The Kerala nun condemned to poverty and virtual sequestration by the Church after accusing a bishop of rape eight years ago has found a helping hand from faraway Bengal.
Confined to an abandoned convent in the middle of nowhere where she and two of her fellow nuns and supporters have been eking out a paltry living through livestock rearing and stitching, they have now learnt the art of batik printing to supplement their income.
In the secrecy of well-wishers’ homes in a neighbouring district, a batik designer and trainer from Calcutta taught them the nuances of a craft that Rabindranath Tagore had introduced to Santiniketan after visiting Indonesia, where it had been perfected.
It took the three nuns just a fortnight to pick up the resist-dyeing craft of tuli batik, where wax is applied to fabric with a brush. They now print cotton and silk saris.
Denied food or medical allowances by the Jalandhar Diocese, to which they belong, the trio have also learned the local technique of screen-printing.
The room at the St Francis Mission Home in Kottayam, where the nun lives with two others. Picture by Cynthia Chandran
“When we realised we had to increase our income, one of our strongest supporters, Father Augustine Vattoly (of the Ernakulam-Angamaly Archdiocese of the Syro-Malabar Church) connected us with a lady teacher from Kerala, who was once based in Calcutta. She led us to the batik designer,” the 50-year-old nun said at her convent in Kottayam, where The Telegraph met her on Saturday.
“Since I’d worked in Punjab from 1994 to 2013, communicating with our batik master in Hindi was not difficult,” she added.
This newspaper’s journey to the St Francis Mission Home in Kuravilangad, Kottayam, provided a vivid picture of the three nuns’ isolation.
The steep road down to the convent from the main highway at Nadukunnu looked utterly and eerily desolate. Not a bird chirped or squirrel squeaked from the huge teakwood trees, the silence broken only by the taxi tires’ scrunch over the carpet of dried leaves covering the narrow, earthen road.
At the small gate, a policeman asked this correspondent to write her name and contact number in the register.
He said personnel from five nearby police stations had been taking turns providing the nuns with 24x7 security since 2018, when the rape complaint was lodged against Franco Mulakkal, then bishop of Jalandhar.
A Kerala court acquitted him in 2022, and the nun’s challenge in the high court is yet to be heard in four years. Mulakkal, whom she accuses of raping her 13 times between 2014 and 2016, is now a bishop emeritus, living at a Church retreat, conducting prayers and counselling the faithful.
The nun’s younger sister, a 43-year-old, tall woman with a warm smile, led this correspondent inside. The third nun, a 42-year-old from Kannur, introduced herself and rushed back to her sewing machine.
Their spacious but rundown two-storey convent looked a century old, every inch of its 15,000sqft floor space scarred by neglect. It was difficult to imagine that it once housed a bustling hostel and an old-age home.
The rape complainant said the nuns had started off in 2018 with nine chickens and 15 ducks. The figure has now gone up to 36 chickens and 28 ducks, whose eggs they sell in neighbourhoods down the road. They started stitching in November 2023, taught mostly by YouTube videos.
Whenever their families come visiting, they bring groceries, clothes and medicines.
The batik printer from Calcutta, whom this newspaper contacted over the phone, said the three nuns had grasped the technique quicker than most.
The survivor in the Bishop Franco Mulakkal case sorting out the batik silk saris she and her colleagues designed
Among those who have stood by the nuns is Sisters in Solidarity (SiS), which has given them sewing machines and provides them with orders to stitch bags, saris, nightgowns and cushion covers.
With help from the SiS, one of the nuns has taken to growing vegetables — green chillies, long beans, ginger, turmeric and other greens — that they can eat.
On Saturday, their Spartan lunch consisted of rice, sauteed long beans, moru curry (a Kerala dish made of yoghurt) and mint chutney.
Occasionally, after completing a stitching order, they go out accompanied by women civil police officers and buy fish from local shops.
Currently, they haven’t time to breathe: orders provided by the SiS ahead of International Women’s Day, March 8, have to be completed.
“When I told my father that I wished to be a nun after my tenth grade, he agreed,” the rape complainant said.
“During the month’s wait for the exam results, I learned the basics of stitching, typewriting and shorthand. Later, when my younger sister expressed the same desire, he (father) asked her to be with me in the same congregation.”
She added: “Since then, my sister has been with me, always motivating me. She is an excellent cook, an avid gardener, and a good tailor. On certain days, she lifts my morale by cooking new dishes.”
For the past few years, she has been suffering acute back pain whenever she gets up after sitting for a while.
After the nun’s recent, and first ever, television interview — in which she spoke of her hardships and her determination to bring her tormentor to justice — the Kerala government issued ration cards to
the nuns.
Women officials from the civil supplies department bought silk batik saris
from them.
On Friday, chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan appointed the former state law secretary and senior lawyer, B.G. Hareendranath, as special public prosecutor in the rape case, now before the high court.
The nun had written to Vijayan last November seeking the appointment of a special public prosecutor.
“I’ve been dragged into the case by the Catholic Church and want to see justice prevail. I will not be cowed down by pressure,” she said.
But adversity has taught her not to ignore the small things: “Hopefully, I shall improve my sewing skills.”