Carlo Torriani

SWARGA DWAR

The conversion of a catholic missionary

presented by

Card. Simon Pimenta

PIME Publications, PIME Regional House, Eluru - 534 0-07, A.P., India

A PROTEST BY THE PATIENTS

 Letter No. 32, February 1988

Dear Friends,

    One very dear friend wrote to us: “I hope the new ashram may give you also some satisfaction, beside the inevitable troubles and the disappointments.” This sentence, which I will call “intuition” helps me to write to you this circular that is a little different and difficult.

    Usually we told you our commitments and our achievements, but, as in any human endeavour, there are also difficulties, contrasts and disappointments.

    What has happened?

    Eleven of our leprosy patients, nearly all those able to work, went away angry, not without bringing their case to the authority of the sarpanch and the police, accusing us of unfair treatment. Police and sarpanch understood immediately our situation and our stand and gave us support. The police inspector who came to Swarga Dwar, identified immediately the trouble maker among the patients and suggested to send him away and pardon the others. But all of them, under the spell of the leader, chose to go. They collected their few things and the money that we have kept in saving for them and they left.

Those who know the institutions for leprosy rehabilitation, they are aware those cases like this happen everywhere. But for us it has been a slap in the face and it took quite a time to make sense of it and discover how human nature works.

    The demonstration took place in a critical moment, when we were harvesting paddy. They knew that we needed to do it quickly. So we had to hire labour from outside to collect the entire paddy.

Just this year we cultivated, for the first time, all the fields available and we were expecting a bumper crop.

    After one week some of them started coming back, others followed; in total seven of the eleven came back to Swarga Dwar. Peacefully we set down together to reason out how it happened and why, which human mechanisms came to play and which changes can we make in our set up.

    First of all we came to know that the leader of all had already been dismissed from another rehabilitation centre for indiscipline and theft. He got in love with a girl outside and he run away with her after robbing the other inmates. My social studies helped me to apply in this event the theory of A. H. Maslow’s “hierarchy of motivations”.

    The persons who come to us are mainly people who live on the road. Their first need is to have a bath, after to have a meal and a sure place where to stay. In that moment they are ready to accept any condition. After they realise that the meals are three, every day, and the place is really nice and confortable. Then they start thinking that once a week it is nice to go out and go to a cinema or have a drink. After saving some money they start making plans how to spend it. They realise that with some money in hand they can hope to go back to the family or to the village and regain respectability. Some young one can also hope to meet a girl and convince the family to arrange a marriage. All things very good and legitimate. Maslow has graded his hierarchy in this way: first need is thirst, second hunger, recognition, love, success, etc.. But every institution is started to satisfy some particular need not all.

How many needs can Swraga Dwar satisfy? How much can be that pocket-money that we can give to the patients to incentive their rehabilitation? They are difficult question, but more difficult is for the patients to understand our limits.

    Manual work is part of the rehabilitation process, but the patients come with a trade union mentality and they pretend every thing. To the newcomers we tell clearly which is our purpose on our limits. When they are in need they accept anything. When new needs surface they expect everything from Swraga Dwar. They are unable to think and to say: “Thank you for what you did for me now I go elsewhere.”  We must recognise for some of them there is “elsewhere” and for this they are frustrated.

That is the moment when the relationship goes in crisis. We need to talk, but neither they are able to verbalise their needs, nor we have such a mastery of the local language to explain the nuances of the situation. The relationship becomes strained and sometimes it brakes as it happened in our case.

    In our analysis of the situation we got light also from some passages of the Gospel. May times Jesus was mobbed by the people, particularly after the multiplication of bread, he had to take rescue in some house, or on a boat, run away on the other side of the lake or on a mountain. When he started to educate the people talking to them of the “bread of life which come down from heaven”, they left him, so much so he had to tell also the disciples: “You too want to go?”

    Looking at the things from a supernatural point of view, we are convinced that “without shedding of blood there is no redemption”.  Trials and failures are part of the “royal way of the cross”.

Just two days before this protest happened, by coincidence, we fixed on the wall of our chapel a big wooden crucifix that we have particularly ordered one year before. Only a coincidence? For an aesthetic reason or for intuition, we put it strait away on the wall, without cross. Did the cross remain for us? Are these walls, this institution our cross?

    We must also be careful in this way of thinking. We must avoid thinking that if the cross is necessary, then, the worst it goes the better it is. We must first examine whether there has been any mistake on our side and be ready to change. We can’t solve the problems only playing the role of the martyrs. But after doing all our duty, we must be ready to say: ”We are useless servant”.

    We shared with you our problems. Every time I write to you I would like to share joy. But we Christians know that joys come through the way of the cross. We hope that this experience will help us all to grow in responsibility.