Theatre nurse manager writes poems of her love for Irish life

“There’s no way I’m leaving this place,” said a nurse manager who celebrated 20 years working with Tallaght University Hospital.

Monica Mathias (47), originally from the Konkan region of India, arrived in Ireland in 2005 after getting a job as a theatre nurse at TUH.

A poet and storywriter in her spare time, she recalled the ‘dark, frosty, freezing’ streets she would walk to work in the poem she wrote for the occasion, ‘Two Decades in TUH.’

‘Though wrapped up in layers / couldn’t control the shivers,’ reads the poem, and Monica thought she couldn’t handle a weather so different from back home.

“When I first arrived, I was living in Aylesbury, 5km away from the hospital with no public transport,” she told The Echo.

“I will never forget those cold, dark mornings and the way my nose would get red by the time I reached the hospital.”

The nice and supportive people Monica met at TUH encouraged her to give it a bit more time and to wait for the first rays of spring.

‘Loved kind-hearted Irish welcoming hugs / With happiness hidden in hot coffee mugs,’ as the poem goes on, helped her settle into her new life and overcome homesickness and fear.

When her husband eventually reunited with her, the nicer weather and the new apartment they moved into, just besides TUH, finally convinced her to stay.

Twelve years later, she became theatre nurse manager, which has been her role for the past eight years, while continuing to mark the bad and the good moments with poems and stories.

‘Days and months turned to years unnoticeably / Some became friends and some family,’ Monica wrote.

Her two Irish-born boys, who are now 16 and 18 years old, can hardly bear the Indian heat when she brings them over for the holidays, she laughed.

Speaking about her job, Monica said, “as a storywriter I often find myself feeling deeply the stories of people I’m assisting.

“I think about their families, especially when we’re dealing with an emergency.”

Over 20 years, she turned ‘From a girl to a woman responsible,’ as she wrote in her poem, and counts numerous achievements outside of work too.

Her short story ‘Navi Disha’, written in her native Konkani language, got her the prestigious Karnataka Konkani Literature Academy Award during the hard times of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021.

Looking at the future, Monica is sure she will keep calling TUH and Ireland ‘home’ for long enough.

“It feels like yesterday, and now I don’t see myself going anywhere else,” she said.

‘Go raibh maith agat Emerald Isle / Memories with you make me smile.

‘My head bows with gratitude and praise / To few more years, here’s the toast I raise.’