What Mother Teresa taught me about life and other lessons

I was then 25, mother of three, settled in my marital life with Naresh (the ace tennis player and industrialist Naresh Kumar). My love for social service made me bump into the Missionaries of Charity. I distinctly remember that afternoon. I was in one of those weekly meetings, making paper packets for putting medicines and pills for the lepers. Mother had taught the girls how to fold the paper and we were busy executing the job.

Suddenly someone whispered that Mother was coming. Before I could prepare myself for that moment, she came in with her broad smile. As we were introduced, she shook hands and the strength and warmth I felt all at once was amazing. She made me feel very comfortable and close.

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The meetings became frequent, twice a week, and sometimes I would meet her more often, just like that, for a reason or without one, with our mutual liking blossoming into a strong bond, something between a mother and her child and between two close confidantes.

Even though I came from a different social stratum, affluent you might say, I never felt uncomfortable and out-of-sync working for the slum people. Mother told me to live my life as it was destined for me. She would often say that I won't have to give up luxury and my lifestyle to work for the poor. In fact, she told me that I should be equally generous in sharing my time with my kids and family.

It was just the way she put it that made it so much simpler for me to go about my work. What was so inspiring was her smile. She was always a happy person, gentle and smiling even though she was working in such a depressing surrounding. There was something divine about her smile and seeing her happy and content which made others forget their pain.

I was perfectly at home jangling the collection boxes at Park Street or sitting at a rickety table at the Mother House and typing out letters and money receipts in an old typewriter. I remember serving khichdi, ladleful, as poor people would throng the Sishu Bhavan every Monday when food and clothing were distributed.

Also read - Mother Teresa: Something squalid for God

Mother would often tell me, "What I can do, you can't do and what you can do, we can't." Perhaps this was her way of making every person feel important in the scheme of things.

She got the Nobel Prize for peace in 1979 and was delighted, not for herself, but for the poor. She asked the patrons not to spend money in hosting the reception dinner. Instead the money should be given for the poor, she said. Taking note of such an appeal, many countries also contributed similar amounts for the Missionaries of Charity.

Mother Teresa's life was one of profound simplicity. The furniture was minimum, a bed and a stool. The room didn't even have a fan. She would, however, ensure that the visitor's room had one because the visitors would not be used to bear such hardship. In fact, Mother Teresa had no personal secretary. She would take her own call and the loving, affectionate "yes" and not a hello was so reassuring. People would at once feel that help was just a phone call away.

She would plop herself on a small stool while sisters would sit on benches encircling her, whenever there would be a meeting. Even though people loved worshipping her and putting her on a pedestal, she loved being grounded, being with the poor.

I don't know how she would have taken to this - she being canonised and becoming a saint. Now after her canonisation one can pray to her in a church and she can have churches built in her name too, but I am sure she is squirming inside to be perched so high up.

When I was diagnosed with cancer and was undergoing treatment in 2001, four years after Mother left us, I could feel her presence embracing me. I felt so blessed. There would be no pain and I could face the challenges with a calmness of mind.

In fact, when Mother was suffering from cardiac ailments, she insisted that she be allowed to die peacefully at the Mother House and not in a hospital with gadgets hanging from her body. Though we had arranged for an oxygen cylinder at the Mother House, she was very much against being given such support. Strangely at that moment when the mask needed to be put on, two electrical circuits stopped working and we had to let her pass away quietly, as she wanted.

There was a child-like simplicity about her. When I had wanted her to come and see some of my paintings on her, she came thrice and took a great interest in going through all of them. When I requested her to sign those works, she put in her signature, without complaining. She knew it was her child's request to her mother. Sitting in her spacious drawing room, framed in between a wall-to-wall MF Hussain painting of Mother Teresa and one oil work on the nun, done by her, Sunita Kumar, the spokesperson of Missionaries of Charity and a "devoted child, friend confidante all rolled into one", was a picture of poise as she was talking about a rare friendship that spanned over 49 years.

(As told to Romita Datta.)