"Reading stories will take you places you never knew existed," said Rukmini Pereira, a sari-clad thirty-something, with her rather-large thick-framed glasses and a small white flower -- that sometimes turned light purple and sometime a warm yellow -- forever tucked in her tightly pulled-back hair balled into a 1970s-styled bun sported by sub-continental women. Now sadly out of fashion. "They will help you meet hundreds of people who may not even exist but each one of whom you will come to recognise as yourself eventually. With them [the books] you can live a thousand lives if you wanted."

When she was not in class you strained to hear what she was saying. But she never said anything trivial.

I still remember the day she said this to me; perhaps not realising she was teaching me one of my most important lessons ever even though at that time I didn’t even fully understand it -- that imagination is more important than education, as elegantly put by Albert Einstein.

Humidity hung heavy even in the ramshackle corner of the school where the teachers sat without their usual stern looks they carried in classrooms and which doubled up as a small library. Ms Pereira was always happy to discuss books. She had in her hands 2001: A Space Odyssey, a seminal science fiction novel by Arthur C Clarke who, by happy co-incidence lived close to the school and who, goaded by her I would one day end up meeting and discussing books with.

Ms Pereira was my English teacher who was the most kindest, most wisest teacher I ever had and I had dozens in several countries. The setting was Colombo, Sri Lanka in 1981, and I was in Class 8, a month away from leaving for another school to pursue my O’ Levels.

The bus that took me home was late that day. The other students were mostly in the canteen or ambling about in the school courtyard. "School books are important to get grades but story books are important to discover yourself," she said. I was the only student with her because in class she was always bringing up specific books and quotes from them and I was always hungry for more. She taught us English. My favorite class all day! She was my favourite teacher. I didn’t know it then but she would be my favourite teacher forever.

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I now understand much better what Ms Periera was doing. The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery. She was pleased, I think, that I took interest. I asked her about what she was reading and she told me about Clarke’s Odyssey. It would become the first science fiction novel I ever read (and what an amazing one to start with) and would spark a lifelong interest in the genre that changed my life.

She was the one who lent it to me two days later when she finished it. She was the one who then encouraged me to explain it to her. She then took me -- during school time, astonishingly -- one day to enroll me at a Council library close to the school as a member where I would discover some of the finest books I’ve ever read.

I have tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat as I write this, remembering her, my teacher, mentor to my then fragile soul. Ms Pereira who perhaps never knew -- even I didn’t back then -- that she would inspire hope, ignite my imagination and instill a lifelong love of learning in me.

Ms Pereira I hope you met all the thousand parts of you in all the thousand books you read. Thank you for sending me down the rabbit hole, like Alice in Wonderland, where I continue to meet and be astonished by the many versions of me.