Iowa native recalls brief meeting with Mother Teresa

“Do you want to do something extraordinary while you’re in India?” the monk asked. “Go see Mother Teresa. You will feel the fundaments of humankind in her presence ...”

Two months later, our flight from Katmandu to Kolkata (Calcutta) arrived several hours late, it was already dark and the prospects of finding Mother Teresa seemed dim. In retrospect, squeezing a 24-hour stopover to meet a Nobel Prize Winner on a weekend and without an appointment seemed audacious, if not ludicrous. If not for the monk’s promise to write a letter of introduction and the oblivious confidence that comes with being 25-year-olds, we’d have given up. Instead, my friend and I set out early the next morning. I handed the address “54A Lower Circular Road” to the cab driver who responded with unbridled enthusiasm, “Mother Teresa!”

Twenty minutes later he pulled off to the side of a busy road and motioned down an alley. I could see no sign or street numbers but he insistently pointed to a door thirty paces away. Wait here, I instructed. Sure enough, small letters on the door read, “Missionaries of Charity.”  A young nun with a thick Hindu accent answered our knock. She grilled us on who we were and why we wanted to meet “Mother.” Reasonably satisfied, she declared Mother wasn’t there but suggested we try Nirmal Hriday — the Home for the Dying and Destitute. We thanked her and jumped back into our cab.

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