1983, St. Xavier's College, Mumbai, I run breathless after a smart sari-clad woman sashaying down the wooden corridor outside the main office on the first floor. "Ma'am," I say to her as I come up, trying hard to still the boyish pounding in my heart. She turns and meets me with a cool gaze. "Yes?" she says, suggesting by a narrowing of the eyes that I should say what I had to with least ceremony and even less ambiguity. "Ma'am," I say to her. "I have a request. May I please drop your papers for the prelims? "And why is that?" she asks, without a flicker of surprise. "Because I am not prepared. At least not in the way you would want me to be," I say. "And are these only my papers you wish to drop or some of the other papers, too?" she asks coolly. "No," I say. "Only yours." "And why is that?" she asks. "Why only my papers?" I pause, then say with hesitation, "Because I know you will understand." A silence follows. She looks at me penetratingly, as though reading my mind, as though scanning my intentions; then nods curtly, a "yes," and walks off.

And now I am trying to deal with a warm expansion in my heart, a swell of gratitude for having been understood, trusted by someone I deeply respected, someone in whose lectures I had sat enthralled, glad, ever glad, for having taken up English literature. This was Eunice de Souza, my firebrand teacher, role model of my youth, who day after day brought alive the poetry of Langston Hughes and Yeats and Cummings and the plays of Edward Albee and Tennessee Williams and who taught literary criticism with such fiery zeal that years later I would bring that analysis and knowledge to not just my work but to every book I'd read.