Brother : Part 2

Spiritual Genius: 10 Masters and the Quest for Meaning
by Winifred Gallagher

(Page 2 of 2)

To describe the RTU children simply as variously disadvantaged, however, is not to do them justice. Laughing with Tata-ji in the sunshine, they are joyful and, oddly, all beautiful. In their lively, lovely company, it's especially sobering when Brother says that his next project is a similar village for abandoned HIV-positive children. The gravity of India's looming AIDS crisis has been hushed up, he says, and partly because of this secrecy he predicts an epidemic worse than Africa's.

Like a benign Pied Piper, Brother leads a tour past MCV's well-appointed playground - "our psychiatric clinic" - the residential cottages, and the airy community center. Its rear wall features a mural of an Indian-looking Christ painted by a Hindu artist; in this religiously inclusive nation, many non-Christians revere Jesus as one of the world's great spiritual masters. The painting neatly expresses the balance between Brother's pride in his own faith and his deep respect for the people he serves.

In forty years in India Brother has not made a single convert. His nonevangelical stance is partly political, in that it allows him to continue his work despite the Indian government's attitude about foreign missionaries, clearly expressed in its prohibition of new ones. Regarding this policy, Brother says only, "We wouldn't want Indians telling us how to run things in our Western countries." His aversion to proselytizing, however, runs deeper than mere pragmatism. "Our philosophy is Christian," he says, "and the people know that. They know, too, that we don't try to change anyone's religion. God converts people, not us. We just hope to make people better Hindus, Muslims, or Christians."

The next stops on the MCV tour are the day-care center and kindergarten. Illustrating twoferism, both are open to the local community's children. For them attendance means not only an educational advantage but high-protein meals in a region where some children's black hair is streaked with malnutrition's orange. The MCV kids, too, benefit from this integration with the larger community, which they come to feel is theirs.

On a shady porch some foster mothers offer us the chai - spiced tea with milk and sugar seemingly boiled all day - that's inevitably given to guests in India. In the wilting heat hydration is essential, and the ubiquitous steel cups of caffeine and sugar quickly become addictive. Several little girls busy themselves grooming Brother. First they comb his scanty locks, which have the reddish cast his temperament suggests; then they adorn him with a plastic headband. While my forehead is being painted with a bindi, or ritual dot, I try to estimate aloud how many millions it would cost in America to build a campus that houses and educates 112 children, accommodates their adult caretakers, and also serves the local community. Brother makes some rapid calculations and announces that MCV cost about $80,000. A dollar goes a long way at RTU, where a child can be maintained on $20 per month and 1,000 sponsors pledging $240 per year would cover the children's entire annual budget. When the subject of adoptions comes up, he says kindly, "I hope you don't mind, but I don't believe in foreign adoptions. We only place our children with Indian couples."

The kids are thrilled by my reporter's notebook and insist on putting down their names - R. Nandini, S. Gomathi, M. Ramya - so that they will be famous. Those too young to write sound out their names emphatically so that they can be recorded as well. One tiny, silent child of about two stays glued to Tata's knee. "She has no one at all," he says, gently stroking her shiny curls. "She was just . . . found."

As I watch Brother with the little foundling, it strikes me that the wonder is not the multitude of orphans he has raised and educated over the decades but his regard for this one, right here and now. The sight of this odd couple detonates a culture shock that has nothing to do with being a Westerner in India. Back home religion - or, more often, spirituality - is increasingly an aspect of "personal fulfillment," but to Brother, it's a literal response to Jesus statement "Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do to me." For Brother, whatever means not just food, clothing, and shelter but a deep, personal, one-on-one concern that must be called love. This little girl may be just one of thousands of Brother's children, but she clearly knows that he loves her, just as she loves him.

While Brother searches for a video of Home Alone, a favorite for the children's weekly movie nights, the visiting nun and I enthuse over the pretty, cheerful village. Her far subtler understanding of poverty shows when she commends the thoughtful way in which the doors and windows of MCV's cottages have been positioned to maximize privacy. When children are raised in a crowded single room, she explains, they grow up with no sense of the human right to solitude - their own or others'. Like Brother James, who provides not just houses and schools but also flowers and fountains, Sister knows that poverty can be a spiritual as well as a material affliction.

We return to the Jeep to bump our way back to Ambu Illam for lunch, passing through villages of the sort that constitute the "real India": the small settlements of one- or two-room thatched or masonry houses, connected by dirt roads and paths, where 75 percent of the population lives. Like many dynamos, Brother James is easiest to interview when he's allowed to do something else at the same time, even if it's only driving. Behind the wheel he recounts a little of his history in the region. It began with drilling wells, which allowed him to meet the villages' elders and discuss their priorities, which he found highly sensible. Brother grins, recollecting how the old men told him, "Don't think you're doing anything so grand, after the way you British oppressed us!"

Copyright © 2002 by Winifred Gallagher.

About the Author

Winifred Gallagher's previous books are Just the Way You Are: How Heredity and Experience Create the Individual, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and The Power of Place: How Our Surroundings Shape Our Thoughts, Emotions, and Actions. She has written for many magazines, from The Atlantic Monthly to Rolling Stone. She lives in Manhattan and Long Eddy, New York.