Thousands of mourners filed past the body of Mother Teresa lying in state at St Thomas's Church in the eastern India city of Calcutta yesterday. She died of a cardiac arrest on Friday, aged 87.
Despite the heavy monsoon downpour, queues formed around the 155-year-old Catholic church the day after her body was brought there from the headquarters of the Missionaries of Charity, the order she founded nearly half a century ago to look after the sick, dying and unwanted.
Irrespective of their religion, the rich and poor, the old, young and infirm walked reverently past the glass case placed around the diminutive nun's body. Their eyes brimming with tears, they paused for a moment to invoke her blessing.
Mother Teresa's body was draped with the distinctive blue-bordered white cotton sari, the uniform of her order, surrounded by white lotus flowers.
Each mourner was given a rose as they filed past by a nun, who said: "It's from mother."
A group of nuns sang Bengali hymns during a vigil which will continue until her funeral next Saturday. Many mourners were from the several homes run by Mother Teresa's order across Calcutta. "We have lost a real mother," said Dully (24) from Shanti Daan ("Peace giver"), a home for the mentally retarded.
Workers, meanwhile, began digging up the cement floor in the hall below the chapel at Mother House, where Mother Teresa will be buried in accordance with her wishes after the state funeral. The house, located close to where Mother Teresa began her work in the 1940s, will be designated a heritage building after her burial.
On instructions from the Vatican, the Missionaries of Charity postponed Mother Teresa's funeral from September 10th, the 51st anniversary of the day she decided to serve the poor while travelling on a train to the hill town of Darjeeling, 300 miles north of Calcutta.
"She gave solace to the rejected," the Prime Minister, Mr Inder Gujral, said in St Thomas's Church yesterday. He said for the first half of the century the fight against poverty was conducted by Mahatma Gandhi and in the latter half by Mother Teresa, who showed the world the path to selfless service.
Nevertheless, Mother Teresa's methods did not go unquestioned. The British television documentary Hell's Angel: Mother Teresa of Calcutta accused her of misappropriating donations, promoting a reactionary strain of Christianity and accepting money from dubious sources. But Mother Teresa refuted these allegations, saying that every penny she got was used exclusively for the poor and her only worldly possessions were two saris, which she washed herself and a bucket she shared with other nuns for bathing.
And, if proof is needed of her austerity, she lived in Calcutta's oppressive heat and humidity - where temperatures often touch 35 Celsius - in a small, airless room without a fan.
For decades, she ate only boiled rice flavoured with a little salt and chilli powder until her health deteriorated recently and she was put on a better diet by doctors.
M.R. Narayan Swamy adds: Most of Mother Teresa's critics were from the majority Hindu community in India. Mr Bal Thackeray, the fiery leader of the Hindu militant Shiv Sena party, was one of them. Mr Thackeray once thundered: "She is very cleverly converting Hindus. But nobody should be taken in by this."
The accusations have had few takers from the overwhelming majority of Hindus. Most Indians - Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Sikhs - have been enamoured by her work among Calcutta's teeming poor and the dying. To most, she was a symbol of hope.
--(Guardian Service)
