KOLKATA: The Sunderbans and its "forgotten people" will be the subject of author Dominique Lapierre's next book — one that he plans to start working on during his stay in the delta in mid-December this year. He visits the islands on Thursday to inspect the "City of Joy Foundation" health project that he has set up to extend medical services to its inhabitants."The Sunderbans and its people require the attention of the world, they are a forgotten people who live on islands where the earth is saline and whatever grows is salty, where the water that is available for domestic purposes is contaminated with high levels of arsenic: my book will focus on the lives of the people there, those who have made me their benefactor, an honour more important to me than the Knight's Order," the writer told The Hindu , whose bestsellers included "City of Joy" and "It was Five Past Midnight in Bhopal."

The author's health project involves "four ferries, equipped with x-ray machines, surgical instruments and medicine, that traverse the waters of the delta 300 days a year carrying doctors to treat the sick in medical dispensaries set up ashore." The ferries are named "City of Joy." Once in a month, a special one with a team of 10 doctors, which include eye specialists, a dentist and an ENT specialist aboard, does the rounds as part of "a unique health project.

It was started five years ago and "still expanding" in the world's largest mangrove forests, he pointed out.

Mr. Lapierre was in a village called Bakshi in Howrah district where he had just "spent the greatest moment in his life; one that has made him feel the proudest person in the world." The event: the inauguration of a rural computer centre, funded largely with royalties earned from his books. Similar centres will be coming up in the 15 other schools under the Bodhoday Vidya Mandir Education Programme, which he sponsors across four districts in the State.

"These schools have been set up for the most deprived children who were rescued from the hands of mafia gangs that engaged them in ferrying illicit liquor against a fee of Rs. 50. We have got the children to enrol and are also paying Rs. 50 to their parents each month — the money their wards used to earn," Mr. Lapierre said. The novelist was also present at the foundation laying ceremony of the Lapierre Sadan within the Asha Bhavan Centre in nearby Bantabla, set up for children suffering from cerebral palsy.

© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu