Kolkata: A slight stoop, hands folded, those merciful eyes and the unmistakable veil across her wrinkled forehead. Kolkata’s most famous icon has perhaps never been sculpted so brilliantly so far.

The 5 ft 2 inch-bronze statue of Mother Teresa to be inaugurated at the Bishop’s House on Park Street on Friday catches the missionary’s spirit quite vividly. It has been created by sculptor Subrata Ganguly who worked with Mother as a youngster.

“Having watched her from close quarters and interacted with her on numerous occasions, it became easy sculpting the statue. I knew exactly how I wanted to portray her. I didn’t have to put in a huge effort to make the sketch for the statue since that famous gait and the poise were etched in my mind,” said Ganguly who has also made the fibre-glass image of Mother which will be installed at the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart of Mary and Blessed Teresa at Baruipur the same day which also happens to be Mother’s 116th birth anniversary.

The Bishops’ House statue will be placed opposite a sculpture of Pope John Paul II.

Ganguly was a student at Don Bosco School, Liluah when a Missionaries of Charity team led by Mother Teresa launched a project involving street children of the area. “We were asked to gather a group of local street children and teach them. Some were supposed to be nominated for various vocational courses. That was when I came in touch with Mother. She would come to the school often and calmly listen to how we were working with the group. She always had encouraging things to say to us.

‘You are doing a great job, keep it up,’ was all that she would say,” recalled Ganguly.

It would often be frustrating for Ganguly and his friends for the street children would keep disappearing. Once Mother Teresa and the sisters visited the school to find that almost all of them had fled, The Times of India reported.

“We had put in a lot of hard work, trying to convince them that the project would help them. But the grown-ups among the group were not impressed. They persuaded the rest to stop participating in the project. Mother came to our school to find that nothing was working. But she didn’t lose her composure nor did she appear disheartened. She smiled and lauded our work saying we had done our best and the work will definitely continue. It actually did and we managed to get the children back,” said Ganguly.