For one young English volunteer, a gap-year experience in Kolkata with Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity was an experience that shaped her future

This time 12 years ago I had just been granted a place at medical school and was planning my gap-year trip to India. A central feature of this was my intention to volunteer with Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity. Being raised a Catholic meant that I had long been aware of their work, and I felt drawn to help in their efforts. I was the only one of my friends planning such a trip.

I had already visited India with my grandmother when aged 12 and had listened to my mother’s accounts of her own long-ago trip with wonder, so I had a vague idea of what might await me. But I was still overcome by the intensity of Kolkata: the noise, the dust, the pollution, the teeming mass of humanity that flowed ceaselessly. And the beggars.

Though not as numerous as I’d imagined, and interspersed with very wealthy Indians, the sight of entire families living on traffic islands – filthy and hungry – struck me as abhorrent. As I approached the Mother House for the first time, a young beggar woman held up her baby to me gesturing for me to take it away, and give it a better life. Now, as a mother myself, I can only wonder at her despair.