To love without giving birth!
My mom once said, “Be a worthy child, and you will find many mothers at every stage of life”. It was tough to comprehend what she was saying at the age of 12, but life is the best teacher, and indeed it gave me many mothers, lessons, and exams too!
Recently, met one of my mothers after 15 years, and my heart was pounding as I entered the convent along with other ex-convent girls. As always, she was smiling. We sat for hours talking, and all stories rolled into flashback. One of our favorite times with her was the storytelling when she would sit on a couch, and all girls used to sit on the ground surrounding her. She would tell us about her life experiences, fun facts, tragedy, and everything that could affect us in any way.
Living with her was not an easy task, and understanding her was an achievement. I doubt if anyone has reached there. Several years ago, a 19-year-old girl moved from South Africa to India to serve the poor and needy. She was unaware of her future, but sure about the journey. She was named Sr. Kishore when she joined Helpers of Mary Congregation to continue her service. She started caring for the orphan and helpless girls, and it’s been 56 years with the same routine. Her love, care, and affection have not changed a bit.
I was 14 when I first met her, and fear was the only feeling I had for her, like all the other girls. However, as time passed, it had also given birth to many other feelings. One day we had a two-year-old baby in our convent, and Sister asked me to take care of her. Little did I know anything about babysitting, I went through a series of scolding, yelling, the dramatic episodes to learn about what a child needs. And then she said, “It’s easy to give birth and love your child, it’s difficult to love without giving birth”, and this changed my way of nurturing the baby and understood her love for us too. After 5 years when I held my niece on her first day on earth, I knew exactly what I had to do. Like me, all other girls were given young kids to care for, and I know they have turned out to be wonderful mothers too.
Sr. Kishore has always been like a coconut, hard to crack and tender inside. The only problem was that we never understood when it was hard or tender. We were 20 girls, and if anyone of us had done something wrong, she would shout at all of us together, and we used to fight with that one girl who created the chaos. One day one of us broke a mirror in the dressing room, and all of us were dead scared to figure out what will happen if sister finds out. So, we all came up with a plan to ensure that she doesn’t come closer to the dressing room for two days until the mirror was fixed. Everyone was so attentive to answer her in the first call, pin-drop silence in the afternoons, homework, garden, kitchen, everything completed on time. Two girls managed to step out for groceries and got a new mirror, and managed to get it through the hallway without any other sister’s noticing it, and got it fixed. That day after the teamwork, we realized the reason why she would shout at all of us simultaneously. I don’t think any of us would forget that episode in our life.
She trained us to be creative, artistic, dance, sing, clean, and yet do all our work in silence. “She would often say that the beauty of women is to do her work in silence”. This used to be an everyday dialog when our iron buckets made noise while cleaning. Trust me, 15 minutes for every task, like cleaning your room, dishes and washing clothes with those iron buckets, was a task and too much to ask at that time. Perhaps we were not brave enough to tell her then, but surely, we realize why we are superwomen now. Sister also used to reward us with snacks and movies on Saturdays after all our work, taught us to find happiness even in small rewards, after all those were the happy moments we had.
Besides all her love and care, there were two other famous things, her temper, which goes without saying, and her dialogues for all scenarios. Whenever she sees any boy loitering around girls, she would say “any pair of pants is good for you’ll” sure this had kept most of us away from boys. Some girls wouldn’t eat non-veg, and the dialog for that would be “eat and if anything happens to you, I will bury you in the cemetery”. We had a cemetery in the compound, and most girls would eat, not with the thought of anything happening to them after eating, but with the fear that sister is sitting and watching until the plate is clean. Another amusing one was “Thum dewani hai kya”, which means are you crazy. I can’t describe how we managed to listen to her scolding with this line without laughing. It still brings a smile on my face. Sister had saved all our photos, clicked at different times, and showed them to us. She has been carrying those with her for 15 years. While we were looking at those photos, we relived all her dialogues and those moments like it was just yesterday.
The best part of Sr.Kishore was that she never gave up. She had been in and around five to seven convents taking care of girls from 20 to 400 at a time. She had her ups and downs with the girls, some had boyfriends, some didn’t want to study, some were clueless about their life, some were wild, some were abused, yet she is there creating and lighting paths for many. Not only for the girls, but she has also gone out of her way to support helpless family members, communities, sick, and much more. Not to forget the personal life they have, which reminds me of an incident when sister lost someone close to her in her family, I vividly remember that we were drawing something on the board for an occasion and writing a quote “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others”. She got a call to inform her about her loss. She took her moment to let her pain roll down in tears, and post that, she was back to board and continuing her work as if nothing happened. I gathered some courage to ask her how she managed to do that, and she told me, “That’s the reality of life, her service takes priority over her personal emotions, and that’s exactly what we are writing on the board”. It’s unbelievable to see their commitment. Like her, there are many other Nuns who are doing the service in silence, and nobody notices the sacrifice they do for humanity.
There were no words to express how our few hours were spent just talking and remembering our lives years back. She called out to other sisters and proudly said these are my girls, and we were overjoyed to see the pride in her eyes. While we were bidding goodbye after a wonderful day, she had tears in her eyes and said, “When I close my eyes, do come and visit me”. We all had tears we were trying to hide. Isn’t this something that every mother asks from their children? I still wonder how she managed to love us and so many girls unconditionally without giving birth.
A Convent Girl!
