News28 Apr 12
A Memoir of Miracles
Why Walk? Fly!
Coincidental Encounters… or Miracles? You decide.
Now that you have met me, your life will never be the same again.
Experience Miracles
Coincidences? Or Miracle Encounters. You decide.
24 true stories of miracles, narrow escapes and quiet wonders. Yours to have whenever you like.
See the StoriesGet the Book
USD 10.10. Add your name and email in the PayPal note and the book comes to you.
CheckoutThe Author
Jo Barretto
Husband, father, grandfather.
Jo and his Finnish wife Tuula have spent over forty years serving children, business leaders in boardrooms, and broken hearts in between.
This book is 24 true stories, told plainly, from a life that kept being interrupted by something larger than itself.
24 True Stories.
01
ChapterIt’s a Wonderful Life
December 1981. A Mumbai merit scholar who grew up steps from Juhu beach turns eighteen and walks out of his parents’ home with 30 rupees, while his father warns he will never be welcome back.
02
ChapterThirty-Seven Years Later
His worried mother marches eighteen-year-old Jo into an imposing office in Byculla. The meeting goes badly. Thirty-seven years later, a chance hello at a Goa fruit market shows what it set in motion.
03
ChapterPunjab Express
With an unreserved ticket and a plastic bag, Jo boards a thirty-six-hour train north. Two baton-wielding guards throw him off, he jumps back on, and he spends the night locked in a toilet.
04
ChapterFinding Jimmy
Eighteen and working as a translator in a grim city hospital, Jo is handed a stranger’s dead child and left alone with him. Thirty years later, the boy’s mother asks him to find the unmarked grave.
05
ChapterA Visitor at 4 a.m.
Calcutta, 1984. Jo’s young wife Theresa falls ill with malaria, leaving him alone with their six-month-old daughter. The night after she dies brings something he has never been able to explain.
06
ChapterPlane Crash
October 1988, a flight to Dimapur, Nagaland. Jo visits the cockpit, meets the captain and pockets his card, meaning to talk more another day. On its return journey, the plane crashes.
07
ChapterMarry Me
Five years a widower with a small daughter, Jo spends one evening in Delhi’s Paharganj alongside a Finnish woman named Tuula. He sends her a note asking her to marry him. She is waiting at the gate.
08
ChapterHeart Adventures
At forty-three, Jo is told his leaking heart valve needs surgery at once. A stranger on the Goa-Mumbai express makes a bold prediction. Finnish doctors surprise everyone. Then, one night, he cannot breathe.
09
ChapterThirteen Hours in Tampere
Seven years on, the chest pain returns. Jo puts off surgery and spends weeks at bedsides in Goa’s hospice, care home and hospital wards, before a thirteen-hour operation in Tampere, Finland.
10
ChapterThe Envelope Through the Window
Rent due and no money: an envelope flies through a window, a home of eighty climbs out of debt by Christmas, a five-year-old dreams of a new SUV, and a shopkeeper near Turku remembers an orange tent.
11
ChapterThe Yellow Screwdriver
A friend’s dishwasher is dead, the repairman says replace it, and her husband does not want to spend 300 euros. Jo, who never finished his engineering course, picks up a yellow screwdriver.
12
ChapterElephant to the Rescue
Five-year-old Daniel wants an elephant ride as his prize. It is monsoon season in Goa, and everyone says there is no elephant to be found. Then one comes lumbering up the road.
13
ChapterViking Line Encounter
Two suitcases of donated children’s clothes, the overnight ferry from Stockholm to Helsinki, and no ticket. Jo waits until one guard is left at the gate, and a much longer story begins.
14
ChapterA Precious Pearl in the Tsunami
After the 2004 tsunami, an office door in Tampere that should have been locked leads to a free seat to Goa. On the flight, a young Finnish stranger pulls out a slip of paper with Jo’s phone number on it.
15
ChapterDead Man Pays Back
Max, a generous Goa businessman, cuts ties, then loses everything when mining is banned. When he calls in despair, Jo answers, and lends him money he never repays. Until long after he is gone.
16
ChapterThief Returns My Money
At 3 a.m. at Dadar station, a smooth-talking money changer cons a jet-lagged Jo out of 280 euros. Three months later, among thousands of taxis, Jo goes looking for him.
17
ChapterSigns
A grieving mother’s red-breasted bird, a beach-flat weekend for a heartbroken hall manager that turns out to be his last, a name on a mop handle, and a number plate in Guwahati.
18
ChapterVoices in the Roof
In an eighty-year-old house, rats scurry over the maid’s room at night, until they start to sound like human voices. The skeptical owner decides to sleep in there himself.
19
ChapterFlat 9 D/E
On a Cochin rooftop in 1996, Tuula points at one top-floor flat, 9 D/E, and says that is where she would live. Six months later, a stranger who says she does not rent out flats changes her mind.
20
ChapterThree Wishes
A sailor and his wife, six years married and longing for a baby, sit with Jo over pen and paper. Then a young man from Jordan writes down three wishes: a better job, a car, and to live next door.
21
ChapterCoach S-7
May holidays, a last-minute ticket and the dreaded unreserved carriage on the overnight Mumbai-Goa train. Jo climbs onto an empty top berth in coach S-7 and waits all night for someone to claim it.
22
ChapterOrange Couches in Zurich
A Konkani stage play leaves Jo’s pregnant mother afraid for her unborn son. Decades later, two stranded travellers find orange couches in a deserted Zurich airport, and only one of them stays.
23
ChapterThe Land She Would Not Sell
In an old Portuguese-style bungalow, a retired teacher refuses to sell her land. Days later, a pin-stuck black doll lands in the house and her brother suffers a stroke. Then come the bats.
24
ChapterFinnish Strawberries and Honesty
A Finnish summer, a strawberry farm and a sixteen-year-old son’s first job. Jo signs up too, sure it will be easy, until the white-haired owner spreads his berries out on the floor one by one.
01 / 24
What Readers Are Saying
What readers say.
Currently I'm into Chapter 10 of your precious book that you presented me yesterday. I have to forcefully stop myself from finishing it in one night. Not a single page failed to bring out my tears. I was hoping to meet Theresa in my dreams, but it seems it did not work that way. Anyway, I enjoyed so much. Thank you for this amazing life-changing book.
Reader
It's intense… a lot to take in. It almost feels like a movie.
Reader
I read the first three stories. Overall it's very beautiful and inspiring.
Reader
01 / 03
The book is yours.
USD 10.10. Add your name and email in the PayPal note and the book comes to you.
News.
News29 Aug 13
News27 Dec 13
Get in Touch
Write to Jo.
Your email app should now open with your message. Press send there to reach Jo.
