Century Snapshots 1979

Mother Teresa gets the Nobel Prize for peaceShe may not have been an Indian by birth she was in fact born in Albania but Mother Teresa rec...

Mother Teresa gets the Nobel Prize for peace
She may not have been an Indian by birth she was in fact born in Albania but Mother Teresa received the highest civilian award of this country in 1980, a year after she was awarded the Nobel Prize for peace. But all these spectacular honours, including many before and after, were perhaps not enough recognition for a person whose only mission in life was to stand by the poor, the needy, the disabled. And she did this until she died in 1997 in Calcutta, her chosen place of work, for close to 50 years, not out of any sense of pity but out of a genuine concern for the poor, the homeless, the helpless.

On getting the news of her winning the Nobel Prize she said, characteristically enough, 8220;What the Nobel Prize means to me is that with the prize money I will be able to feed more people.8221; In fact, she requested the Swedish authorities to cancel the customary banquet after the prize-awarding ceremony and hand over the money earmarked for it to her. And. indeed, for the first time in the history of the Nobel Prize, the banquet was cancelled and the money given to the Mother.

Born as Agnes Bojaxhiu in Skopie of Albania in 1910, she came to Calcutta in January 1929 and became a teacher of Loreto House in central Calcutta. She set up her slum school in 1948 and in 1950 she got Papal permission to set up the Missionaries of Charity at Creek Lane, also in central Calcutta. In 1952, she opened the Nirmal Hriday home for the dying at Kalighat in south Calcutta.

8220;I first met her about 35 years back when the Mother had not become quite the Mother of later days, and while I worked with her I used to see how she would literally beg from people to raise both funds and materials for the poor,8221; says Sunita Kumar, now spokesperson for the Missionaries of Charity. 8220;For example, one day she would go to a chemist8217;s shop and request the owners to give her some medicines which she could use for the poor. On many occasions she was refused but instead of leaving the place she would quietly sit outside the shop for hours and pray. Finally the shopkeeper would give in and giving her a packet of medicines would say: Well, I think God has listened to your prayers.8221;8217;

8220;I believe the Nobel Prize was an honour for the poor for whom the Mother worked all through her life,8221; says Herod Mullick. General secretary of Bangiya Christiya Pariseba, Mullick met the Mother on different occasions and received help. 8220;She would assist us in all the philanthropic work we used to undertake and help us sort out even the most trivial of problems,8221; Mullick says.

The organisation that the Mother set up for the poor is flourishing. 8220;After her death, over the last two years, 46 new Homes had been set up making a total number of 650,8221; says Kumar.

8212;Sabyasachi Bandopadhyay