CALCUTTA, India -- Kazumi Tanizawa is like a woman possessed as she tends lovingly to Rina Das. The destitute Hindu woman was recently picked up from the streets of Calcutta by sisters of the Missionaries of Charity order founded by the Catholic nun Mother Teresa.
Das now gets breakfast, lunch, dinner and basic medicines at the Nirmal Hriday (Pure Heart) Refuge for the dying and destitute run by MOC nuns.
Volunteers like Tanizawa, a 42-year-old nursing assistant from a hospital in Mitaka, western Tokyo, give the Calcutta nuns a big helping hand. They feed, bathe and put the ill and injured in bed. Wounds are lovingly dressed and bandaged. Their devotion to the poorest of the poor has to be seen to be believed.