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Kindness One: Back in India, finding the spirit of Mother Teresa

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Let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.

-- Mother Teresa

After my trip to the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan I wasn’t sure how I would react when I returned to India.

Bhutan is peaceful; India is India. Two months on a motorcycle with a sidecar aren’t exactly tranquility, so you’d think I’d be prepared for the bedlam of India. Not quite.

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I got used to it again and went about looking for a place to stay for the night in Kolkata, once known as Calcutta. I wasn’t having much luck and Kindness One, my 1978 Chinese motorcycle with the BMW engine, was acting up again.

I asked many people for help, but my luck seemed to have run out. Then I came across the Missionaries of Charity, founded by Mother Teresa. It helps the poor and underprivileged to find hope again. In a city as overwhelmingly poor as Kolkata, this is quite a job.

Two smiling sisters welcomed me into the mission. Unfortunately there was no place for me to stay, but I got the chance to pray by Mother Teresa’s tomb and refocus my scrambled mind. She epitomized what my journey is about, love and kindness.

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Mother Teresa died in 1997, but her presence can still be felt here. Her work and her spirit continue.

With my energy refocused I went back out into the streets to find a place to lay my head for the night.

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