She will forever be remembered as Mother Teresa of Calcutta: a
Christian holy woman in the city named for the Hindu goddess
Kali. To start her home for the dying, Calcuttas city fathers
gave Mother Teresa an abandoned building attached to one of
Hinduisms most revered Kali shrines. No doubt they congratulated
themselves on finding her an eminently practical location; the
shrine was joined to Kalighat a sort of perpetual municipal
funeral pyre, where day and night the bodies of the dead are
wrapped in white linen and consigned to the flames, to be
reduced to ash and scattered in the Hooghy River that flows into
the sacred Ganges. It was a good plan. The destitute could come
to Mother Teresas to die and could then be carted over to the
crematory for the final disposition of their mortal remains. But
how interesting that Mother Teresas home for the dying winds up
alongside a shrine to Kali the Black One, the giver of all life
and the one who takes it all away. Idols of Kali are terrifying
black as soot, eyes wil