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

RETURNED BACK TO INDIA

 Letter No. 19, Bombay, August 1982

 Dear Friends,

    Here I am back to India after three months of working holiday in Italy. It has been a pleasure for me to see many friends after four years. Your interest and your sympathy had been for us a spur and a confirmation of the right choices we had made for our work. Before leaving Italy I was often asked whether I feel sorry and whether I was eager to go back to India. It is a difficult question and you cannot answer yes or no. In Italy I left my mother, brothers and sisters, nephews and many old friends. You can’t go without breaking your heart. But in India is my life, my work, my mission; it is but natural that I should and desire to come back.

     Never the less when I reached here and I was submersed by the routine I felt loath and bewilderment.  You cannot live side by side to such widespread misery and not feel a revolt. If you do not have comparison you are indifferent, but when you come back from Italy you see the difference. You feel the need of a revolution, but at the same time you feel hopelessly impotent and dismay. The Indian reality is so large, so numerous, immense I would say, that you simply feel crashed.

    Well! The silver lining of it is that you feel humbled. And humility is precious gift. In India a person has to stand in front a billion persons, in front of a world completely different, of a reality that overtakes you, challenges you. You must keep quiet and look and wait.

    I reached here in the middle of the monsoon, the relentless monsoon of Bombay. Everything wet, everything flooded, everything stinking. My brother Eugenio took two weeks off and came with me.  We went around in the mud of the slums to see our dispensaries and our balvadis. We gave away those little presents of your generosity.

 Now I feel so much in debt to so many of you. Your generosity that I experienced in these three months, moved me deeply and makes me trembling of responsibility. The thought that you have not done it for me but for the Lord, is consoling me: the Lord will never forget to recompense you.

I restarted my search for a land where to realise a hospice for those cases that do not find shelter and are no more able to look after themselves. A house or a land, near our office or far away.

May the good Lord help us to find a suitable place.

    Agnese Paleari, who had been with us as volunteer for two  years has returned to India for a short holiday. She was our chief guest at the inauguration of the new building of the Cheeta Camp balvadi.

    Closing this letter I would like to say again to you a big thank you. To you that I just left, to you that invited me in your house, to you that wrote to me, to you that I couldn’t meet, to you that sent parcels, to you that came to visit us in India. For all, many thanks, many prayers and many greetings.

 You will not see here the letter No. 20 for reasons of privacy.