Click to play videoKolkata: The world remembers Mother Teresa on her 10th death anniversary today.
Mother Teresa is God for 40-year-old Monica Besra. For Monica, she is a saint who healed her miraculously.
And now it has become a ritual for Monica to clean the Mother’s photograph, as each day is a reminder of what life could have been had it not for the Mother.
Monica and many others like her believe that she was the first recipient of a posthumous miracle of Mother Teresa, founder of the Missionaries of Charity.
On September 5, 1998, on the first anniversary of the nun's death, Monica is believed to have been cured of tumor after a medallion with an image of the late nun was placed one her abdomen.
Three years later in 2001, Monica's miracle became the basis of the Vatican hastening the process of beatification of the Mother, a major step toward sainthood.
However, the miracle changed little else. Monica continued to tend her field as a daily labourer, with her meagre existence sometimes casting a doubt. But her faith often rules over poverty.
“How can I be angry? She is my God and you can't be angry with God. She saved my life. If I had died then what would have happened to my children?” says Monica.
Monica and her four children now have very little to hold on to. Monica claims the missionaries promise to educate her children have also been forgotten.
“They asked us to fend for ourselves. We all work and earn our living,” says Monica.
“They promised to build pucca roads and a hospital but nothing has been done so far,” says Monica's husband, Selku Murmu.
Daily life for Monica and her family is still a struggle. However, she lights a candle, as she knows that she is part of the legacy of Mother Teresa, one that no one can take away from her.
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