Answered Prayers

Indeed,when the Foreign Regional Registration Office (FRRO) sent her a letter last month asking her to leave the country,presumably for not having a valid visa,Sister Jean,as she is known here,scrambled to pack her bags and say goodbye to people she has known for the three decades she has been here. “I feel like such a fraud,” says the British-born nun,laughing. “I had gone to St John’s Hospital,where the patients gave me so many flowers and garlands as farewell gifts. A woman even gave me a ring,” she says,wiggling her finger. Thanks to Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram’s intervention,prompted by public appeal and media interest,she can now stay on as long as she wants.

Ever since she moved to Bangalore in 1982 to run leprosy clinics for the Sumanahalli Society,an NGO on Magadi Road,Sister Jean has been getting her stay permit extended at the FRRO year after year; this is the first time there has been a hitch,and a much-publicised one at that. The nun is gracious in her newfound celebrity. “You know how they say people have their 15 minutes of fame? Well,I’ve had 15 days,” says the 63-year-old,in a cream skirt,T-shirt and sandals. The “Mother Teresa of Bangalore”,as the local press has christened her,is a practical woman. She rides a motorbike about town,and she hopes to train others to replace her so she can go back home to Newcastle,England,one day. “My passport expires in 2019,but I may leave before that. But not yet — right now,I feel I am needed here,” she says.

In DJ Halli,Periyar Nagar,where Sister Jean runs a fortnightly leprosy clinic in a slum,there is excitement among her patients. Chinnamma,one of her older patients,envelops her in a hug; Muniamma covers her with kisses. “She’s a real drama queen,” says the nun,smiling. In the bright blue room that otherwise serves as a kindergarten-cum-crèche,men and women crowd around the table where Sister Jean,who trained in tropical diseases at a London hospital,has laid out batches of medicines. One after another,the patients present their disfigured hands and feet for inspection and dressing. Some soak their feet in buckets of water; others hold out empty bottles that Sister Jean and her young apprentice,Jensaya,fill with an oil mixture: one-thirds eucalyptus oil and two-thirds mustard oil.

Within these blue walls,leprosy is not an ancient disease but a clear and present misery eating away at lives. “Welcome to our kingdom,” Sister Jean says. Twice a week,she presides over Sumanahalli’s three leprosy clinics in town. “There is a difference between eradication and elimination. India has eliminated leprosy,not eradicated it. Which means one in 10,000 cases is still around. In Bangalore alone,491 new cases were reported last year; in Karnataka,4,118. Sumanahalli alone has treated close to 5,000 patients,” she explains. Around her patients,she is both nurse and matron: asking after their families,recalling every last name on the list,and chastising them for not coming to the clinic last fortnight. She speaks in halting Tamil,liberally peppering her sentences with English. “We understand one another somehow,” she says.

Even after all these years of mingling with the locals,Sister Jean hasn’t picked up enough Kannada or Tamil. “They say there’s a switch in the brain that controls language learning. For me,that switch has never turned on,” she says,back at the sisters’ home in Maruthi Sevanagar,which she shares with three other nuns. In the small sitting room,she sits on a cane chair,her blue-grey eyes catching the evening light. Sister Jean is unapologetically British,still preferring bread over dosa and humming to the music of her time: Simon and Garfunkel and the Beatles. “I love detective novels,” she says,pointing to a title under the coffee table by Quintin Jardine,a Scottish crime writer. “I like the British ones,when they are available. I also read American novels if they are good stories,but they have so much sex in them that I censor them when I lend my books to other nuns.”

It isn’t that she hasn’t adapted to things Indian — “I can cook a decent chicken curry,” she says,in her defence. She has travelled to Pune,Mumbai and another place in Maharashtra she says she can’t pronounce. She even enjoys watching Bollywood movies. “The last one I saw was Chak De!India and I loved it,” she says. “I like the fact that in Indian movies,no matter what religion the character belongs to,there will always be a scene where he prays to God to give him strength.”

It all comes back to God — the reason she came to India. Inspired by her Catholic upbringing and her interactions with the Montfort Sisters while she was still in school,Sister Jean decided early on to dedicate her life to the service of the Lord. After medical training in London,she was asked to help the Sumanahalli Society run mobile leprosy clinics. Little did she know she would end up spending the better part of her life here.

“India has given me more than I could have imagined. I’ve met people here who said,I’ll pray for you,” she says. It is their prayer,she says,that got her an extension and then a permit for indefinite stay in India.

Akhila Reddy,the sisters’ neighbour since they moved into the house around the turn of the century,says she is glad Sister Jean can stay. “We have all seen what she has done for patients. She has personally paid for some of them out of her stipend,” she says. Today,Sister Jean sponsors the education of a handful of underprivileged children in schools in Bangalore. But it is her patients that are top priority — right up there with morning prayer in the small chapel in a back room of the house,and Sunday mass at St Patrick’s Cathedral in central Bangalore. “Many of the patients have diabetes,hypertension,even cancer,” she says. She refers such patients to good hospitals with a note to the doctor requesting a 25 per cent concession in the bill,made out to the Montfort congregation. “You have to be careful when you write to doctors. You can’t tell them what’s wrong with the patient; they take exception to that,” she says,good-naturedly.

Sister Jean hasn’t unpacked her suitcase yet. But she isn’t going anywhere. Not yet.