‘Meeting all these people opened up my eyes to the world’

Goretti Carroll has visited India 24 times and she would deeply love to go back there again. She may have left India (for now) but India has clearly not left her. The Athboy resident tells JIMMY GEOGHEGAN how the people understand the important things in life, family and providing education for your children and the respect she saw for mankind

The news emerging from the east wasn't good. People were dying in their thousands, every day, others left languishing, outside hospitals, in desperate need of oxygen and care as they suffered from the debilitating effects of Covid-19. The hospitals were full, the oxygen in short supply.

For a few weeks in late May and early June, India was rarely off the TV news agenda as reports came through of how the pandemic was devastating parts of the sub-continent like an out-of-control, medieval plague.

Many who watched the terrible images on this side of the world can only have been horrified by what they say - especially someone like Goretti Carroll.

Unlike most of us Goretti knows India well; the culture, the people, the way things are done in that country that Mark Twain called "The cradle of the human race."

The Athboy resident has visited the vast country 24 times and she would love to go back there again but that's not possible right now and probably won't be for some time. She may have left India but India has clearly not left her. Never will.

"It was very disturbing to watch was happening and, yes, emotional. because it is the poor people you look to because they can't get into the hospitals," she says adding that she knows of three Indians who became victims of the pandemic.

"They were in their forties and young. One of them was a priest we knew, he worked in a village and on one trip he travelled with us for four days. He borrowed a car and brought us where we needed to go to help a school. The next thing we heard he wasn't well. The next day we learned he was dead, he was only 44."

Goretti is sitting in her house on the edge of Athboy town. In the room are various depictions from India - photographs and images of one kind or another. She is better qualified than most to talk about the poor people of that most diverse country because she has spent a great deal of time among them. She speaks with some authority.

Goretti is involved with the Street Children of India charity, which aims to do what it suggests in its name; lift people from the depths of poverty; the kind of poverty not to be seen in this part of the world. The charity focuses on providing education for youngsters and assisting the elderly - and there is always work to be done. Always.

That voluntary work has brought a richness and a sense of fulfillment to Goretti Carroll's life she is immensely grateful for. Despite the poverty, the pain, the terrible sights she has seen, she loves India and it's people.

Those TV images of sick people left uncared for and abandoned outside hospitals is not necessarily the India she knows. The India she knows is bathed in an ocean of kindness and compassion. Compassion she herself has experienced first hand. The TV images tell one truth but there are others truths too.

Like Mark Twain, Goretti Carroll found a kind of home, a spiritual home, in India, the land of a thousand religions.

KILMAINHAM

One of seven in her family, Goretti Newman grew up in Kilmainham. Her mother May and father Harry were farming folk who cared deeply about their community. She recalls how there was a culture in her home of helping neighbours, looking out for others. One of Goretti's nephews is Meath footballer Michael Newman.

Goretti had an aptitude for numbers and she landed a job with ACC Bank in Dublin before successfully applying for a transfer to Navan. One night in Gatsby's Nightclub in Kells she met Edmund Carroll, a member of a well-known family in Athboy who ran a supermarket in the town known locally as 'Gorman's.'

Goretti and Edmund were married in 1980, their reception held in the hotel in Athboy, then known as the Kirwan Arms. They have since reared a daughter, Rachel and son Edmund, and in time Goretti was to help keep the accounts for the family business. In her spare time she was a volunteer for ACCORD in Navan, the marriage counselling service.

Eighteen years ago the business was sold but Goretti continued to do the accounts for the new owner, for a time at least - but she was also anxious to explore another side of her life.

"I did a lot of training for ACCORD and was fascinated by it. I had worked on my emotional, physical and mental side of my life but one area I neglected was my spiritual side. I read books on the subject. I heard of this guy, Derek O'Neill. He had set up so many charities. I met him and was fascinated when he talked about India. He was organising a trip to India three weeks later and I said I would love to go."

Despite the heat, the poverty, the unfamiliar food, the sight of women working in the fields, the seemingly cruel caste system, India was a revelation - in a "beautiful" way, a word Goretti often uses when talking about the country. "It opened up all the religions of the world to me. I would sit with people of every religion. We'd talk and I realised we were all looking for the same thing, peace of mind.

"Meeting all these people opened up my eyes to the world in the sense that you don't judge people. From my first visit I was moved by the people, how simple their lives are yet the poorest of people they understand life more, they accept what is going on, they are a very peaceful nation. They know the important things in life, family and providing education for your children." she adds.

"There is that constant connection with religion in India. The majority are Hindu but they have a beautiful kindness and respect. If they have a business, for instance, they bless the first bit of money they get in that day, they bless the people that gave them the money, there was that respect I saw for mankind."

One of the most remarkable people Goretti Carroll has met is an Indian Carmelite nun - Sr Rosy Kandathil - who bleeds in her hands when she prays. "She has the stigmata that break out on her hands every Friday, her hands and feet. I've seen the stigmata. She's protected in the convent and we were privileged to meet her because the priest we knew went to the seminary with her priest."

Initially Goretti thought that first visit to India in 2002 would be her only one. How wrong she was. Not long after returning home she was hankering for the place again. "My soul longed to go back," is how she puts it. "I was missing the kindness, the people themselves, and the children, they really opened my heart, yes the children."

EDUCATION

One of the most memorable, profound experiences Goretti had on that first trip to India was visiting an orphanage. Almost 20 years ago now she recalls details of that day as if it was yesterday.

"It was a poor area, it was run by a Muslim man but mostly the children were Hindu and that's what I saw and it's beautiful. That everybody looks after each other. We took the children out on a picnic and we sang all the way. They sang Indian songs, we sang Irish songs. We went on the bus and the children had their food from off a leaf. We paid somebody to organise the food but of course, the big thing they wanted was the 7-Up and the Coca Cola. We had great fun."

Yet there was also the harrowing sights that would melt the hardest of hearts. One of the most profound events experienced by Goretti Carroll was on her fourth visit when she came across an elderly lady living in what was effectively a cow shed.

There is no social welfare system in India as we know it although Goretti is greatly encouraged by a greater willingness in recent years of successive Indian governments to help the poor - and take over the running of schools set up by the Street Children of India which was originally set up by Cork woman Nuala O’Connell.

Over the years the good folk involved with the Street Children of India have put a big emphasis in setting up schools and health clinics often in very remote parts of the country. Before Covid they travelled outside cities such as Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), New Delhi, Bangalore (Bengaluru), Pune and Ranchi, to places where the need was acute.

Vounteers travelling as part of the Street Children of India charity pay all their own costs. They don't stay in hotels but in convents and other types of accommodation.

These days Goretti Carroll works as life coach and, like her husband Edmund, is an instructor in IET (Integrated Energy Therapy) which has been described as "the art of healing with loving and pure energy of spirit."

Over the years Goretti agrees she has has spent a considerable sum of her own money travelling to and from India - but you suspect - she would do it all again without a second thought. She may return again too - when Covid is conquered and life can move on.