I spent a good deal of time recently arguing with some of the great fans of the late Christopher Hitchens, most of whom knew absolutely nothing about him except his anti-religious screeds. I'd go into that but I'd really rather go into this wonderful woman who I just read about and her work.
If you sit in the slums on the outskirts of Pune in the evening, you will hear shouting and yelling from all sorts of places, Sister Lucy Kurien says of her home in South India. Much of the fighting is fueled by alcohol, and sometimes it explodes into bruises, scars, and broken bones. "The women don’t even retaliate."
It's a sound the Catholic nun from Kerala has been listening to since 1997, when she founded Maher, a shelter for survivors of domestic violence outside of Pune. In the nearly 17 years that she has been welcoming battered women and children—as well as women at risk for street violence and trafficking—Sr. Lucy has known thousands of women whose families were shattered by violence and poverty.
Moved by the destitution she first witnessed as a child in India's cities and inspired by Mother Teresa's side-by-side work with the poor in Kolkata, Sr. Lucy spent much of her youth wondering what she could do to end inequality and the violence she saw resulting from it.
Then one night, the young nun witnessed a gruesome murder that shifted the course of her life: She held a young, pregnant woman who had been doused with kerosene and lit on fire—by her husband. Just one day before, the same terrorized woman had begged Sr. Lucy for help, but there was nowhere for her to sleep in the convent.
The woman died, but Sr. Lucy's conviction that she was supposed to do something for the women of her country sprang to life that night.
The story is so horrible but so important that I'll let Sr. Lucy tell it.
While I was working at the convent, a woman came to me asking for shelter. She told me that her husband was in love with another woman, and this man, she told me that he was an alcoholic. She said, "If I stay with him he will beat me. I need to go out from the house."
But where to send her was a big problem, because there in the convent we would never take a layperson. I said to myself, "What should I do to help this woman?" I knew it was a genuine story because she was weeping her eyes out. I felt bad to send her away, but I had no choice.
It so happened that that very night she and her husband must have had some fight. He poured kerosene on her and set her on fire.
This woman was seven months pregnant.
I heard the shouting because our convent was very close to the slum. So I went there, like any other onlooker, to see what was happening.
She came running. She told me, "Save me! Save me!"
Hillstrom: She came running to you?
Sr. Lucy: Yeah... Yeah. She was standing there at the same spot where she was burned. That’s when I realized, "Oh my God it’s the same woman."
With the help of the people of the slum, I tried to shift her to the hospital. It was so difficult for us to find anything, because we had no car—nobody had anything.
When I shifted her to the hospital, the doctor told me that she was already 90 percent burned because her sari had caught fire immediately. She was fully burned. And... I asked the doctor if anything could be done to save the baby ... But what he found was also a fully burned baby.
I was holding this… the fetus, they had given to me. I was wondering what I should do. I was completely devastated.
I was so angry with myself from that time onward because what I felt was that this woman who came to me—I did not help her in time. That was the guilt feeling that I was going through. So much so that as the days went by I became very angry person. All this frustration was leading into anger.
Hillstrom: What direction did your anger take?
"Then the women started telling me things: 'I had no food,' 'He was drunk.'"
Sr. Lucy: For no reason, I was getting angry with people who were living with me. I was never like that—never. My friends advised me, "Lucy, you should go for some counseling because you are becoming something you’re not."
I went for help to one of the priests, and he told me, "Instead of sitting down here and getting frustrated, go out and do something."
I said, "Go out and do what? I have no education, I have no money—what will I do?"
Father was very clever. He said, "But you have love in your heart. Hold on—God will show you the way."
Hillstrom: How did that happen?
Sr. Lucy: I feel like the divine worked with me and walked with me. This priest went to Germany to teach the Bhagavad Gita. An Austrian man met him and told him, "I would like to help a women’s project in India." Immediately Father thought of me because I had written several letters to him.
Hillstrom: What did your letters say?
Sr. Lucy: I had always written: "When I see a woman on the street, I am restless. When I stand next to a child who is begging, I am very unhappy." Things like that. I used to write to him what my feeling was when I would see women being harassed.
These women used to tell me their stories. I had never heard such stories because I was coming from a very secure family where I had seen my father and mother living very happily. So I couldn’t imagine that some things can exist in a family where there is love.
Then the women started telling me things: "I had no food," "He was drunk." One of the women told me that he put her hand in the rice pot where she was cooking. I couldn’t imagine a man could do that. And she said, "My children and I starved last night."
These stories were disturbing me. I used to come to the back of the convent and share what the women had told me. I said, "How can human beings go through this?"
Hillstrom: So this is what you wrote to your friend, the priest.
Sr. Lucy: Yes, and he showed the letters to the man from Austria, who came to India and saw that I really wanted to do something for the women. He saw that if there was money, I would do a good job.
He told me, before leaving, "Lucy, go ahead and start the work—I'll help you." It was my first experience with a European person.
I bought a small piece of land in Pune. Soon after buying the land, I noticed that whenever I spoke to people—wherever I was working—they had so much trust. They started giving me money—20 rupees or 50 rupees, whatever they could share. That’s the time I realized, "Oh my God, they are trusting me with their money—which means they trust me."
That helped me.
Hillstrom: Just regular people?
Sr. Lucy: Yeah, just regular people. Ordinary people from the village. Even the women who were suffering.
Call me skeptical, but I don't know of any big names in atheism who have ever done anything this important.
Pretty much my conclusion, too.
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