order is headquartered. It is also filled with memories for me personally. The first time I came to the Mother House was in 1993. My extended family had come to town on a trip throughout India. I was in the country with my immediate family and we were traveling in the north of India with a couple of my aunts and uncles and cousins and their kids. My father completed his master’s degree (in Divinity) here in Kolkata in the 1969. Every weekend during his time here in town he would go to Nirmal Hriday (better known as Kalighat) which is the home for the dying destitutes she founded there and work, often alongside Mother Teresa herself. Although my dad did not take us to that place of poverty and death, we went to the Mother House, where many of the sisters lived, to see if Mother Theresa was home. She was in, and although she had been in poor health, she came down from her room to meet with the whole family, greeting us all individually, praying with and blessing us.

Mother Teresa exuded an air of what I call “humble power.”  She was a tiny woman who didn’t even come up to my chin, height-wise, but she commanded attention.  However, she didn’t ask for the attention, seemed rather embarassed by it.  After we met her, it was time for the sisters to have evening prayer. Mother Teresa always attended too, of course, and we were able to go as well. She sat in the back of the room, and we sat near to her. It was an incredible experience, especially as I was quite religious when I was younger.

 

Three or four years later, when I was in college, I decided to spend a semester in India and I decided that I would really like to volunteer with the Missionaries of Charity myself. I began making preparations in the fall of my sophomore year for the next spring. That September, however, Mother Teresa passed away. Nonetheless, I continued my plans and went ahead with my semester abroad. While in India, I moved to Kolkata for 3 months, and was able to volunteer for the MC’s myself. I spent most of my time at Nirmal Hriday; however, I spent approximately two weeks at Prem Dan, another home here in Kolkata, which is much larger than Kalighat but has people who are usually not quite so sick. There are several other locations in Kolkata where the sisters have homes and work with the poor and/or ill. I was able to see many of them during my time here in the spring of 1998.

I stayed in a guest house in a church just across the street from the Mother house when I lived here in Kolkata and volunteered each day, taking a bus to work in the morning, helping care for the patients in the homes, helping feed them, clean the home, and do the laundry and dishes.  It was challenging, hot work, and difficult to see so much suffering in the world each day.

Today, I took the bus from Hiland Park and headed to the old neighborhood.  When I got to the Mother House, things were both the same as they had been and different.  Mother Teresa’s tomb is now in a room on the main level and admirers, tourists, and pilgrims come to see it.  They have converted the room next to that a small museum detailing her life and the founding of the Order.  Also, her bedroom has been preserved just as it was when she lived in it and visitors may ascend a set of stairs to the doorway of her room to look in and observe her quarters.  This, clearly, was not something I was able to do the first time I came to the Mother House, as Mother was occupying her room,  I remembered quite vividly seeing her come down from those stairs, however, and had imagined what her rooms were like for many years.

It was very moving for me to walk up them and to see where she had lived (no pics allowed up there, though).  It was a tiny little room, barely enough space for a desk and a bed.  It had a little window and an organizational system for her mail to the many locations and sisters she needed to send correspondence to.  She also had a map on the wall detailing everywhere the order had homes and missions.

When I stayed and volunteered half-a-year after her death, access had not yet been granted to her rooms.  I was lucky, however at that time to meet the nurse-sister, who had been by Mother Teresa’s side when she passed away, and to hear that story firsthand.  I was also able to briefly meet Mother’s successor, Sister Nirmala.  It was a good experience.

This afternoon, I sat by Mother’s tomb for quite some time.  I’m not religious anymore, but there was an interesting vibe in the room, of reverence and calm, as though remnants of that power she exuded remained.  It was peaceful.  Her tomb was decorated with flowers.  They were laid out on the top of the tomb to spell out the words “Jesus my All in All” below a bouquet of other flowers and a prayer box, where people could put slips of paper with their prayers written.

There were sisters who occupied benches by the head of the tomb.  They came and went, but there was always at least one or two there, praying.  I wondered how many minutes of the day actually passed without someone by the tomb.  Perhaps it is never unattended.

 

After visiting the museum section of the house, which chronicles the beginnings of the Missionaries of Charity and of Mother’s life, I left.  On my way out, I talked to one of the sisters at the door who had been there when I entered.  I had not arrived in time that day to talk to the volunteer coordinator.  I don’t have enough time to come back and volunteer after the weekend, and if I wait til the next volunteer registration time, I will have missed the chance to put in more than a day.  She said I could come in the morning and do the work and then register in the afternoon for the rest of the weekend.  I said that sounded great, and so it looks like I’ll be volunteering for the Missionaries of Charity for the next few days.  I’ll be glad to have the opportunity to help out again.

I’ve also got a lot of memories, some quite difficult, from that time frame.  It will be interesting to see how I handle being confronted with returning to the place where I saw so much hardship and that had made such an impression on me in my youth.  I hope I can be useful and make even a tiny little difference against the poverty and destitution so rife here in Kolkata.

After leaving, I crossed the street and revisited the church and guesthouse where I had stayed last time.  It was neat to see the campus and trigger a few more memories.  Then, I walked a long way back towards the center of the city, in the direction of my father’s old seminary.  From there, I decided to try and catch a bus home.  I ended up needing to take 3.  Sigh. Oh, India.