What began as a short hiatus away from blogging during the summer turned into a longer gap, because of all of the hustle and bustle of an international move! Now that I’m on the other side of it, and slowly settling into a new country, a new home, a new environment, I hope I will be able to resume my exchanges with you more regularly.

Some of you have asked, “Where are you? To which country have you moved?” I will answer that question another time, but for now, I want to share something universal I have learned nearly every time I pick up and move.

I was only seven when we moved from India to the United States. I cannot forget a wonderful woman with blonde curly hair, and a bright smile. Auntie Marci was the manager of the local bread store near our apartment in Tampa, Florida. One day, Auntie Marci came to our apartment with a home-cooked, true American meal! Roasted turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, delicious bread, rolls and so much more. It wasn’t Thanksgiving, but it sure felt like Thanksgiving at our little dining table that night! She didn’t know us at all, but just developed a fondness for us, and that fondness grew into a friendship for the years we were in Tampa, and continued decades later. We flew her out in 2007 for my graduation from law school, since it coincided with Mother’s Day, and it was quite a beautiful family reunion since she had become my sister’s godmother in 1988.

In 2002, I picked up my belongings from Berkeley, California, and moved to Galway, Ireland to study human rights law, learn about the island of Ireland, represent the best of the United States of America, and build friendships with the people I met there as a graduate student. Within days of arriving, I discovered that the room I had planned to rent was actually in an undergraduate dormitory. After I had located an alternate room to rent in a townhouse and even moved in, the landlady – on the unwise advice of her husband, a medical doctor – decided to evict me because she said that her townhouse was not safe for a blind student. I needed minders, she insisted!

In the midst of all of this turmoil, people who barely knew me rallied around me. My professor Gerard Quinn,  and another colleague at the university,  Padraic Kenna, and a few others helped me find another townhouse with a room for rent, and then helped me move! Professor Quinn went further and worked with me to turn an incident of egregious discrimination into a test case of the Irish Equal Status Act: to ensure that persons with disabilities in Ireland would have a right of action and redress if they face discrimination on the basis of their disability when denied housing for rent.

And Trina Vargo, the founder and main coordinator of my program, was just a phone call away in the United States. She helped me throughout that weekend with ensuring that the university, including its president, and the community rallied around me in support. She then helped to find pro bono counsel to assist in this landmark suit.

As I settled into the new townhouse with new roommates, they introduced me to their friends, welcomed me into their communities, and even helped to furnish my room with bedding and a warm duvet to give me the assurance that I was not far from home at all! My landlady, Margaret, let me keep my room over the summer, when my mom and sister came to visit, and wrote a letter in support of my good standing as a person and a tenant, as I pursued my Equal Status Act claim.

Years later, I moved back to India from the United States for my day job. I have never lived in New Delhi and was totally unfamiliar with the city. Someone who started out as a friend of a friend, who has become one of my dearest friends now, picked me up from my new home, took me to the market, helped me buy things for the house that I needed, like a cordless phone that would work on 220 V, groceries, and much more. In my first weekend in New Delhi, she and her husband never let me feel like I was alone or without a community! When my parents came to visit, her husband, the late Goolam Vahanwati, former Attorney General of India, told my parents, “You don’t have to worry about your daughter. We are here for her.”

The day after my parents flew back from their first visit, he called me up and said, “You’re coming to dinner at our house tonight!” We had many such spontaneous dinners, many conversations, and a beautiful friendship that I continue to treasure with his widow, Nafisa.

And during this international move, I already have a dozen such stories… Stories of how people that I had never met, who are still perfect strangers, have given up their time, generosity of spirit, and themselves to welcome my husband and me into this new country. One day, my husband and I were trying to order food. It turned out that every restaurant we called or tried to find online had no delivery service. So, we called someone we had become acquainted with through a colleague of mine, and this gentleman said, “I can go pick up the pizza for you! It’s just a few minutes away for me, and it’s no trouble at all.”

My husband and I were struggling to move some furniture in our home as we tried to arrange things in a way that would make sense to us as two blind people. Two colleagues, who already work late went out of their way, stopping by after a long workday to help us move furniture and create a safer, more accessible space. When I thanked them, they both said, “It’s what we do for each other – we are a community!”

I haven’t even been here a full two weeks, and I happened to slip and fall. A colleague came over, drove me and my husband to the hospital and brought us back home. She helped me hobble, both out the door and back in, picked up my shoes, settled me on the couch, and did all the big and little things to help me prioritize my recovery.

A few days ago, I spoke to another perfect stranger by phone. She and I haven’t even met yet. Mutual colleagues and friends who are in the United States connected us. Nonetheless, this perfect stranger immediately started connecting me to her networks, through which I have learned a little bit about the local blind community and found the help I need at home.

One thing people often ask me is, “h”How do you do it? How do you move around the world as a blind person?” My answer is simple. I’m blessed. In a sense, we are all blessed. If you look around, you will realize that you are blessed by the kindness of perfect strangers. These strangers don’t know you, don’t expect anything from you, are busy with their own lives, and still make time to help you! And the fact that they come into my life has little or nothing to do with blindness. The fact is, there are perfect strangers all around us, committing random acts of kindness, just being good people.

Sometimes I wonder if I will actually be able to repay some of the kindness I have received. The best I can hope for is to pay it forward. Whether you are blind,  sighted, disabled or non-disabled, regardless of whatever identity you have, when you pick up and move, when you feel your way into a new community, you will find that the way you settle in is because a perfect stranger was kind, welcoming and generous.

When has a stranger’s act of kindness had an impact on you? Or how will you pay forward an act of kindness you experience this week? Let me know in the comments and on social media, and I will talk to you next week!