One Friday night my father died very unexpectedly, in the middle of a family celebration, to mark my brother and sister-in-law’s 5th wedding anniversary. We were all enjoying ourselves when we discovered that dad had died. It was a terrible shock and we were all numbed with grief.

The following evening a knock on the door was swiftly answered and to our complete surprise one of our neighbours, a Hindu, was standing on the doorstep with a huge quantity of food. She quickly explained that she didn’t know what to do or how to help us, so had decided to cook a full Indian meal for everyone present, as she thought we’d probably hadn’t eaten, which was perfectly correct! It was amazing, and to this day I still remember how the smells and tastes of spices ‘cut’ through the rawness of grief. It was a true humanitarian gesture of kindness.