I had knocked a few times on the glass pane. There was no answer. I walked into the principal’s room. She was new and I was curious. As I covered the distance from door to her sprawling desk, I could see her pick up a lizard from her drawer. My sharp intake of breath made her look up. My sense of horror must have spilled out onto my face.
Piercing eyes with a direct look. And then that signature big beamer that lit up her face. She was clearly not startled. “That gecko has as much a right to live here as you or I do,” she said with a charm that was her unpretentious mode to disarm.
Today, as I speak about biodiversity in Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals to my MA scholars at Loreto College next door, I realise how extraordinarily privileged we were to have had the deeply insightful teacher, who gave us a jump start to ecological issues in our daily grind.
That was my first encounter with Sister Cyril — a teacher, a mentor, a confidante and a counsellor who cared to keep track of me over five decades and six countries.
As I recollect that sleepy summer afternoon at Loreto House, where Sister Cyril Mooney tucked back her dark locks underneath her wimple, I can see her stride to the bookshelf in her laced black short boots telling me about the creatures like geckos and snakes that fascinated her as a biologist.
Although she was not our biology teacher, she did pay the biology lab an occasional visit when we were dissecting frogs or cockroaches.
Once, as she regaled a bunch of us with stories of a dissection gone irretrievably wrong on a rabbit, some cocky student asked her how as a Catholic nun she could come to terms with killing innocent animals and cutting them up. “Sometimes, for furthering knowledge and the progress of science to improve the lot of human beings, we do carry out certain tasks which are necessary,” she said. And then she introduced us to the hugely interesting idea of science and morality. At 15, we were mesmerised by her compelling, nononsense approach to the complex debate between technology and ethics.
Another time, a small group of us craved for phuchkas in the middle of the afternoon. We met at the red cement benches of the lunchroom, and lo and behold down walked our resident phuchkawallah, goosestepping with his stand and his delicate crispy crusty phuchkas and his magic imli water with the secret anatomical ingredient. We barked out his name in hoarse staccato whispers, and as the transaction between the tradesman and the clients was being cemented and the phuchkas were being crunched and walloped, a large shadow fell across the wall.
“And what do you think you are doing?” was the unmistakable voice of the usually composed principal. Unlike her predecessor, Sister Cyril never scolded us but sent us packing back to class with a description of what hepatitis can do to the liver. The gentle admonishment to “never do this again because it can kill you” was more effective than punishing us by public humiliation at assembly. This is another lesson I imbibed for life that came in pretty handy when I wanted to correct a student’s behaviour or motivate a scholar to do better. “Kindness and firmness do miracles,” was the motto of this extremely sharp student of human nature.
A couple of years down the road from the phuchka incident, as I became closer to this large-hearted human being who was always ready with simple analyses of the most convoluted of problems, she once caught me weeping in the corner of the same iconic red cement bench in the lunchroom. This time I nearly jumped out of my skin.
“Bijalpita, what’s the matter?” she asked, with a hand on my shoulder. When I spilled my teenage angst to her and said that I felt I had been cut off by some classmates after I had won an interschool debate competition and a national poetry competition in the same week, she sat down next to me. “How silly, you are. As you grow older you will find that the place at the top is always lonely. If there is no reason you can find for the coldness you are facing, you will slowly understand that you must be doing something right. You shouldn’t allow anyone to rob you of what you have earned. And some of us get used to being happy with being achievers. Not everyone will love you. There will be people who will value you. Those will be your supporters and real friends. Be patient.” That was her sage advice.
That lesson stayed with me a long long time, though her premonition ofbeing in a place of value came faster than I ever expected. As I walked next door to Loreto College, to begin the new phase of my life, Sister Cyril’s predictions came a cropper: I was travelling twice a year to national debating competitions, winning literary competitions, was elected as the student president of the college and was awarded the Jain Memorial Gold Medal for the best academic performance in the final year of college.
As I winged my way to Australia and then to Singapore and Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, and then to Canada for doctoral studies and teaching, I kept in touch and she was always curious about how I was doing. When I received my PhD degree, she congratulated me personally on a trip she took to Toronto.
Canada recognised her unique work of the Rainbow Project at Loreto Sealdah, where she laboured tirelessly to collapse the boundaries between the wealthy and the underprivileged street residents and pavement dwellers’ daughters. Whenshe came to Canada in 2011 to receive an award for her exceptional strategies to make education accessible to challenged girls in the same precincts of Loreto Sealdah where the affluent students came to study, her successful experiment wasdiscussed in classrooms there from Edmonton to Toronto.
We celebrated her international recognition by getting together at our fellow Loretoite from Calcutta, Mitali Adlakha nee Chatterjee’s home in Toronto. And that was the year we got the Loreto Abbey rocking in Toronto with the launch of the Loreto India-Canada chapter with close to 150 attendees. The last time we spoke was when I went to meet her after my return to Calcutta from teaching at the University of Toronto so that my partner and I could keep my mother company. Sister Cyril was welcoming as always with a wicked smile trembling on her lips. “So, the prodigal is back?” she asked with characteristic good humour.
She was in a wheelchair as we celebrated the 175th year of the establishment of Loreto House. That hug from her still carried a formidable force. And as I count the blessings in my life, Sister Cyril comes right on the top of the list. Pride and gratitude make a strange brew as my offering for a woman of extraordinary wisdom and compassion.