"I am not Mother Teresa, I am Sister Nirmala. Looking at myself, I am afraid," she had said after she was chosen to succeed the ailing Mother Teresa in March last year. Seventeen months later, it is a point she has not lost sight of. Perhaps, she never will. And a year after the world's most famous symbol for compassion left the Missionaries of Charity on their own, her order continues to function in the shadow of her name.

"We have to continue in the footsteps of Mother. The world should pray that we can work faithfully to the cause of our Mother and the people," affirms Sister Nirmala, the 65-year-old superior general, in an hour-long interview to Rediff On The NeT.

Giving an overview of the past year, the order says it has sanctioned 17 new homes. Eight have already been opened, one of which was inaugurated in Calcutta on Mother's birthday.

Of a congregation spread over 123 countries, with 4,000 nuns and 370 brothers vowed to dedicated service to the poorest of the poor -- it was the Missionaries of Charity's austerity that paradoxically gave its fame. That made emperors and presidents, showmen and tycoons seek attendance with Mother Teresa. Visiting dignitaries called on her at Mother House. Several hundreds waited to welcome her at airports abroad. And organisations felt honoured to bestow awards on her. Mother Teresa -- the saint of the gutters -- was truly a star.

Something Sister Nirmala isn't.

"Mother Teresa was worshipped like a goddess," says Monsignor Herbert Eric Barber, chaplain and confessor of the Missionaries of Charity. Fortyseven years ago, he was on the church committee that loaned Rs 125,000 to Mother Teresa to buy Mother House from a Muslim family.

Others associated with the congregation feel Sister Nirmala, armed with a degree in law and a sound grounding in spirituality, has the requisite credentials to run an established order -- one which has largely remained unchanged and has the same vows from the day it began.

"Sister Nirmala cannot match Mother's charisma. Neither has she ever thought of herself as a replica of Mother," says Archbishop Henry Sebastion D'Souza of Calcutta. His association with Mother Teresa began when they worked together in a makeshift hospital at Salt Lake during the 1971 East Pakistan refugee crisis. The archbishop testifies that he has seen no diminishment in the spirit of the order after her death and does not foresee any danger in its continuity.

"We must remember that Sister Nirmala is not striving to be Mother Teresa. Just like a new managing director cannot be like the one before. But she is communicative and has the ability to carry the organisation with her," says Missionaries of Charity spokesperson Sunita Kumar, who knew Mother Teresa for 32 years, and helps the congregation deal with their vast correspondence and other office work. In the absence of a fax at Mother House, all faxes for the Missionaries are sent to her office, which she directs to the MoC headquarters.

There are other instances of the congregation's austere living: Nuns do not have the comfort of fans because Mother thought all four seasons were to be enjoyed -- it was only in the last two years of her life that she was finally forced into installing a fan in her room. Personal belongings are kept in an iron bucket and ice-cream comes as a treat twice a year.

A co-worker reveals how Mother once returned from Paris with three taxis full of cake. 'A kind baker has sent these,' she told the expectant nuns, '…but these are for the children, not for you.' Another reveals how she exchanged messages on the same envelope until there was no absolutely no space left on it.

"After you have had a tremendous personality, it is not fair to say that Sister Nirmala will be like Mother Teresa. But this comparison is not unusual. It happens in any organisation," adds Amita Mitter -- another co-worker with the order since 1964. Mitter along with a group of wellwishers helps in the packing of leprosy pills, stitches bandages for patients and participates in the arrangement of the annual children's party in December. At times, she would lend her "small red Maruti car" to Mother -- so that one of the newly wed girls from the home could go for a short drive.

Mitter reveals that at one point Mother contemplated starting a Missionaries of Charity branch for Hindu women who shared her concern for the wretched of the earth. Where they would live on separate floors, practice their own religion, but work together. Finally, realising it would not work, she abandoned the idea.

Co-workers concede they did not know much about Sister Nirmala before she took over as superior general, and were taken unawares when her selection was announced. She may not have the charisma of her predecessor, they say, but she has continued to learn along the way. She is known to confer and take advice from the senior consuls of the order. Moreover, after having spent so many years as a contemplative, they believe she has deep spiritual strength.

"Before, it was a one woman show. Just now it is too early to gauge Sister Nirmala's work," says Chandramani Agarwalla, a co-worker for 31 years. "Now even though Sister Nirmala is the head of the society, all decisions are taken collectively."

Agarwalla visits Nirmal Hridaya, the home for the dying, every morning and has moved from feeding the inmates when she began to maintaining the registers and other paper work. Both Agarwalla and Mitter say Mother Teresa never made any demands on them. She asked them to serve the order as per their capacity, and did not mind if they did not show up for days.

"Mother always told us our family duties came first. And that four hours of the day belonged to us. Only then would she delegate work. Whenever I asked her where all her energy came from, she would say, 'If you pray six times a day like I do, you too will have the same energy,' " recalls Agarwalla, who believes Mother's life was a personification of the teachings of the Bhagwad Gita.

Social worker Padma Parikh, who started a Gujarati ladies group to assist Mother Teresa in 1975, recalls how Mother asked them for old saris for her girls -- when her own sari bore the brunt of countless darns. How the order chose to live without fans but found them necessary for the comfort of inmates at their various homes. How to save expenses, they asked wellwishers travelling abroad to carry their letters and post them there.

"When my mother died, I did not feel the loss as I did for Mother," says Parikh. She learnt of Mother's death in a television flash in Singapore. "I rushed to the Indian embassy to express my grief and went to the Missionaries of Charity centre there," she says, adding that she was arranging to take Mother by helicopter to Amreli in Gujarat to inaugurate a home later that year.

Whether it is a sad Sister Ashrita, sitting on the Nirmal Hridaya platform with tears streaming down her cheeks, remembering her last meeting with Mother the day she died. Or a wealthy Sunita Kumar recalling her telephone conversation with Mother a couple of hours before she passed away. Or a ninety-year-old Michael Gomes, who rented out the top floor of his Creek Lane home in 1950 and gave the society their first home -- the Missionaries of Charity remains dwarfed by Mother Teresa's image.

This is exactly what gives rise to the speculation about the congregation's future. A much younger order, compared to established congregations like Canossa, Carmel and Loreto -- where Mother Teresa herself spent 20 years -- the Missionaries of Charity have never known a life without its founder. This places a greater challenge on the shoulders guarding its future.

"The Missionaries of Charity should understand their publicity portion is over. Now is the time to concentrate on stability and consolidation. We have before us the example of Father Elias. He succeeded Francis of Assisi -- who was declared a saint after his death. And Father Elias nearly destroyed the congregation. So what god wants, he does. If he wants the Missionaries of Charity to continue -- no one can stop them," says 80-year-old Monsignor Barber.

A former bishop and vicar general, Monsignor Barber has been associated with the order since 1951 and has many interesting anecdotes about the society and its charismatic founder. He does not rule out the possibility of changes in her absence. "The sisters are dedicated and Sister Nirmala is a holy girl. Now there will a new way of looking at the society, but it will surely be affected without Mother Teresa," adds the priest who gave his old cassocks to the nuns so that they could make bandages for leprosy patients.

It was after the Magsaysay Award in 1962 that recognition of her work started coming Mother Teresa's way. She won the Padma Shri, the Padma Bhushan -- India's highest civilian awards -- the Templeton Prize, the Nobel Peace Prize, the Medal of Freedom -- the highest US civilian award -- and a host of other citations and awards.

"She must have had about 50 doctorates from prestigious universities the world over," says a priest who knew her well, but wishes to remain anonymous. "She once came to me and threw them all on my desk, asking 'What should I do with them?' I told her, 'Burn them all -- you have not even gone beyond your Senior Cambridge.' "