Rajendra Aneja writes about the compassionate work of Mother Teresa’s missionaries of charity
In the midst of lush green and exotic gardens of Chandigarh, India, there is a brick coloured, single-storey Home.
Enter the premises. Meet Smitha five months old, wrapped in beautiful lemon-yellow shawl. Her eyes gaze at you with wonder. Someday, Smitha will grow up, go to school. If she is bright, she may also go to college. If she is lucky, she could get married. Otherwise, she will stay in this Home, to help another Rita or Sunita grow up. But, Smitha will never know who her parents are. They abandoned her at the doors of this Home on a dark, cold winter morning. Now, Smitha has a life to live.
In another room meet Roshan, a mentally retarded and physically handicapped boy. Though four-years-old, he cannot perform any normal human function. He remains in his bed all day. He has to be bathed, fed, his clothes have to be changed and his toilet has to be administered. Other inmates help him in these basic tasks. Roshan will grow older, but he will always be in bed. He too, does not know who his parents are. They abandoned him at the door-steps of this house when he was just eight months old.
Meet Chanderpal. He is 58 and is suffering from Tuberculosis. He was an earning member of his family. When Tuberculosis took hold of him and he could earn no more, his wife and children disowned him. Chanderpal occupies a bed in this house. A doctor comes to treat him. He lies in his bed in a room. Chanderpal is waiting for his death. He is grateful that he can receive it with dignity when it comes.
Smitha, Roshan and Chanderpal are among the 150 persons, who lived in this Home in 1986, when I visited it a few times. This Home that provides shelter, has an unassuming board, which reads “Shanti Dan” Missionaries of Charity. Home for Sick and Dying Destitute, Crippled Abandoned Children.” The Mission was founded by Mother Teresa, honored as a Saint and a Noble prize winner. It is at this Home, that I met Mother Teresa in 1986.
The Sisters of the Mission, administer to the needs of the 150 inmates. There are many pretty babies below the age of 12 months. They lie in neat white cradles, covered by spotlessly clean woolen shawls, their heads resting on soft pillows. They hold out their tiny hands for affection. These babies were all abandoned at the door-steps of this house. Some were sent by hospitals, when their mothers did not want to take them home.
There are also about 100 mentally retarded and handicapped children between the ages two to 15. Some of them cannot even move a limb. When you enter their room, they struggle to raise their thin, bony arms in greeting. Some of them stutter and cannot even utter a word. Many older people come to the house on their own to die quietly and with dignity.
The Indian Government had withdrawn the permission, for Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, to receive donations from abroad from 25 December 2021. Fortunately, the permission was re-granted again on 8 January 2022. I have had the opportunities to see the humanitarian work of this organisation in some far-flung countries.
In Sao Paulo, (Brazil), Mother’s Home was located in a large slum, managed by 10 Sisters, mainly from Europe, when I visited it in 1997. The Sisters cared for 600-700 unwanted babies, deformed children and sick, terminally old men, women. Though some of the rich people of Sao Paulo offered to help to relocate the Home to more elegant surroundings, the Sisters opted to stay put in the slum, because they asserted, that is where their work was.
Even in affluent Sao Paulo, Mother’s Home was protecting and caring for the unwanted, particularly the old and sick parents. When Mother Theresa passed away in 1997, all the inmates gathered to offer prayers for her, which I attended.
In Dar es Salaam, (Tanzania), the Sisters had cared for unwanted babies for decades when I paid some visits there, between 1999 and 2002. Many of the orphans were teenagers and helping the Sisters to manage the Home. There was a clinically clean room, with pretty cradles for abandoned babies. There were clean beds and playgrounds for about 100 orphans, aged between three and seven years. They would all break into a joyful dance at the commencement of African folk music.
There was heartening support for the Mission from all communities. A company took its staff and their families on Sundays, to spend it with the children and the sick. Another business installed an air-conditioner in the room, in which new-born babies were kept, since the temperatures soared during the summers. Another company installed a music system, so that children could dance. There was a tiny, simple chapel, where the troubled could seek solace.
In Abidjan, (Cote D’Ivoire), the Home was an oasis of peace, in a country rent asunder with a civil war, when I was based there in 2003. Despite the protracted curfews, the Sisters of Charity served the sick, elderly and orphans relentlessly.
All these Homes, amongst the 760 in 139 countries, were managed by dedicated Sisters, from across the world, who receive no salary. They manage with just two to three (sarees) dresses per year and eat a simple meal with the inmates. The astonishing commitment of Mother Teresa and her Sisters, is an inspiration.
For the Sisters who have given their lives to the cause of the rejected and the destitute, working in the Home is a saga of sacrifice and love. Their only reward is a smile on the face of a baby or a sign of life in the numb limb of a handicapped child or an articulate word from the mouth of a stammering child. They serve the needy, irrespective of religion or nationality. Mother Teresa and her Missionaries have transformed a desert of pain, into a garden of love.
Aneja was Managing Director of Unilever Tanzania. He is an alumnus of Harvard Business School and the author of books entitled, “Rural Marketing across Countries and “Business Express”. He is a Management Consultant
