THAT DAY DILIP KUMAR AND SAIRA BANU STOOD IN A LONG QUEUE WITH HUNDREDS OF OTHERS TO HAVE A DARSHAN OF MOTHER TERESA

Ali Peter John

She was a pretty young nun from Albania who had opted to come to India as a missionary to serve the poorest of the poor and landed in Calcutta where she started her mission to work among the destitute and sick of the city.She used to walk in the streets wearing a coarse white saari with a blue border and was joined by a few other Indian young nuns who found her to be very energetic , enthusiastic and willing to work for the lepers and other very sick and dying who had no one to take care of them.She had started working with just a few rooms and a few patients and some local doctors.Her mission kept growing and there were people from India and from different parts of the world who heard about her mission and were willing to go out of their ways to help her in her mission.Within years ,she was successful in coming up with her own”Home”for the poor who were almost given up for dead and whose bodies were found in a state of decay and with worms , maggots and other kinds of insects feasting on their rotting bodies .She used to go around with her other nuns in a van and pick up bodies from different places in the city of Calcutta and brought them to her “Home” where she and her nuns gave the beggars and lepers a better kind of life till most of them got cured and some of them died , but not before they got the kind of dignity and care the nun with a mission wanted to give them.Years past and that pretty nun became Mother Teresa ,a name which was now
known all over the world as “the saint of the gutters working to change Calcutta into a city of joy”.

It was only the beginning of many miracles worked by Mother Teresa who ultimately won world wide recognition and ended up winning civilian awards of the Government of India including the Bharat Ratna and she went many notches up in winning awards all over till she ended up winning the Nobel Prize.Now she had her centers of the “Missionaries of Charity “in every major city in the world .She had become a human being who was difficult to believe and describe and the Roman Catholic Church with the Pope decided to honor her with the title of “Blessed “which was considered a step before a person is declared a Saint.

There were books, short films, documentaries and even Hollywood films inspired by her and work made about her.I kept following all her achievements and she was one more living legend who I dreamt of meeting or at least seeing some day…..

I was in my office when my friend Mohan Wagh , the renowned producer of Marathi plays and well-known photographer who was a personal photographer of Lata Mangeshkar and the entire Mangeshkar family, V.Shantaram,
Sachin Tendulkar, Bal Thackeray and many others ,(he had become a good friend as he was also one of the earliest photographer of “Screen”when he used to earn rupees two hundred a month and slept in the dark corners of old buildings and was the favourite photographer of all the leading female stars like Nargis, Nutan, Nanda, Waheeda Rahman and Mala Sinha ) called me and said ,”Ae chhokra, tereko maire sath janaeka hai . Do baje mere ghar aana”.It was only when I reached his house that he told me we were going to see Mother Teresa.It was a time when I couldn’t believe my ears . I had waited for years for something so unbelievable to happen to me ….

On the way, Wagh gave me a bundle of currency notes and said ,”ye paisa tereko Mother ko dena hai”. Every senior person I had met after joining “Screen “was only kind and helpful towards me and Wagh was one of the best of them (it was at this stage that I knew him as the father-in-law of the fiery leader Raj Thackeray who had married his daughter Sharmila who I had seen first when she was a kid)

We reached Ville Parle, where I knew Mother Teresa had her smaller Centre in Mumbai.As we entered the gate of her “Centre ” we saw a huge crowd standing in a queue and among them was the legendary couple , Dilip Kumar and Saira Banu who were standing with some middle class people and several slum -dwellers . Wagh knew some one working at the “Center” and tried to use his clout to jump the queue but I told him it was not the place to show his influence and asked him to join the queue like Dilip Kumar and Saira Banu had so obediently done.He agreed and the queue kept moving….

Wagh asked me to go in first and I was overwhelmed when I saw the Mother herself sitting on a plain coir mat with her gnarled hands folded .I bowed before her and had no words to say to her.I then handed over the currency notes to her which she accepted with both her hands and said in almost a whisper ,”thank you, I need this more than all the flowers and praises.It is this money that is going to help my children in Calcutta and other “Centers”. Please tell others about my need for money more than anything”.She wanted me to wait a little longer , but the crowd behind was growing impatient and their where scenes of some slum-dwellers growing restless and wild . I had to leave with Wagh and the Mother slowly raised her hand to bless us….

If was one of the few memorable moments in my life.I had the good fortune of fulfilling one more ambitious dream ….

I don’t know why , but after that meeting with the Mother,I kept praying for her every evening when I prayed .I wanted her to be made a Saint.There were times when I even got angry and asked some good and influential Christians why there was a delay in her being made a Saint when so many others were made Saints.They said that Pope John Paul had some problems with her being declared a Saint.I had faith in my belief that she would be made a saint and I was finally lucky to be one of the living to have met a nun who became a Saint during my life time….

I remember many stories about Saint Teresa , but there is one story that comes to my mind now . Khushwant Singh was one of the most controversial and irreverent writers and journalist who didn’t spare even the most mighty and powerful and was an agnostic who had no respect for either God or his people.

He once went to Kalighat in Calcutta where the mother ruled with her love and care for people who no one cared for.He went around the “Center” for two days and when he returned ,he wrote ,”I went to scoff and stayed to pray . I saw people worshiping
Kali in a mandir.They were foolish people who were worshiping a kali made of stone while I was worshipping a Kali who was the real Kali made of flesh and blood “.

There may be a hundred books written about Mother Teresa, but this one line written by a staunch non-believer says it all,tells the truth and only the truth of one of the greatest human beings of this century.