Our first stop in Kolkata was at Mother Teresa, MC (Missionaries of Charity). This was actually Mother Teresa’s second home for dying people. Our guide said that her idea was just to provide a place for people who were dying to be at peace and have some comfort. This place was started in 1953. You duck down a narrow street or alley off a more main street to get to the door. It’s not an easy place to find. Once you walk down the alley and around a corner or two, you come to the door which you can see in the first photo.

It’s a four or five story building which is very simple and the whole building looks like what you see in the first photo. Once inside the door, we were in a courtyard. We were only allowed to take photos in the courtyard and in Mother Teresa’s tomb area which is inside a room right off the courtyard. You can see mother Teresa’s tomb in the second photo.

We were also allowed to see Mother Teresa’s bedroom which was very small and very plain. There is a statue of Mother Teresa in the courtyard. We noticed local people stopping at the statue for a blessing, so I had Vicky do as the locals were doing, which you can see in the third photo.

After a day in Kolkata, Vicky said she understood why Mother Teresa picked Kolkata. Vicky said, “You can’t walk out the door without seeing someone in desperate need of help”. From my journal after our second day in Kolkata, I wrote, “The destitute state of so many millions of people was depressing. They need thousands of Mother Teresas here.”