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

I BECAME A MUSLIM

Letter No. 35, March 1989.

Dear Friends,

    We decided to go for a picnic and we chose to go to Haji Malang. We started off early in the fresh of the morning. Haji Malang is a holy place on a mountain at about 50 km. out of Bombay. Holy men lived there in previous centuries. Haji is a man who has done his pilgrimage to Mecca. But before reaching the darga of Haji Malang there is a Hindu temple. So Hindu and Muslim devotees climb together from the bottom of the mountain where the vehicle had to stop. It takes one hour of steep climbing to reach the top, but after you can enjoy a beautiful panorama of the plains between Panvel, Taloja, Thane and Kalyan.  I was thinking that one group, those without ulcer to the feet, could go up and the remaining, could wait down. But at the moment of dividing the groups, everyone was ready to try the climbing, including Namdeo who has a foot-drop and wears a special boot with a spring to lift the foot, and also Iqbal who has a foot amputated and the other grossly deformed. We volunteered to lift them up with our shoulders. Sometime Subramani carried him like a knapsack.  I was expecting him to give up out of tiredness, but everyone, to my surprise, reached the top.

    After so much struggling to reach there we didn’t suspect that the bigger obstacle was still to come. Iqbal, as a devout Muslim, bought a box of agarbhatti, removed his orthopaedic boots and went to the entrance of the darga. The gatekeeper stopped him: “Lepers cannot go in”.

    I was siting far away, resting under the shadow of a tree, not in harry to go in, but simply looking at the building and enjoying the panorama. I intervened and explained to the gatekeeper that Iqbal was not an active leprosy patient, that he had been treated and was not at all contagious. The gatekeeper told us to go to the office. We went there and the officer told us that this is the custom and the rule: leprosy patients are not admitted. I told him that I am a medical man, I am working with leprosy patients since twenty years and these who are with me had been sick but now they had been treated and are no more leprosy patients. Their deformities are just like the deformities of poliomyelitis, they remain forever.

    Surprised by my insistence he told me to go to speak with the trustee of the darga. We went to place indicated, but nobody was there. We waited for fifteen minutes and nobody came. I understood that nobody wanted to take responsibility. So I told all my men, Muslim or not, to take Iqbal in the middle and follow me with determination. We removed the shoes, we made the ritual ablutions, and like devout Muslim, all together we went inside to pray.