The Hindu : Front Page : <I>The City of Joy</I> soon to be a documentary

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Monday, Mar 05, 2007
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The City of Joy soon to be a documentary

Special Correspondent

Lapierre: It will portray the courage of the people of Kolkata in adversity

Dominique Lapierre

KOLKATA: Writer Dominique Lapierre is looking forward to The City of Joy being made into a documentary for television in both Hindi and Bengali. It will have 250 episodes, each of 22-minute duration.

"Producer-director Ashis Roy is to begin shooting after the monsoon," he told The Hindu here on Sunday. "It will portray the capacity to share and the courage of the people of Kolkata in adversity, especially of those living in slums," said the writer and philanthropist who always carries with him a rickshaw puller's bell, "which helps me to face the world," like a lucky charm.

"I want the documentary to be a homage to the pullers of rickshaws [a mode of transport that the State Government plans to phase out] and whose voices I hear with the jingle of the rickshaw bell that I carry with me in my pocket like one does a cell phone," Mr. Lapierre, who is on a brief visit to the city, said.

"The sound of the bell, given to me by my great friend Pal, himself a rickshaw puller whom I met while researching The City of Joy, provides me the impetus to triumph over everything. It gives me the vitamin," said the author who expects to complete his next book based on the Sunderbans in another two years.

Not that his books have not been made into films earlier.

The City of Joy was made by Roland Joffe in the early nineties.

"But I liked the book more than the film," Mr. Lapierre said. "O Jerusalem [1971] is set to be released in May. Is Paris Burning? [1964] is already a film and I hope that next year my book set in Spain during the civil war ... Or I'll Dress You in Mourning is made into one in 2008."

Mr. Lapierre, who was earlier in the day felicitated by the Dominique Lapierre Fans' Association, said The City of Joy — a story of the heroic battles of the inhabitants of a Kolkata slum against adversity — was to be translated into Sanskrit by Ramesh Bhattacharya. The book has already been translated into Hindi.

"I was very touched by Mr. Bhattacharya's request to me to translate the book and I have agreed. I see it as a testimony of Indian life recorded in Sanskrit."

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