Among all the noise about Mother Teresa - positive and negative - this will be my memory of Mother Teresa.

Avid Kumar runs a four-person business painting the exteriors of high-rise towers in Kolkata, the capital of India's West Bengal state. His first job was carrying live chickens to a market on a bicycle, but as the rising popularity of Western-style supermarkets cut demand at the market, he switched to painting. His biggest worry is getting paid on time.

This love need not be productive (although true love always produces something beautiful, even if it is invisible to the eye). It need not be useful (is not life more than food and the body more than clothes?). It need not be efficient (love cannot operate on a schedule).

The taut drama becomes even more chilling with the knowledge that it is re-enacted everyday in some form in countless brothels in India and beyond -- more often than not, without the intervention that saved Lakshmi.