A saint of a woman

Years ago, MF Husain, the iconic Indian artist, drew three striped lines on a swathe of white canvas. There was no face; just the folds of the sari covering what

Years ago, MF Husain, the iconic Indian artist, drew three striped lines on a swathe of white canvas. There was no face; just the folds of the sari covering what would be a head, draping shoulders hunched in a mother’s stoop, an interpretation perhaps of the Pieta statue by Michelangelo now in St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. To every Indian, as to most others across the globe who saw it, it was instantly recognisable as Mother Teresa of Kolkata, the woman who took dying men and women from the streets of the city to her home, or the person behind the orphanages which cared for newborn babies abandoned on some other town’s pavement or refuse dump.

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And as Pope Francis, himself radically interpreting Christ’s compassion and love in a modern world, canonises Gonxha Agnes Bojaxhiu born in the distant town of Skopje, now in Macedonia, as Saint Teresa of Kolkata, India sees it as an honour to its own tradition of renunciation and service.

In fact, Mother Teresa made the khadi sari with its three blue line-border as iconic as herself. A symbol of compassion and love. Much as Mahatma Gandhi had made the homespun a symbol of the poor of the land. India never had better ambassadors. The khadi he wore was spun by himself. The khadi she wore was woven by victims of Hansen’s disease, deemed by others to be unclean and historically doomed to places where they would not be seen by others.

What Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in his ‘Mann Ki Baat’ on 28th August, 2016, reflects best the sentiments of the Indian people: “She was born in what was then Albania. Her language also was not English. But she moulded herself (to Indian conditions) and served the people of India. It is natural for every Indian to take pride in the moment in which such a Mother is declared a Saint.”

She had learnt English for she first wanted to be a teacher, and she soon learnt Bangla in her adopted land. Mother Teresa herself not only imbibed Indianness but she went further and proclaimed Indian values that she admired, to the world. She praised the Indian attitude of listening to each other and contrasted it with the hurried rat race of the West. According to her, the Indian ethos of being with someone, listening without a clock and without anticipation of results, teaches us about love. Because the success of love is in the loving – it is not in the result of loving.

For 17 years she taught in Loreto, St Mary’s School, Calcutta (now called Kolkata). This totally Indian nun taught in Bengali because the medium of the school was the local language and she called herself “the happiest nun in the world”. Teresa gave her all to this vast country. And the Indian people gave back love in equal measure. She became the quintessential Mother, a title given by the people only to a very few in recent times. The state bestowed on her the highest civilian honour ‘Bharat Ratna’ in 1980.

The moment of her canonisation can be summarised in her own words quoted by Rukmini Chawla, her biographer, on the back cover of her book: “I see God in every human being when I wash a leper’s wounds. I feel I am nursing the Lord Himself. Is it not a beautiful experience”. Mother Teresa was God’s gift to India. By imbibing Indianness, cultivating asceticism, taking the love of God from India to the rest of world, she became India’s gift to the world.

Theodore Mascarenhas is secretary general, Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India