The Charism of Bandra Girl, Karuna Mary Braganza!
Allwyn Fernandes
The Charism of Karuna - Life Story of Sister Karuna Mary Braganza! - by Pearl Drego
When I sat down to skim through “The Charism of Karuna – Life Story of Sister Karuna Mary Braganza,” I wondered what was the justification for a 400-page paean to a living woman! I am against hagiographies and I thought this was one more of them. I haven’t finished the 400 pages yet, but I can tell you that it is difficult to put this book down once you start reading it.
This is not just the story of a woman, a Bandra girl – a “soda-lemon” mix of Goan and East Indian parentage, to use a popular colloquial Bandra phrase – who joined the Society of the Sacred Heart that runs Sophia College. It is a story of the life and times of Karuna Mary Braganza and I must say Pearl Drego has done a marvelous job of telling not just the story of her life and pioneering achievements but also recent history.
Just read the first chapter, I was told. It is correctly titled “Origins”. The origins of picturesque Bandra, of the East Indian Community, the antipathy towards Goans and Mangaloreans (mutual, in those times, I must hasten to add), life for a girl in a household of boys and her determination (well before today’s liberated times) to be “one of the boys”, including her determination to become a “Jesuit father” when she grew up! Sadly, St Ignatius’ experiment in founding an order of women proved disastrous -- to the good luck of the Sophia nuns!
Pearl has put a lot of painstaking research into her work. Her writing style makes the story easy to read – whether it is Mary defying the world to go to Xavier’s when girls were expected to go to Sophia’s by order of the Archbishop of Bombay, wondering how to tell her boyfriend that she would not be marrying him after all (I was told about him many years ago by one of his fellow Jesuits!) , or Mary deciding to dump those ugly European habits, veil and all and opt for a sari and show “the whole head, of course” because you can’t wear a sari and retain the veil.
She tells of how Cardinal Valerian Gracias would not look at her thereafter and even her mother rejected her without the nun’s uniform – “if you are not wearing your habit, don’t come home”! Mamma mia, that was the unkindest cut of all!!!
As a chronicler of change myself, this is a story of change – of change that comes from asking “why not?” Mary must have been quite a rebellious child (was that why Carl Rogers’ Group Dynamics scared her?). She was also at that point in history when change was happening all round her and all around her were feeling bewildered and confused. Someone had to keep her head and take that change head on and take decisions. Mary Braganza showed the kind of courage that only true leaders have. She took the bull by the horns when she needed to in a way that would have earned the plaudits of bullfighters.
When her role as a leader in education demanded that she go to Delhi, she did – and stayed with lay people (women, let me add) at a time when it was unthinkable for a nun to live outside the convent even for a day. At one time, she even lived with a lonely widow and her young children in the “servant’s quarters” in the American embassy in Delhi, sleeping on the floor to experience what it really means to be poor. She restructured salaries in one organization she led, to reflect the need of the person rather than the position (Karl Marx would have sainted her for it)…there are myriad such instances in Pearl Drego’s account.
But it was how the Vatican Council and Pedro Arrupe and Paolo Freire influenced her that I found most interesting. When you read how she fought to bring about change, first in her own order and then in the Catholic world around her, you realize the ferocity of the “reform the reform” movement now on in in the Church. But I will leave that for another day as it is already 2 a.m. That’s how gripping the book is.
Thank you Pearl, but a zillion thanks to Karuna Mary Braganza for being what you have been – a constructive rebel and trailblazer! I do hope more people will read this book, especially the young, both lay and religious. This, for me, is what being a Christ-ian means – responding to the environment around you with the sensitivity that a Christ-ian training and education brings.
Allwyn Fernandes
Communications Professional
'Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind do not matter, and those who matter don’t mind'