The Mother Teresa Effect: What I Learned Volunteering for a Saint

By Alicia Young

What it’s like to meet a future saint? To work for one?

Mother Teresa’s mission to the poor resonated through every country, faith, income level, and worldview. Her compassion touched everyone from small children to heads of state—and one garden-variety Catholic.

Journalist Alicia Young volunteered in Calcutta (now Kolkata) over Mother’s final Christmas. She divided her time between Kalighat, the Home for the Dying Destitute, and a rural leprosy hospital. In The Mother Teresa Effect, she narrates her transformative journey with humanity, color, and gentle humor.

As the world celebrates the newly canonized Saint Teresa, Alicia vividly:
•Reveals meeting her—an encounter that veered into unexpected territory
•Recounts daily life at the hospice and leprosy ward
•Explains how a one-time go-go dancer coped with living in a convent
•Chronicles daily life in Calcutta, from pavement dwellers to elegant soirees
•Relates anecdotes from others who have felt her ripple effect
•Shares simple, potent lessons she learned on gratitude and nonjudgment

Alicia Young is an Australian journalist with more than twenty years’ experience as a medical reporter, foreign correspondent, and news anchor. Outside work, Alicia handles parasols and power tools with equal ease (not really, but she helpfully holds the flashlight when needed).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alicia Young
• Release date: Oct 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9780996538848

Alicia Young

Alicia Young is an Australian international TV journalist with more than fifteen years’ experience as a medical reporter, foreign correspondent, and news anchor. Prior to journalism, she was a social worker and crisis counselor. Alicia was once told off by Mother Teresa for not having children and has volunteered at a hospice and leprosy hospital in India. Outside work, Alicia handles parasols and power tools with equal ease (not really). She lives in the US.www.savvylife.net

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PART I

Getting Settled

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ARRIVING IN INDIA

Late November 1996

Jon and I arrive in Calcutta from the US, where he’d delivered his first academic paper at an earth-science conference.

My aunt Rita (known simply as Rita) picks us up with her driver in stifling heat and humidity. A ride of technically forty-five minutes to her apartment bloats past two hours, as the traffic inches along at a murderous rate. Calcutta is a city of twelve million people, and it seems as though every one of them is on the road right now. Horns blare impatiently and achieve nothing. Beggars encircle the car, leaning against it, their fingers poking through the sliver of an open window. We jostle around inside, our jet lag casting a dreamlike haze over it all. Hands thrust huge bouquets of roses against the glass; Rita nonchalantly explains they’ve likely been swiped from Christian graveyards (Hindus are cremated). The glacial pace of driving offers glimpses of street life: people rummaging through trash, cows weaving on and off the street, pollution enveloping it all.

My arm is still tender from my final hepatitis B shot. I’d begun the series of injections in Australia, and packed the needle and vial in my hand luggage. Yesterday we stopped at a US travel clinic for my final dose (I couldn’t bring myself to do it, and Jon seemed a little too keen to try.) They wanted two hundred dollars for the two-minute job—make that a two-minute jab—and a ream of paperwork. Instead, we got to the airport and asked to see the doctor on call. She was an Indian lady, and when she learned our destination, she graciously administered the shot at no charge.

We finally arrive at Rita’s home. Jon and I will have almost a week here together before he heads back to Australia. Rita’s apartment is spacious and well appointed, decorated with understated elegance. The family has domestic staff (a way of life for a quarter-billion Indians), and they’re still referred to here as servants. Hospitality is taken seriously and offered graciously.

We’re each brought a refreshing glass of nimbu pani, a mixture of water, a squeeze of lemon juice, and a dash of honey. It’s touted as a healthy, gentle way to cleanse the system.

The air is fragrant with hand-ground masalas (spices). A platter of samosas appears, delicious triangles of golden puff pastry filled with a medley of onions, potatoes, and peas. (Rita’s staff eat the same dishes prepared for the family themselves. This is not the norm.)

The longtime cook cheerfully needles Jon to eat five times more than anyone else; she considers it her duty to fill his six-foot-five frame. We smile, accustomed to being lovingly badgered to eat; relatives at home are mortified if we visit and fail to consume half our body weight. Next door is a large pond, handy to walk around. At the rate we’re eating, we’ll need it. Watch how Indians walk, Rita counsels. They almost glide along. And it’s true; it’s as though minimal effort is exerted in the heat.

The pace inside is relaxed, in stark contrast to the bustle on the street. There is no reliance on fast food or something frozen thrown into the microwave. Each dish is cooked from scratch and presented beautifully. And just as meals are planned ahead, so are other rituals. The hot water system, known as a geezer, must be turned on at least thirty minutes before it’s needed to ensure a steamy supply. There is no option to hop in for a quick shower on the spur of the moment or before you dash out the door.

Our gifts of liquor, chocolates, and other items are stored in a locked cupboard.

The staff is quietly horrified that I wear minimal jewelry. They fret discreetly to Rita that every woman, no matter how poor, should adorn her neck, wrists, and fingers, if only with colored string. That I would choose to go out with a simple wedding band and watch mystifies them.

There is a knock at the door. Rita had given out new clothes to workers around the apartment complex a month or two before, to celebrate Diwali (the Festival of Light). A man politely requests his as he’d been out of town.

A few days later, the jet lag is subsiding.

I’ve been looking forward to visiting Auntie Grace at the convent where she lives. She has been a nun for more than sixty years and is now in her mid-eighties. Her memory is razor sharp, and she affectionately chides me for not having replied promptly when she wrote to me at age fourteen, more than a decade earlier. I’ll be moving into this convent when Jon leaves. Most volunteers to Calcutta stay in the budget hotels on Sudder Street; my experience will offer a different way of life, and I’m eager to sample it.

Auntie Grace is not a sister with the Missionaries of Charity but belongs to a different Catholic order. She worked with Mother Teresa for decades on many of the same committees and recalls that while her famous colleague had a good sense of humor, she could be very strident. Grace remembers a time Teresa turned to her during a meeting and announced, I’m sending you another forty orphans next month. Mother, we can’t feed the ones we have, Grace countered. God will provide, responded Teresa, and that was that. She was already checking it off her agenda.

Grace recalls that when the Missionaries of Charity was first established, the sisters existed on very little. They would be sent to the market with instructions to bring home only enough food for that day. Having no money, they then would stare at the floor with their baskets beside them, arms crossed in humility. And there, they would wait in silence for someone to offer to pay on their behalf. This could take minutes, hours, or most of the day.

By the time we provide all the family updates, Grace is looking tired, so we say our goodbyes.

We head next to Kalighat, where I’ll be based. We’re both curious to see it, and Jon will feel better about my absence if he can picture the environment.

Kalighat goes by several names. Formally, it is Nirmal Hriday, the Missionaries of Charity’s Home for the Dying Destitute. It also translates to Home of the Pure Heart. Kalighat derives from Kali, the name of a Hindu goddess, and ghat, the word for the mouth of a river, such as the nearby Hooghly River.

A sister graciously makes time for us. She explains that when Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950, she began scouring locations for a home. Despite teaching in India for seventeen years, she was initially greeted with curiosity and skepticism. Some days, this would escalate to outright hostility, as people suspected her real agenda was to convert people to Christianity. Thus, she found it difficult to secure a base. Legend holds that in time, she learned of a Hindu priest dying of cholera; she nursed him when others, fearful of catching the disease, would not. In gratitude, the community worked with local officials to give her a building off the main Hindu temple, formerly a dormitory for out-of-town worshippers. This is where I’ll volunteer.

By evening, we transition to another world as we head to a wedding with Rita. Wedding season (roughly between October and December) is in full swing as it brims with auspicious dates to marry. In a country approaching a population of one billion, wedding season is so big that it has a direct impact on the global gold market. Nor is it fueled only by demand for rings, but all manner of gold bangles, bracelets, and necklaces. While 18-carat gold is popular in the West, here 22-carat gold is strongly