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

MANIKYAM

 Letter No. 41, March 1992

Dear Friends,

    A friend of mine told me that my circulars are becoming too much intellectual and that I should speak much more about my life. But then my fear is I will be too monotonous. My routine is the same, every day, every week, every month. It is necessary to go beyond the single event and look at it in an  ideal perspective.

    To evaluate what we do in Swarga Dwar we must always keep in mind the first purpose: to give a place, a hope, a voice to those leprosy patients who are near the gate of heaven. Let us take for example Manikyam admitted here in January 1991. We met him first when he was coming to take treatment from our dispensary in Chunabhatti  many years ago. He was living at Kurla station. He was having with him a small girl of five years of age, Laxmi, who was helping him to beg and to cook since he was not having fingers but only two stumps. When we knew him, his wife was no more. He requested us to place his daughter in some boarding school. We found a place for her in Sneha Sadan at Oshiwara. He was not regularly coming to our dispensaries. Some time later wwefound him admitted in the hospital at Varsova. In 1987 we gave him shelter at Swarga Dwar, but after he recovered strength and courage he wanted at any cost to have back his own freedom too: he insisted to go back on the footpath of Kurka Railway station. In February 1991, the PIME sisters of Varsova phoned saying that Manikyam was brought there to their hospital by a priest who found him lying on the road. They asked us whether we wanted him back. Since one year now he is here with us. He is not an easy fellow. He does not like to stay in bed. He must be spoon-fed and taken to bath. Fortunately there is Dharma who helps him.

    Dharma is another patient and he was living in our parish in Irla, helped by the St.Vincent de Paul Society. He must be around seventy. He moves around slowly dragging his feet, but he is always active and ready to help. He spoon-feeds Manikyam and give him a bath.

    There is also Iqbal Gafoor who was the first patient to be admitted in 1986 when we opened the Hospice. He was only 12 and he was just from Taloja. It has been for us a sign from heaven that the first one who needed admission was just from Taloja, a Muslim village where there is our post office.

    Beside the eight permanent residents in the hospice there are fifteen able enough to work in the fields, some living inside in farm houses and five coming from nearby villages. Every Wednesday the medical staff of Lok Seva Sangam comes from Bombay and we have a dispensary for people of the area. During the year 1991 we have registered 126 new cases of leprosy and we have treated 1116 cases of skin diseases. The work of agricultural rehabilitation goes on: we produce rice enough for all the year, milk, vegetables and fruits for our consumption. We do also sell, particularly mangoes, and with the income we cover one fourth of our budget

    Swarga Dwar is not only an hospice for few, not only a rehabilitation centre more or less self-sufficient, but, above all, is an ashram, that is a place for meditation and ecumenical prayer. We discovered that leprosy patients have some messages for us: 1) that death is the gate of heaven; 2) that the Kingdom of God is founded on a stone rejected; 3) that the Kingdom of God is here at hand because leprosy is cleaned; 4) that healthy and sick people, from one religion or another, can live happily together.

    Will we be able to communicate these messages ?

    You can also come and see, we have a guest house for those who want to come to share our rice.