And that's how I went to Calcutta with the share of my royalties in my pocket and I wanted to see Mother Teresa. At 5 o'clock in the morning, I said, 'Mother, I have brought some money. Do you know an institution working for leprous children?' She said, 'It's God who has sent you.' There was an English gentleman who had opened a home in Barrackpore for leprous children from the slums, to cure and educate them. And he had no more money and was on the verge of closing his home, called Udayan. So I met this gentleman. We were very impressed to see everything. I gave him the money that I had brought and said, 'This is to help you pay your debts.' And I made an extravagant promise: 'You'll never close your home.' Then I went back to Paris and wrote an article about this centre. In the end I said if only 3,000 of us were to send Rs 1,000 every year, we could save 500 children from death. We were living near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and about a week later, our house keeper came up and said, 'Mr Lapierre, I don't know what's happening, but there is a truck from the postal service downstairs with nine postal bags for you. What should we do?' Fortunately, my wife comes from a family of nine children. She's got six sisters. So we told the six sisters to come to our apartment, took the nine bags, and for three weeks we sorted out all the letters. There were messages of hope: 'Please say to Mr Stevens in Calcutta he should never close his centre.' In one envelope there were two wedding rings, and on a sheet of paper it said: "We have worn these rings for 40 years of happiness. Today this gold will be more important for your children in Calcutta. Do not thank us.' I think we had tears in our eyes.

... contd.