Kabir, and a table of mismatched chairs

In 2006 I finished a 3,500-mile charity race across India, raising money to get clean drinking water into communities that did not have it. Two friends and I took the overnight train from Darjeeling down to Calcutta, where we were flying out from.

The journey was eight hours and we were supposed to sleep. We did almost none.

We got talking to a local man in our carriage. His name was Kabir, and we traded life stories the way you do at night on a train, and about two hours in, not at the end, when it would have been a gesture, but two hours in, he invited the three of us to stay with his family for the two days before our flight out.

Our first reaction was that it was strange. We hesitated, talked about it quietly between ourselves, and eventually said yes. It was an odd thing to agree to: a stranger's house, a stranger's family, and a level of generosity we had no way of returning.

His family lived on the outskirts of the city. There were nine of them in the house: him, his wife, four children and three grandparents.

The first evening they invited relatives as well. I think around fifteen people ate with us all told.

The table was old wood, and it was not flat; there were lumps and dips across the surface and not one chair matched another. Some were wooden, some had fabric on them, and some were metal - they'd clearly been found rather than bought, over years, and put around the table because a table needs chairs.

On that table were something like thirty dishes. All of it made that day by the mother and grandmothers. Nothing bought, nothing packaged, nothing opened.

They also offered to slaughter their pig for us. It was the only one they had. We said no, and I still think about the fact that the offer was made without any hesitation at all.

We wrote to each other for years afterwards. Occasional messages, life updates, that sort of thing. Then at some point, maybe ten years ago, he stopped replying, and I have no way of contacting him now. Their home was materially modest, yet they gave more to three strangers in one evening than I have come close to giving anyone.