Kolkata Isn't Just the City of Mother Teresa

Her devotion to my city, where she lived from the 1930s until her death in 1997, could not be questioned, and I was not one of those who only saw her foreignness. Albanian-born Mother Teresa was an integral part of my city; she was as much a Kolkatan as I was. But she did not define my city for me. She was part of the patchwork that made up Kolkata along with its artists, its filmmakers, its politicians, its cricketers. Only when I went to America as a student did it start feeling as if my city had somehow become Mother Teresa City and nothing more. I would always feel uneasy, almost guilty, when I met those volunteers who had been to Kolkata. For them it was their hardship posting and a place of self-discovery. For me it was just home.