I met her in my night school for the poor refugee children in a refugee colony. There her three emaciated children regularly came. Of course the chief attraction was the free bread offered. They were refugees from east Bengal riots taken shelter in India. Then India too was suffering from famine as green revolution has not started yet. Many were dying due to it.
Her husband and brothers were massacred when the Muslim rioters attacked their Hindu suburb near Dhaka. Violated and traumatized she escaped to India with her five children. She travelled through Pakistan with still living and wounded relatives and neighbors, forever leaving their hearth and home. One of her child died on the way and all scanty resources were robbed in that lawless land.
Famished she arrived in Indian border and then to our Murshidabad district of west Bengal. Here in India, pauper she had to save her children by prostitution as no suitable work for frail her was available.
She tried to persuade me to open an orphanage and take her starving children. I had hesitated as a riot victim refugee myself, I had also lost all. But her imploring led me to open one mud hut orphanage on faith. My faith was rewarded by Providence. I began to grow up in the likeness of Heavenly Father as Christ exhorted, by loving the children. In that orphanage I felt the touch of love-heaven.
I confess with shame shame that I hated her as I had a very wrong idea of purity and sin then. But as I began to grow up spiritually my whole mentality changed. It is futile to explain to those who hadn’t gone through this process.
I believe that she was used by Christ, who started my long regeneration process of faith-works, when I believed in him.
But I was hard on traumatized her. She died prematurely due to privations. But she showed her love to me and Christ even on her death bed. Now I think that she is more heaven worthy than me in love, humility and patient uncomplaining suffering.
