A friend in school, who was not too bright, not too memorable, who never made waves...told me she had read somewhere education is what starts once school is over. I bumped into her in the market and we landed up having a coffee and catching up on old times. She started out sharing an sms with me that made me laugh, “The English grammar is a funny thing — if more than one mouse is mice then more than one spouse should be spice!” This girl is only 53 and is battling cancer, colon cancer. If you look at her, you would never guess, she was laughing, drinking in fact dunking her conversation in coffees. We exchanged notes on common friends and then she told me how she goes to visit our English teacher, Mrs R. “You do remember her?” she asked.

“Remember?!,” I raised my eyebrows, “Of course how could anyone forget her? Tall, handsome, dignified and so passionate about her subject! God she inspired me.” I gushed. “Once I wrote some essay for a competition and I must have used a metaphor that she read out twice in class, praising me, even though I never got the prize. I had written -- she turned him down like a bedspread! She encouraged us so much, we were driven to perform...she always made stories sound magical. Literature so close to life, so full of the stuff of life.”

“Do you know this same lady is 73 and has lost her mind,” she said. “Her husband died when she left school and ever since, she has been disoriented. Now, 10 years later, she wanders around Defence Colony, like a waif. If you look at her, you would think she is homeless. She never had children, her brother is in Bangalore and has abandoned her. She just walks for hours and then comes home; I have no idea how she lives. I know the house is hers, and one part-time lady comes to clean because I have dropped in and seen her. I fear someone will take away her house from her...I visit her once in a few weeks...when I go to Batra Hospital for my chemotheraphy.” My heart went out to the two of them. This girl who was battling a serious illness, post chemo goes to visit a teacher who filled up our life once. A teacher who always said it’s not what you do that matters, it’s how you do it that matters. It’s the passion you bring to it that matters.

A novel that today I would call commonplace, A Passage to India by EM Foster, was at one time so special because she breathed life into it. It’s a novel I remember because she set it aflame in our hearts. Like mine, she must have touched so many lives.

I felt sad. This same lady today had lost heart, lost the heart to live perhaps. Lost passion. Lost a reason to live. She, who always said education is a journey not a destination, was a lost soul. Reminded me of that movie, 36 Chowringhee Lane. What touched me more was this friend, this simpleton who in class showed no striking qualities, turned out a beautiful human being. A person who though in dire straits, still had time to spend with someone in greater need than hers. You could be in school, at an exam, in hospital, in court, in a queue, at work....there is no greater value than human beings.

I saw it so clearly. When you can’t see God, just look at the good in other human beings. That’s Him showing us where he lives. Heaven isn’t his home, it’s down here among us