One day my father asked me to him a favor.  He seldom asked anyone for favors so I wanted to comply.  “Katayun, please take this note to Mother Teresa at Mother House”, said my father.  I waited in her office and in about fifteen minutes or so when a small dynamo entered the room.  She was draped in a white saree with a blue border and a fabulous smile which warmed the cockles of my heart.  That was my first darshan.   She heard me, took the note, read it and tucked it away.  It seemed she has asked my father, who was the manager of Singer Sewing Machine Co., for sewing machines for her girls.  Father had agreed to a handsome discount in that note which satisfied her.

My business over, I felt I needed to linger in that atmosphere.  After that, I saw Mother on several occasions.  Midnight Mass at Mother House on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve where she handed everyone a mug of hot cocoa and cookies.  I remember the warmth and friendship of those gatherings.   The stark sophistication of the simple paper stars strung against the changing night sky: the beauty, serenity and simplicity made me reluctant to go home but it also ensured a beautiful start to the coming year.

The next time I was at Mother House at midnight, I felt a strange emptiness and could not explain it.  After the Mass conducted by a Jesuit priest from St Xavier’s, I looked around for Mother.  Then I heard someone say: “Mother will return to India next week.”  No wonder her spirit was missing throughout that evening.

The last time I saw Mother, she was in a coffin in Loreto House and like the thousands in the queue I waited my turn to go up to Mother and recite a small Zoroastrian prayer which seemed very apposite:

“Ashem Vohu: In righteousness lies real happiness for it is God’s finest gift; Happiness is his who is righteous for true righteousness’s sake.”

The shopkeepers on both pavements of Middleton Row offered all of us in the queue clean, cool drinking water in disposable glasses.  Such a Christian gesture!

When I learnt that Mother Teresa would be canonized in Rome after they investigated her miracles, I was puzzled.  All her life was a miracle I thought. How did she care for the lonely, the poor, the miserable, the sick and the dying?  Wasn’t that a miracle?  Influencing nations around the world to “give till it hurts”.  Wasn’t that a miracle?

One day my father asked me to him a favor.  He seldom asked anyone for favors so I wanted to comply.  “Katayun, please take this note to Mother Teresa at Mother House”, said my father.  I waited in her office and in about fifteen minutes or so when a small dynamo entered the room.  She was draped in a white s