I never loved anyone until I married at the age of 35. Maggie taught me love with her agonised endurance of my narcissistic whims and fancies. I was not aware of her agonies until the bubble of my ego burst under certain pressures imposed on it brutally by a few self-appointed benefactors. While I’m grateful to the benefactors for their ruthless devotion to their task, I could never forget the fact that they overdid it with more zeal than the medieval crusaders. Some scars left by crusaders remain with you until your end. The lessons are obvious enough, however. One, love endures, agonises and transforms. As one of the first Christian missionaries, Saint Paul, said, “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” [ 1 Corinthians 13:7 ] Saint Paul was an ardent crusader too. But he knew that “Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” He did not say that love transforms. But it does. Maggie transformed me. Years
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