On Dominique Lapierre’s mind - Sundarban and Africa

NEW DELHI - The Sundarban mangrove forests of West Bengal and Africa are bound by a thread in eminent French writer-humanitarian Dominique Lapierre’s literary landscape - they are his work stations.

“The project in the Gangetic delta which began three years ago as a healthcare measure for villagers in the remote tiger habitat has grown to touch one million lives,” said Lapierre, who was in India to oversee his Sundarban Project, a relief initiative in West Bengal.

He also released his new book on Africa, “A Rainbow in the Night: Nelson Mandela and the Tumultuous Birth of South Africa”.

Lapierre’s initiative in the Sundarbans is spread across 14 projects that comprises 600 drinking water wells, 120 schools and mobile hospitals.

He says it is “a continuation of his ‘City of Joy’ endeavour” - the spillover from the book about the life of a rickshaw puller in Kolkata that earned him international acclaim and kick-started his love affair with India.

“Likewise in Africa, we have another philanthropic project. We run a series of schools near Cape Town for poor black people. Poverty still persists to an extent, but the blacks are not going to jail any more. The biggest problem is unemployment and 15 percent of the population is hit by AIDS,” Lapierre told IANS.

The royalty from the India edition of his book will go to fund his projects in West Bengal and Africa.

Why the Sundarbans?

“It is one of the poorest areas in the world. Nobody thought about it - it was not on the map of India. They are very difficult islands in need of help. The project was the culmination of efforts to show to the world the heroic people of the Sundarbans who managed to survive the adversities,” the writer said.

Three years ago, when Lapierre decided to help them, he realised that the only way to “help the people of Sundarban was to go to the island with a mobile hospital”.

“We operate four boats - mobile hospitals. Last year during the cyclone Aila, our boat was the only one to come to the rescue of the people because we approached the delta through the sea,” he said.

“Kolkata is so much in my blood that as I travel around the world, I hear the voice of my friend - the old rickshawallah,” he said ringing a metal hand-rickshaw bell that he carries with him.

His projects are small, mostly supervised by the writer and his wife.

“We do everything ourselves - there are no other people and not much expenses. We don’t have to pay salaries,” he said.

Lapierre said he has set up a fund in Delhi with his friends in India to raise money for his projects. “It has a budget of Rs.12 crore. I hope to attract Indian money from those affluent people who have money to spare but don’t know how to share. India has more billionaires than China,” Lapierre said.

Lapierre was conferred the Padma Bhushan in 2008 in recognition of his efforts.

He divides his time equally between humanitarian efforts and writing. “Half and half,” he said, offering a break-up of his time.

Recounting the writing of the book “A Raibow in The Night..”, Lapierre said an extraordinary invitation set him off to discover South Africa’s tumultuous past.

“Someone came and told me one day, Dominique, do you want to meet the South Africa’s Mother Teresa? We arrived in Cape Town to meet a white woman, Helen Lieberman, the wife of an affluent lawyer who risked her life day and night to save the black men, women and children.

“After three weeks of interviews, I felt I could write a book on her. But one day, she offered me much more. She took me on a tour of Cape Town and stopped in front of a statue of a tall Dutchman, Jan Van Riebeeck from Holland, who landed on the shore of South Africa on April 6, 1652, with a group of 100 compatriots,” Lapierre recalled.

The writer stood by the statue and wondered why he couldn’t write the story of the Dutchman, “the founding father of South Africa”.

Lapierre went on to write about the Dutchman who had sown the first seeds of segregation between the blacks and the whites.

“Riebeeck planted a hedge of almond (and resins) trees on the tip of Africa. It was the first act of segregation perpetrated by the white man against the blacks of South Africa,” the writer said.

(Madhusree Chatterjee can be contacted at madhu.c@ians.in)