Sixty-Five Cents That Changed A Life

Victoria Moran is the author of a number of successful books on self-help and spirituality published by Harper and several other major imprints, and has appeared twice on Oprah Winfrey’s show. In 1976 she was a writer for a local magazine in her hometown of Kansas City, living from paycheck to paycheck and hardly thinking about whether the future might hold something for her beyond that metropolis. Then one day, as she was riding the bus, a man tried to board it who was lacking exact change for the sixty-five-cent fare. Rather than see the driver turn him away, she offered to pay the fare herself. The stranger thanked her for her kindness, introduced himself, and they fell into conversation. That chat changed her life. The rest of the story is here. Hint: the man on the bus, six years before, had, with the help of a Baltimorean of note, familiarized America with a word referring to the Indian subrulers of the Moghul empire.