Kalighat, the Home of the Pure Heart (Nirmal Hriday) (formerly Kalighat Home for the Dying) is a hospice for the sick, destitute and the dying in Kalighat, Kolkata (Calcutta), India, established by Mother Teresa. The building was an old abandoned Hindu temple to the goddess Kali, the Hindu goddess of time and change, before she sought permission to use it. It was founded by Mother Teresa on her 42nd birthday in 1952, two years after she established Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata in 1950 Mother Teresa opened this free hospice in 1952, next to the famous Kalighat Kali Temple in Kalighat Calcutta. With the help of Indian officials, she changed an abandoned building which previously served as a temple for the Hindu goddess Kali into the “Kalighat home for the dying”, a free hospice for the poor. Later on she changed the name to “Kalighat the Home of the Pure Heart (Nirmal Hriday)”. People who were brought to the home received medical attention from the Missionaries of Charity and were given the opportunity to die with dignity. "It was weird trying to change the temple into a home for the dying, but it was helpful to the men and women dying" MB 8J
Famous quotes containing the words home and/or dying:
“Working women today are trying to achieve in the work world what men have achieved all along—but men have always had the help of a woman at home who took care of all the other details of living! Today the working woman is also that woman at home, and without support services in the workplace and a respect for the work women do within and outside the home, the attempt to do both is taking its toll—on women, on men, and on our children.”
—Jeanne Elium (20th century)
“Behind every individual closes organization; before him opens liberty,—the Better, the Best. The first and worse races are dead. The second and imperfect races are dying out, or remain for the maturing of the higher. In the latest race, in man, every generosity, every new perception, the love and praise he extorts from his fellows, are certificates of advance out of fate into freedom.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)