Another Day at Nirmal Hriday
In Bengali, Nirmal Hriday (nur-MALL hur-DIE) is translated "Home for the Dying and Destitute." It was the first Missionaries of Charity home, and is considered "Mother Teresa's first love." There are many other homes here in Calcutta (and all over the world): Daya Dan, for handicapped boys, Shanti Dan, for women with mental problems and their children; Shishu Bhavan, for handicapped children and toddlers . . . just to name a few. I have spent time working at each of these homes, but I always find myself drawn back to Nirmal Hriday.

Nirmal Hriday is known among MC's and volunteers by its shortened moniker "Kalighat," because the home is next door to the Kali Temple and the Kalighat subway stop. The name Kolkata (Bengali for "Calcutta") is said to be named for the terrifying goddess Kali. Kali is regarded as one of the principal deities of Bengal. She is an incarnation of the Hindu goddess Parvati, who is the consort of Shiva, one of the Big Three Deities. Kali is regarded as the destroyer or liberator and is often depicted in a fearful form: she has jet-black skin, a long red tongue dripping with blood, and a necklace of human heads. Clearly the kind of gal you want to take to parties. The Kali Temple attracts thousands of devotees daily to give puja, or sacrifice. The puja can be flowers, incense or (soon to be not) live goats. And believe you me, those goats look nervous.

There are about 80 "patients" at Kalighat, roughly half men, half women. Most of them are older, and those who aren't sure look older. For instance, we have Markie in the books as age 30. Upon further investigation, we've discovered she's 14. It's incredible what hard living on the streets can do to the way one looks, much less the way one feels. Most of the patients are found on the street or brought in by a team of volunteers who "work station," which means they go to the Howrah or Sealdah train stations every morning and walk back and forth looking for those who need medical assistance. Often times the volunteers will do wound care on the spot; for those who need serious attention, the volunteers bring them to Kalighat. You wouldn't believe things for which these men and women need "serious attention." So hold on.

Some days, Kalighat is like a scene from Dante's Inferno. Because of neglect and inaccessibility to health care, mosquito or rat bites turn into skin ulcers that turn into open wounds that get infected that eventually just rot away giant areas of the leg or arm or face. Often the wounds have maggots. Often the patients have scabies and lice. And many of the patients have tuberculosis and distended stomachs. Some of the patients are skin and bones. Some of them have families; most don't. Some have mental illness. None of them have homes.

What's The Story?
Every volunteer has a story or eight from Kalighat of putrefied flesh, filth, human feces, body parts where they're not supposed to be. But this belies the true state of the men and women patients. While their eyes suggest great suffering and abandonment, they also sparkle with beauty. The women's ward is filled with the most beautiful, sweetest women who love on all of us volunteers. Shima has crazy gray hair and is quite strong. Every day Susan and I spend one-and-a-half hours of wound care on her: she has seven large, seriously infected, deep open wounds on each leg. I now know what tendons look like. She suffers during wound care: Susan cuts away dead tissue and flesh with a scalpel and hydrogen peroxide. But every once in awhile during the procedure Shima will sing us songs. After we bandage Shima up, we feed her a big lunch and chai tea. She smiles, kisses me on the cheek and sometimes massages my arm. She has the most peaceful smile.

Nilima recently had a stroke and cannot move her right arm or leg. She is one of the women that clearly have eaten well before arriving at Kalighat: moving her around is a challenge because she's pretty big. One of the volunteers is a physical therapist and she works with Nilima every day to stretch out her limbs. In the mornings I come by Nilima's bed to say hello and hold her hand. She is excited to show me how she can lift her right leg or move the fingers on her right hand. This is tremendous progress. Yesterday while doing wound care on Shima, I saw Nilima across the room stand up with the aid of a walker. She caught my eye and grinned from ear to ear with delight. Nilima has the funniest old-woman cackling laugh, and it is infectious.

Sabita is a quiet one. I'm not sure exactly what her story is, but she's been at Kalighat awhile. Like Nilima, she cannot move the right side of her body. She has an enormous abdominal cyst that makes her appear eight months pregnant. She loves to receive massage. Since I have no directly applicable skills for medical care, the one thing I definitely can do is give good massages. Sabita often looks pensive but she never complains (and rarely speaks, for that matter). She observes the other women and quietly keeps to herself. When I enter the women's ward each morning, she's the first woman I wave to from across the room. After I massage her, she sometimes squeezes my hand and kisses me on the cheek.

Bed 29 has her name in the books officially as "Unknown." She talks constantly in words unintelligible to the MC sisters, wraps her bed sheet over her head and rocks back and forth chanting. She loves the volunteers, and insists they park themselves right across from her so she can massage them, instead of receiving a massage herself. All the while she chats away and giggles. She is a crack-up and never fails to make me smile.

Portha arrived at Kalighat just last week, and is about 20 years old, I believe. Portha was found on the street after having been repeatedly raped by several men. The physical damage was severe, in addition to the other health problems she has . . . not to mention the emotional damage. We do not know much more about her except that she lives in a tough area, has no family nearby and no money. She has no clear drug addictions, but knows where to find hard drugs if needed, which is not exactly a difficult undertaking in Calcutta. After a few days of rest and healing, we're seeing Portha's personality surface. She really responds to all the love and affection given by the volunteers; she smiles nearly all the time. The other day the woman in the back corner of the ward all looked a little bored, so I danced for them. I recalled a little traditional Indian dance I'd seen during my Palace on Wheels tour, and threw in a little swing dancing besides. It was not pretty. But it did amuse all the women greatly, as laughs and claps filled the air. Portha stood up and twirled her arms in the air to show me the proper dancing technique. She and I danced together a bit, and knowing I'd been clearly bested on the dance floor, I let her take a bow. Now every day she wants to dance with me or with any of the volunteers. She's safe here, and even finds joy.

Raise the Roof
I love the roof of Kalighat. Indian roofs tend to be flat and open, with several levels where one can hang laundry, grow plants or just look into the distance. There is a little perch with an overhang overlooking the street below, where I can eat my lunch and drink my chai tea. From my perch there is a direct view of a large crucifix hanging on one of the turrets of the Kalighat building: next to the crucifix hangs a large sign next to Jesus that simply says, "I Thirst." I sometimes spend an hour on the roof attending to the laundry drying in the wind on the lines. It's sunny and breezy on the roof, and although one can hear the traffic and crowds of the street below, it's still serene, a delightfully restful hiding place.

The Plumbing Is Fine
Some of you have asked about my health, what with my being in a cesspool of sickness and pollution. The volunteers all take precautions with rubber gloves, facemasks, vitamins, protein, malaria pills, etc. The pollution gets to us sometimes, and sinus infections are the norm. They usually go away in a few days. The most frequent malady is, as one might expect with rich, spicy, good Indian food, diarrhea. Knock on wood, I've only experienced it twice.

Last week's was on a local train with four more stops to go. It hit me all of a sudden, and man did I have to go right now. But with a ways still to go on the moving, jarring, bumpy train, I had to really concentrate. I had a vice-grip on Trever's arm and forbade him to speak to me for fear he'd make me laugh causing disaster to strike. The train arrived at the station, Trev helped me off the train and I slowly walked toward the exit with my head down. It was nighttime, so it was dark outside. "Hmmm . . . nobody would see me if I just hopped down on the train tracks five feet below," I thought. No joke, I actually considered this. My eyes began to blur; my face turned white. "Please, God, oh PLEASE don't let me blow!" And as if it were the Pearly Gates, there was a sign indicating a women's bathroom. And, Hallelujah, I just happened to have a square of toilet paper in my bag. No Western toilet; just an Indian "toilet," which is a hole in the ground for squatting. No problem-o here. Five more seconds and I wouldn't have made it.

After that, I was a new woman: I had been saved by Divine Providence of an Indian Toilet. Trever was now allowed to talk to me. So other than that, I remain healthy and my plumbing is fine.

Control Freak
I do the same kinds of things every day at Kalighat: help serve meals and chai tea, massage the women, assist Susan with wound care, help with laundry, or just sit with the women. This day I walked back toward the back of the women's ward to say hello to the aforementioned Bed 29 woman. Today she was different: she wasn't chanting or chatting unintelligibly or rocking or laughing. She was on her side rolled up into a ball, weeping. Instead of ignoring her, which I considered doing and sometimes do with some of the women, I walked over and touched her on the shoulder. She continued wailing. I sat her upright; she was still clutching her knees to her tiny little chest. I rubbed her back a little; she continued her cries. I couldn't ask her what was wrong because we spoke different languages. Her eyes were filled with big, heavy tears. Was she scared? Did she feel alone? Was she in pain? But I couldn't ask, I couldn't know, I couldn't fix her. Here's the interesting thing: I didn't want to try and fix her. And that's my nature: got a problem, let's fix it. At that moment I just wanted . . . to be sad with her. So I wrapped my arms around her, cradled her head on my shoulder and just hugged her. As I stroked her hair and her back, I began to cry too. Not for the injustice of poverty, not for the loneliness of abandonment, not for the ugliness of the streets, not for the pain of disease. I cried because I was just sad, simply walking through the raw emotion along side this little bit of a poor woman. Her heart was hurting, and I was just plain sad.

Maybe Jesus is like this. His heart is hurting because our hearts are hurting. He's sad because Bed 29 is sad, or because I am sad. "You don't see the big picture, Denise," I can hear Him say. "You don't see what's on the other side of this issue, and you can't imagine how much I love you. Sit with me and let me just hold you."

In Henri Nouwen's book The Return of the Prodigal Son, the author describes his reaction to the Rembrandt painting of the same name. The painting depicting the biblical story of The Prodigal Son captures him, it transfixes him. He sees that "the tender embrace of father and son expressed everything (he) desired at that moment. Now I desired only to rest safely in a place where I could feel a sense of belonging, a place where I could feel at home." Nouwen goes on to say that "coming home meant, for me, walking step by step toward the One who awaits me with open arms and wants to hold me in an eternal embrace . . . had I, myself, really ever dared to step into the center, kneel down and let myself be held by a forgiving God?"

I have never really dared to step into that center. I'm in control, you see, and I can work things out. If it is to be, it is up to me, as the saying goes. I want to "keep some control over my journey, to remain able to predict at least part of the outcome . . . that relinquishing the security of observer with control" for the vulnerability and unknown of a broken, powerless prodigal son seems close to impossible for me.

But things are quite clearly not in my control. Calcutta throws that in my face every day, every hour, as if to mock the image I fancy of myself. And when I see that I want to be that "son" who dares to let God hold him and love him, I don't know how.

I feel as if sometimes I just need a good smack across the face or a swift kick in the ass. "Wake up!" Jesus should say. That's what I deserve for being so stubborn, such a rotten lazy person sometimes. Why doesn't God just compel me to believe? Why doesn't he just overwhelm me and force me to listen and follow? Look at those words: smack, kick, compel, force. The description of the father in the Prodigal Son story uses very different words: open arms, moved with pity, rest, home.

I'm still trying to understand this idea: the embrace of a loving Father who is sad with me, who wants to give me rest at "home." By this exchange today the concept begins to have meaning for me.

FYI, Bed 29 eventually calmed down. She smiled, whispered something unintelligible in my ear, and moments later began rocking back and forth chatting away.