I was nursing my sick wife when somebody rang the doorbell. It was a Tamil girl promoting the sale of the Oxford Thesaurus, a dictionary of synonyms. The girl had a bagful of them and one in her hand for display. My first impulse was to politely turn her away when she noticed that I was greedily looking at her book. "Do you know what it is? She asked. I said yes and how some years ago somebody had borrowed mine and never returned it.

"It’s less than a thousand rupees," she said placing the beautiful thesaurus in my hand. "Do you wish to buy it?" "Yes, but," and I looked at my sick wife, Elaine, who was in the hall with her feet in a basin of warm water.

"Is she sick?"

"Yes, she has a varicose ulcer that is not healing."

"Have you consulted a doctor?" "Many doctors, and I am doing my best to follow instructions with the medication."

This Tamil girl spoke English so well that I had to ask her how she had managed.

She said: "I am an English Honours Graduate of an Indian university and I was teaching English in Jaffna, my hometown. When the LTTE started to conscript Tamil girls and boys my parents sent me to Colombo. I escaped conscription and now my desire is to go to Australia and, if lucky, teach English."

Then my wife, Elaine, joined in the conversation. She said how she and I had been teachers of English for a long time and that she had an FTCL in speech and drama. Elaine asked our Tamil friend for her name and it was spelt Vithiyaa. The girl was happy to have met us and she said it was the first time she had the pleasure of being received in a Sinhalese home. "How do you know we are Sinhalese?, " I asked. "I saw your name on the door," said she.

"Yes, only the name is Sinhalese but we are essentially human beings, " said my wife, adding: "When God made man and woman. He did not create Tamils or Sinhalese. God made humans and the devil made races. See the ethnic conflict that is going on and on" It was a long conversation and at the end Vithiyaa, with a tear in her beautiful eyes, gave us the beautiful book as a gift, and said: "Please accept it with my compliments."

She became our friend instantly and I remembered what Confucius, the sage once said: "One friend is much and two are many."