Details of that meeting with Mother Teresa more in Delhi than two decades ago are sketchy. But the particular moment is very clear. It must have been late October; winter was making a guest appearance in a city bathed in dust and just out of months of torturous summer sun. I wore a floral yellow shirt, a fading photograph shows.

It was a morning trip, accompanied by my grandparents, aunts and cousins. We were all excited we were going to meet Mother Teresa.

We stood in the compound of a two-storied building in Old Delhi with many others, just a few feet away from the dry Yamuna River and a bustling bus terminus. It was one of the many orphanages that Missionaries of Charity ran. This was the regional house, one of the six homes in Delhi. When Mother Teresa was in the national capital, she stayed here and met each visitor with the same zeal.

We waited outside the building, under a tree, Mother will come soon, a pleasant sister said. There she was, an old woman, so short and kind of old I thought, walking with a beatific smile!

Her presence, inscrutable.

She walked out slowly. A frail, petite frame clad in a white cotton sari with blue border. With a beaming smile and kind eyes, she went around blessing each one of us. “God bless you,” she said, a rosary in hand. She gifted each one of us a small square card, mine was yellow, with a bible quote.

Hardly 17 years old, I tower over the Mother in the picture.

I returned to the same place after a few years, not to meet her again but to pay her my homage. She had passed away on September 5, 1997.

Love is a verb! She showed us. Mother to all. It was beautiful to see the sisters look after the newborns –feeding them with bottles when they searched for a mother’s bosom. The nuns held them tight, whispering to them words of comfort when they cried. Today many of them have found families, love and hope.

‘What can I do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family!’ -Mother Teresa.

It’s that simple.

The lines to a school hymn come to me: “It takes courage to leave what good future can give, and to go to a land where the poor need a hand.”

Saint Teresa, pray for us.

(Priya Solomon is a New Delhi-based veteran journalist at Azhimukham Media Private Limited (azhimukham.com). Earlier, she worked with India Today Group and The Week at their Delhi bureaus. She is married to Josy Joeph, author of “A Feast of Vultures” and one of the top investigative journalists in India.)