The Art of Compassion

Two little children in Calcutta, India, a teeming city of millions, most of them poor. Urchins, they would have been called in a Dickens novel. The boy maybe eight, the girl 12 or so. They might have been brother and sister. I don't know.

They tugged at my jacket as I walked down a packed street. "Sir, sir, spare some money?" the girl asked. I tried to move on. Because of the crushing poverty, begging was practically an industry in Calcutta. It was 1988. I was 24, a struggling artist just out of Brooklyn's Pratt Institute. Like generations of young people before me, I traveled to India in search of something vaguely spiritual. I just wasn't sure what.

The kids persisted. The boy thrust up his fingers. "Please, sir," he said. His fingers were mangled stubs. The girl held her hands up too. They were the same. I wasn't shocked. This was standard begging strategy, and I couldn't give what I didn't have.

"We're lepers," the girl cried. I didn't know whether to believe them. I quickened my step. So did they. What did they want from me? I was just a scraggly young American with a backpack. There were many more prosperous-looking tourists all around. "Come and see where we go for lunch," the boy said, keeping up.

I thought about how I must look to them. A fairly clean pair of jeans and a backpack must've seemed so affluent. "Okay," I said, not sure why. Maybe my conscience had something to do with it. How could I turn them away?

They led me down a back street to a drab stucco building. The girl reached up and pulled on a bell. The door opened. A nun appeared. "Welcome," she said. From within I heard voices—children's voices. I was led into a room lined with about 20 cots. "This is our orphanage," said a nun. "Some, like these two, just eat here." Maybe it was the look on my face that said I was losing my heart to these kids. "Let me take you to meet the sister who runs our place," the nun said.

She showed me to an unadorned room off the main quarters. It was empty, save for a plain wooden table, two chairs, a bare lightbulb hanging over the table and a curtain for a door. One of the walls was inscribed with a prayer by St. Francis. A moment passed. I studied the prayer. There was nothing else to do. A nun wearing a white head shawl bordered in blue finally stepped through the curtain. She was short and energetic with a remarkable aura about her. "I'm Mother Teresa," she said.

I'd never heard of her. But I could see she was smart and charismatic. She drew me right in. I'd come to India to travel and soak up its culture until my money ran out. So I was shocked to hear myself say, "Could I stay here and help you?"