Mother Teresa centenary celebrations

Yesterday was the Birth Centenary of Mother Teresa now known as Blessed Teresa of Kolkata following her beatification. I have a lot of memories of her and The Missionaries of Charity especially the various welfare programmes we did in Kolkata together.

In one of the public programmes Mother Teresa said about me – “He is a boy with a different vision all together.”

I remember, some years ago there was a programme organised at the Kalamandir in Kolkata in which our ex-Prime Minister was supposed to felicitate Mother. But Mother Teresa could not attend due to ill health and Chandrashekhar ji went to the Mother House to felicitate her and pay his respects.

For several years I used to visit the Mother House especially on specific occasions like Mahavir Jayanti, Christmas etc. In fact, I was instrumental in fixing up appointments at the Mother House for many delegations from the Jain community mostly during Mahavir Jayanti.

I don’t know whether it is right or wrong, but I haven’t been to the Mother House since her demise. Somehow I have never felt like being there. May be it was Mother Teresa to whom I was drawn rather than the Mother House.
The day was otherwise quite busy and after 3 PM I was there for the whole evening in Lal Bazar for a meeting on our project for the elderly -Pronam – with the Kolkata Police Commissioner and other police officials.

From Lal Bazar I went to attend the annual general meeting of West Bengal Flower Grower’s Association at the West Bengal State Assembly Committee room. I was once again elected vice-president of the organisation. In the evening, I was supposed to attend Arindam Sil’s party at Hotel Hindustan International but felt too tired and had to give it a miss.

The Mother Teresa Film Festival is currently on at Nandan, I spoke to Prasenjit Chatterjee and may be some time next week I shall organise a special show of a documentary on Mother Teresa directed by Payal Mohanka.

ess bee