Kolkata
When I handed two
cones of ice-cream to the two Bengali girls who were squatting in front of the
hotel entrance, you should have seen their eyes sparkle and glitter, their mud-stained
faces beam with smiles. The shopkeeper probably overcharged me. RM 10 does not
mean much for most Malaysians. But one can get a lunch for RM 2 in Kolkata. The
older sister gingerly tore open the ice-cream cover for her sister. They both licked
the ice-cream slowly very much like the way I lap Haagen Daz. They know how to
savor every moment of it. The children in Kolkota seem happy even though they
live in abject poverty. On several occasions, some of them pulled my hand and
asked me to take photos of them. They would pose for me and after that want to
see the photos. But they never once want me to give them some money. They were
just satisfied to look at their faces in the photos.
When the taxi sped
past the street teeming with people, I saw a woman washing her hair by scooping
the running water from the drain. She was happy to wash away the dirt from her
hair with the not so clean water. It’s all she could afford. Every now and then
we see men bathing in the public from the tap and some women washing their
clothes downstream with the bathed water. No one seems to complain. The Bengali
in Kolkata are able to take whatever life throws at them.
There is something
about this city that had produced 5 Nobel Prize Laureates. Mother Teresa who
won the Nobel Peace Prize (1979) came to Calcutta in 1948 and worked among the
poor. She started the Missionaries of Charities, a small Order of 13 people
which now consists of 4000 nuns. The Missionaries of Charities believe in
caring for the unwanted, the uncared and the unloved in society. Kolkata
streets are full of people making the five-foot ways their homes. I saw a family
of 3 generations living under one roof that has no protection from strong wind
or torrential downpour of rains. I visited the home which housed many unwanted
children and infants. I was talking to a nun who has been working there for 15
years and all I could see is a woman of faith, of love and of hope. Many of
them go about their work, doing mundane things without drawing attention to
self because they have seen Mother Teresa living her faith, loving Christ and
serving the least unassumingly for 49 years. When Mother Teresa said that she
is just like a pencil in the hand of a mighty God, she meant it with all her
heart and lived it out beautifully. When she said that “we must do small things
with great love”, we see her feeding the poor and caring for the dying day in
and day out for nearly 5 decades. Her words take on new meaning.
Being a tourist in
Kolkata for 4 days and living here for 5 decades is a world of difference. One
can stomach the filth, the stench, the noise, the pollution and the crazy
traffic in Kolkata for a few days but to work here for a few years is a
different story. I began to understand why hardly any Malaysian Christians ever
felt called to migrate here. We neither have strong stomachs nor great hearts.
Stepping into the home
turned museum of Rabindranath Tagore immediately made me feel that I am in a
totally different environment from the world outside. Within the enclave and
inside the many rooms hang Tagore’s personal paintings, manuscripts of his poems,
prose and the music he composed. The first question that came into my mind was
how a place like Kolkata could produce and nurture a polymath who had
profoundly impacted not only Bengali literature and music but also its region.
Tagore was the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize of Literature (1913). When I
saw the oil painting portrait of Tagore in Victoria Memorial Hall, I had goose
pimples all over me. He looks like Jesus of the Western paintings.
Sarah, my daughter,
laid her hands on whatever Tagore books she could find in the second hand book
stores or the first class book room in the streets of Kolkata; in the process
she helped me to empty my wallet! When Sarah was born, I gave her the name in
Chinese meaning poem/literature and melody/music, hoping that one day she would
use literature and music to serve God. It has become a reality. When she said
yes to Rema to bring 75kg of English Literature books (mostly Shakespeare) to
be given to Jadavpur University where her late husband Professor Lim Chee Seng
once taught as adjunct professor, little did I know that it turned out to be an
adventure of a significant kind. We were impacted by this great city Kolkata
which has produced 5 Nobel Prize Laureates.
