Her mother called her Gonxha, which means “Rosebud” in Albanian. Her friends knew her as Agnes; to the world she was Mother Teresa. Little Acts of Love , a book on Mother Teresa by Amar Chitra Katha chronicles her life in pictures, to show what set her apart as the most unique person the world has known.
“Move to the slums, this is your true vocation,” says the Voice to her on the train to Darjeeling. Mother Teresa looked around to see who it was. There was no one speaking to her. “Follow me to the slums, among the poorest of the poor,” says the Voice again. Back at the convent, Mother writes in her diary: “God said to me, ‘Come, be my light,' and I go.”
The book begins with the birth of Agnes, the last of three children. She loses her father to a rare disease when she was just eight years old. Her foundation of faith at home helps her see pain and loss as God's way of making one strong. She decides to leave her country to work as a missionary. At 18, she leaves home for India.
August 15, 1947, India becomes free. In the partition that follows, many become homeless and Calcutta's streets aer lined up by refugees. Mother Teresa would look from her convent window and long to be on the streets with the hungry poor, but she had to wait for the Pope's letter allowing her to work outside the convent. In about a year, her request is granted and Mother Teresa heads straight to a slum called Motijheel in Calcutta and begins to teach children Bengali alphabets and lessons on cleanliness. Soon more sisters from the convent join her and Mother starts a dispensary. She pleads with the rich for donation to give the needy a better life. The Missionaries of Charity, a home for the suffering and the sick, becomes a reality. Could one believe that a cheerful child born in faraway Yugoslavia, would cross the seas to serve the poor in a nation not hers?
From 1960, Mother Teresa started opening homes all over India. She won the Nobel Peace prize in 1979 and the next year she got India's highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna. In her lifetime, she set up hospices, orphanages, schools, and homes for people with AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis in more than 120 countries.
A true story that moves the reader any number of times it is read. The book is neatly packaged with expressive illustrations that match well with the dialogues. Faith, courage and sacrifice do not come easy. So too, love. But these are never out of reach, for they are closer than we believe “right inside each one of us” as Mother Teresa's life goes on to show.
MOTHER TERESA (LITTLE ACTS OF LOVE), Amar Chitra Katha, Rs. 40
