Religion: Sisters in Saris

In Calcutta's filthy, fly-infested streets it is often hard to tell the living from the dead. Thousands of the area's 4,500,000 people, hungry and unemployed, huddle day and night in dank back alleys or sprawl on the sidewalks splotched red with betel spittle. The dead sometimes lie where they are for days before police vans cart them off to the burning ghats. The dying, picked up and carried from hospital to crowded hospital, used to be dumped back on the streets; there was simply no room for a hopeless case.

Last week a slim, grey-eyed woman in a blue-bordered sari was briskly going about the business of making Calcutta a better place to die in—and to ward off death when possible. Mother Teresa and 62 sisters of the six-year-old Roman Catholic Order of the Missionaries of Charity are running one of Asia's most remarkable missions at the very gate of the temple of Kali, Hindu goddess of destruction.

Pure Heart. Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was born in Yugoslavia, of Albanian parents, 47 years ago. At 18 she went to Ireland to join the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and six weeks after being admitted, set sail for India to teach in the order's schools and convents there. After 20 years of teaching, she asked permission to work among Calcutta's poor.

Mother Teresa (the name she took when she became a nun) studied nursing and moved into the slums. She organized outdoor schools and set up a dispensary, petitioned the municipal authorities for a shelter to which the dying destitute could be brought. She was given the pilgrim hostel at the gate of Kali's temple in Kalighat, the most ancient quarter of the city, named it Nirmal Hriday (Pure Heart) and went to work.

Two years later, in 1950, Mother Teresa received canonical sanction for her order. Today the sisters run nine day schools, 15 Sunday schools, two commercial schools, two technical schools, and seven dispensaries, which treated 49,000 patients last year. Mother Teresa has adopted Indian citizenship, and all her sisters are Indian. Their habit is the sari —to identify them with the country and because it is the most practical dress in Calcutta's humid climate. (No sister possesses more than two saris; in teaching hygiene to the poor, they are able to point out that it is possible to dress neatly and cleanly with only one change of clothes.) Friendly Subsidy. At first Indian authorities, traditionally antimissionary, were as suspicious of the new order as were the priests of Kali. But by now, both have become friendly; the municipal government has even granted Mother Teresa a $200-a-month subsidy.

Nirmal Hriday has nursed more than half its 6,363 admissions back to health. But it is still intended primarily as a place for those beyond helping. One day last week Mother Teresa watched a new arrival, who, when he felt the thin, cotton pallet that covers the iron bedsteads, clutched it fiercely and said: "Thank God! Now I can die like a human being."