I knew her since she was a small girl. I saw her grow up, study, graduate, marry, and go to live in Mumbai with her husband and her parents-in-law in the unwieldy labyrinth of growing space and cosmopolitan humanity. It is always hard for a Hindu bride to leave her parents’s home and go to live with her in-laws in the closely woven patterns of relationships in the joint family. The change was harder still in this case, as the bride was a delicate girl, both in health and in mood, had been brought up with overindulgence by her parents who belonged to the exclusive caste of “Anavil Brahmins” where the search for a suitable partner is a delicate task as the caste is small and the prospective bridegrooms scarce. In this case, to make matters worse, the girl had lived all her life in Ahmedabad, my own city, and a city joyful and carefree and measurable and walkable and enjoyable, while now she had to live in the huge metropolis of Mumbai that dwarfs the newcomer in its boundless extension. There she went. Several months passed by.

I happened then to go to Mumbai for a lecture, and I am saved from being swallowed up in the whirlwind because my hosts come to fetch me and bring me and take me and handle me without my quite realising where I am or what I am doing. I had a day off between engagements, and I tried the adventure. They had put at my disposal a car with its driver, I had the girl’s address, and the driver would find the place. It took us an hour and a half to get to the area where she lived. Mumbai is immense. And yet another half hour to find the exact street in the maze of lanes and alleys that criss-cross the city’s suburbs. At last we found it.

We climbed the narrow stairway in the crowded building, quite different from the elegant villa that had been her home in Ahmedabad. The driver, efficient to the end, knocked at the door. The girl herself opened it, but she did not see me. I had hidden myself in a corner of the stairwell. I saw the girl’s puzzled expression. “Whom do you want?” She was looking at the driver. I came out of my hiding place and pronounced her name. “Anar!” She saw me and her whole face lit up. “Father!” For a moment the whole environment disappeared. She held me crying for joy, and I caressed her gently. We went inside. She introduced me to her in-laws. She brought me tea. As luck would have it, while we were talking, her father called long distance from Ahmedabad and I spoke with him on the phone. The girl was suffused with joy; her parents-in-law looked at her with respect when they saw that such a one as I had come to visit her, and her family in Ahmedabad rejoiced at the happy and unexpected event. The greatest joy, though, was mine. It is vital to renew links of affection in a ruthless world.

Some times I have made long journeys just to visit a friend and spend with him or her a few days of renewed closeness. I need doses of tenderness to soften down the Darwinian harshness of the struggle for existence. I need to know that someone at least loves me for myself, not for my books or my conferences or my successes. I need to rest from my work and my efforts and my efficiency, before people who are only interested in my presence, my person, my affection as they know I am interested in theirs.

During my first summer after my arrival in India as a young man, I fell sick. It was nothing serious, but my western body felt the grip of the tropics, and my whole skin swelled in purple waves of seasonal allergy. I was then in the natural paradise that Kodaikanal is, doubly precious to me for its wild haunting beauty and for being my best Jesuit friend’s birthplace; but since the burning malaise caught me in its grip, I lost all sense of beauty and laid down writhing in pain and unease in my lonely room.

Suddenly Father Rector appeared at the door. He was a very efficient and quick administrator, and he unleashed his efficiency on me. He told me, without even stopping to ask me how I was feeling: “I know your situation. I have called the doctor of the place who will be here soon. He will give you the proper treatment. If in three days your health does not improve, I will send you with a companion to Chennai and have you admitted to hospital there. Do not worry.” And he turned and left before I could open my mouth.

I was furious. My soul was burning inside me even more than my skin around me. How and where they heal me is not the point; I am not going to die of this one, and you need not worry about my burial. But, for heaven’s sake, treat me at least as a person! Look me in the face, speak slowly, hear my own condition from my own lips, tell me you feel it though it is not true, cheer me up telling me it will soon be over though neither you nor I know how long this is going to last. Spend a little while with me, please, sit down on that damned chair and keep me company which is what I am longing for when I am alone and sick in a foreign country where I have just arrived for the first time. He was only the efficient executive, he had heard that one of this subjects was in the infirmary, had taken the proper steps in the matter, had informed me, and that was all. To hell with efficiency! I would have preferred to be given a purgative, happen what may, rather than a professional diagnosis under a dehumanised treatment. That was my first sickness in India, and I got over the allergy, but the inside scar remained. I tell it now to wipe it off.

In Africa it was different. I had literally landed in the midst of a community of Sisters where I was supposed to give some talks on religious life, and the talks were at the moment in jeopardy, as I was running a temperature when I arrived, my throat was hoarse and I felt an overall weakness due to a strong flu that had almost made me cancel my journey at the last moment. I landed anyhow, and they saw my plight. I was sheer misery. To my surprise they seemed to rejoice at that. “We are going to heal you!” It was a battle cry. They saw their chance to have me under their sway as a helpless patient, and they decided to take revenge on me for all the times when priests like me had held them under our sway. I could expect no quarter.

Part of them went immediately to the surrounding forest to fetch the medicinal leaves and herbs they know so well and use so efficaciously. Native medicine of home-made remedies. Meanwhile another party had brought a huge cauldron, had filled it up with water and placed it over burning firewood to boiling point. Then they began to throw the leaves into the water while they uttered words in languages I did not understand, and I could not make out whether they were Christian prayers or heathen incantations. They looked like Macbeth’s witches dancing around the cauldron, but one thing was clear, and that was that they were having the time of their lives. Then they placed my naked torso over the boiling brew, they covered me with blankets on all sides and they ordered me to stir the concoction, breathe deeply and sweat feely. They kept me at it for three quarters of an hour while they laughed and sang and danced around me, keeping me helpless in the wild sauna.

At long last the din stopped, someone gave the order, “One, two, three!” They removed all the blankets at once, dried me up, gave me a strange brew to drink, and they put me to bed under orders not to stir a finger. I dropped like a log, and slept for ten hours. When I got up, my throat was cleared up, my lungs were clean, and I was ravenously hungry. Another outcry. The tribe was getting ready to feed me. I do not know who had a better time, whether they looking after me, or I letting myself be looked after by them. The beauty of giving and receiving in love, which blesses both the one who gives and the one who receives. I am only eagerly waiting to get the flu again.