who came to visit her. Seeing her in her sari, some burst into tears. But all
were glad to see her and to offer what help they could.
Many years later, Michael Gomes recounted some of his experiences
helping Mother Teresa. On one rainy afternoon, Mother Teresa and
Mable Gomes returned from the slums. Both were soaking wet, and
Mother Teresa apologized for Mable’s condition. She told Michael that
they had just come from a home where they found a woman standing in a
room without a roof. Knee-deep in water, the woman had held an enamel
washbasin over the head of her sick child to protect him from the rain.
The landlord had broken the roof deliberately because the woman had
been unable to pay her rent for the last two months, owing him a total of
eight rupees. Later that afternoon, Mother Teresa hurried back to give the
woman her rent money.
On another occasion, when Michael accompanied Mother Teresa on
one of her begging forays, they again encountered rainy weather. Watch-
ing from the train window, they saw a man, completely drenched,
slumped under a tree. The two hurried to finish collecting medicines and
went back with the hopes of helping the man. However, when they
reached him, he was already dead. As Gomes later recounted, Mother
Teresa was in anguish over the incident, and the fact that many other
poor and gravely ill men and women, like the unknown man, might have
wanted to say something to someone, to have some comfort in their final
hours. The incident hardened her resolve to search for a facility where the
terminally ill could die in dignity and peace.
Gomes also remembered giving Mother Teresa extra food whenever
there was any to spare. Often she would ask him for extra mugs of rice,
which she gave away to starving families. Still, from time to time, she en-
countered hostility. Gomes remembered when a group of passengers on a
train, remarking on her strange nun’s habit, said that she was nothing
more than a Christian hoping to convert Hindus. For a long time, Mother
Teresa listened in silence. Finally she turned to them and said, “Ami
Bharater Bharat Amar” (I am Indian and India is mine).^6 The passenger
car was silent for the rest of the trip.
“IT WILL BE A HARD LIFE”
On March 19, 1949, the feast day of St. Joseph, foster father of Jesus
and the protector of the Virgin Mary, a young girl appeared at 14 Creek
Lane. Subashni Das had been a boarder at St. Mary’s at Entally since she
was a small girl, and had been one of Mother Teresa’s students. She was
now in the last year of secondary school. She had come to join Mother
OUT OF A CESSPOOL—HOPE 45