Author: Sr Cyrilla Chakalakal FSMA
Pages 112, 2014, Mumbai
On Nov. 16 this year the Franciscan Sisters of St Mary of the Holy Angels (FSMA) will once again relive with pain and sadness the brutal murder of their two sisters. What adds to their sorrow is the fact the two nuns have not received justice even after 25 years.
In her book, “Walking with the angels,” Sr Cyrilla Chakalakal, the congregation’s current superior general, narrates the pain and anguish her nuns continue to experience even today.
Sister Chakalakal was part of the three-nun team that worked in Snehasadan (home of love), a home for destitute children in Amboli, a suburb of Mumbai. It was founded by Jesuit Father Hugh Fonseca to house and educate children found on railway platforms and streets. The home has several centers in the city.
The FMSA sisters continue to be house parents of the boys’ section while other religious sisters run the houses for girl children.
Sister Chakalakal stayed at the home for more than 22 years. In between she also served as the provincial superior for 12 years.
Holding a Diploma in theology she had been a director for the aspiring young women to religious life, and a teacher. She is a member of Satya Shodak (truth purifier, group of women theologians and grassroots women theologians), as well as a member of Indian Women Theologians Forum.
What attracted me to the book was my acquaintance with Sr Chakalakal and Snehasadan.
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I had visited her when she was the house parent in a Snehasadan center with another sister from 1980.
I was among thousands of people who had flocked at the Holy Family Church grounds, Chakala, Mumbai, to bid farewell to the two nuns who were murdered at one of the Snehasadan homes.
As I took the book to read the same emotions I had experienced on that fateful evening welled up in my heart and the same questions cropped up in my mind, “Why did this happen to these sisters who had risked their security and comfort of their convent for the sake of the poor children? Where is our God of the poor?”
Today of course more questions are added as similar events have been happening at regular intervals during the past 25 years.
Justice is meted out to some and others are left in the dark. Sr Rani Maria’s paid murderer was punished and released and adopted by her family. But justice has not been meted out to Sister Valsa John, who lived with tribals in Jharkhand, helping them to develop their life situation.
In the book Sr Chakalakal explains how her congregation decided to take up this daunting mission at Snehasadan.
“In response to the signs of the times and the call of the Church for option for the poor, we the Franciscans of St Mary of the Angels made this as the thrust of our province since 1975 onwards and launched into new challenging ministries among the poor and the needy. Taking up work in Snehasadan – home for homeless street children, waifs, delinquents and unwanted, was one such challenging apostolate that we took up in 1980.
“Leaving the security, comfort and status that an institution provides, we chose to be with these unfortunate children, though we can scarcely say that we equate them completely, and hence our understanding of what it really means to be marginalized was very superficial, until the murder of our two sisters in Mumbai in 1990. Then the sheer force of personal experience brought home to us still more poignantly the desperate plight of our indignant brothers and sisters, exploited and crushed by the society.”
“Walking with the Angels” is a window to the life of the Sisters of the Holy Angels who opted to work for the marginalized; through this window we also see the life of the “street children” at Snehasadan homes. It all comes alive through the eyes, heart and pen of Sr Chakalakal as she narrates the events as they happened.
Every chapter is a story to be meditated upon as each one opens up unique experiences:
The arrival of the first batch of the children covered with filth, the effort to give them bath, the repugnancy she felt, the cleverness of the children, the runaways seeking asylum, the discomforts and insecurity she and her sisters faced looking after the children, caring for the sick child as a mother cares, Taking a sick child to the hospital at midnight all alone and spending the days with him there, the support and trust they experienced, the learning experiences from unexpected persons and events — all these are vividly described in the book.
She also narrates the happiness the nuns felt seeing how the children changed after a bath and a wholesome meal which were to become a regular feature in that “house of love.”
The strength of this “Iron/Gold Religious” as I call Sr Chakalakal is amply revealed through these printed words.
She also shares the lessons she has learned from this children and other people whom we would think were crushed by unexpected events.
She also expresses her gratitude to the Religious Congregation, Daughters of the Cross, who stepped into their shoes and to Snehasadan after the painful event to give them a break and live through their grief.
She quotes a Muslim woman, a domestic help, whose daughter with four little children had lost her husband, “We are all in the hands of Allah and Allah knows everything, Sister,” in answer to her comment: “How very sad.”
If these narratives can make us laugh and congratulate, cry and sympathize at some point, what makes our heart pierce is the poignant reminder of the event of November 16, 1990, and its aftermath.
“I want the memory of Sr Sylvia and Sr Priya to be kept alive. The blood they shed should not be in vain, the spark created in the hearts of people should be remembered and the flame should be passed on and never be allowed to be extinguished,” Says Chakalakal.
“Will the real Church, please stand up?” the article she wrote on the first death anniversary of her sisters and published in the Bombay diocesan weekly “Examiner” is added in the book.
In it she wrote, “When are we going to take up the challenge of making Christ alive and present in the real life situations of millions of our marginalized? Are we going to continue to be satisfied with offering them mere platitudes, rituals and prayers? When are our pious hymns and prayers going to take on flesh? When are we women going to wake up, shed our timidity and be fearless in standing up against the atrocities perpetrated on the poor and on women in particular? Are we ever going to give to our poor and oppressed the prophetic note of hope, of possibility that will wipe away their tears of despair? There is no substitute for living with the downtrodden.
“Can we make our Eucharist really meaningful by becoming, for the weak and oppressed, the body of Christ?”
Sr Chakalakal asks leaving the reader to ponder about one’s faith in Christ, and service for his people.