Mother Teresa not out

“What we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But if that drop was not in the ocean, I think the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.” Mother Teresa had said once famously. I don’t know about you, but I neither liked her nor wanted to meet her.
The Missionaries of Charity’s care of the destitute and dying did not impress me at all. My grudge was that why Mother was not rooting out the unjust structures that perpetuated the rampant misery and penury all around us. People branded me a communist when I argued that Mother was only dressing the wounds but did not diagnose the disease to cure it. I was barely out of college then at 21, a young angry man wanting to change the world upside down and bring about justice and freedom to the abandoned, orphaned, hungry and thirsty faceless and homeless oppressed by an unjust system.
It was a chance meeting in early 1980s in Nashik, the grapes growing city, where I met her for the first time face to face. The wrinkled, hunched and diminutive woman in fact came around meeting all who had gathered. She came to me and held my hand. I felt her Rosary she always carried in her hand. She was always in touch with God from whom she drew strength. She also ate lunch with us and once again I happened to be sitting by her side.
I asked her about pulling down the unjust socio-politico structures that deprived the ‘daridra narayans’ their basic necessities. She broke into a beatific smile and said, “Son, I do what God has told me to do: cloth the naked, feed the hungry, dress the wounded, visit the sick and take home the abandoned.” I was not convinced. I said why not teach them to catch fish with a rod instead of feeding them with fish. She said when she picked them up, they cannot even stand; they are either so sick or hungry. Once they are well, they never returned. They learnt to stand on their own feet. I was changed.