Book Extract: A Thousand Suns: Midnight's Scribe

There is something of an irony in reading the memoirs of one who is essentially a chronicler of the lives of others. Even so, Dominique Lapierre is no ordinary journalist. A writer of international renown, he has over the years interviewed the most exalted as much as the most infamous. A Thousand Suns (Full Circle, Rs 295), the English translation of his recollections, is thus a look back at a life lived to the fullest -- yet, as Lapierre emphasises in the accompanying interview, far from done.

Indians, of course, identify Lapierre with Freedom at Midnight, the racy account of 1947 which he co-authored with Larry Collins. Years later, Lapierre was to pay tribute to Calcutta's indomitable spirit in City of Joy and immerse himself in social service -- sometimes with Mother Teresa, often alone. His life is a living monument to India's great relationship with the West, ever-varying yet relentless. These extracts too tell a similar story. The first and second are of imperial masters; the final story is of an Englishman who came as a humble servant to India's most wretched souls -- its lepers.

Often his (Louis Mountbatten's) sense of humour would spice up our stark and studious reconstruction of the facts with incidents that were comical or touching. He told us how on the night before India's independence, he had withdrawn to the solitude of his office. "I am still one of the most powerful men in the world," he thought. "For a few more minutes, from this office I shall still rule over a fifth of the human race." He was reminded of a story by H.G. Wells, The Man Who Could Do Miracles. It was the story of an Englishman who had the power, for one day, to accomplish anything he liked. "Here I am, in my last minutes as viceroy of India," Mountbatten had said to himself. "I must do something exceptional, but what?" All of a sudden, inspiration struck. "I shall promote the wife of the nawab of Palampur to the rank of highness."

Mountbatten was a rich source of stories

Mountbatten and the nawab of Palampur, a small Muslim state in west-central India, were old friends. In 1945, while staying with his friend the prince, Lord Louis had received a very peculiar request from the British diplomatic resident accredited to his host. The nawab had married an Australian, to whom the viceroy of the time obstinately refused to grant the title of highness on the grounds that she was not of Indian blood. The nawab had been heartbroken. But Mountbatten's intervention had been to no avail. London was fiercely opposed to Indian princes marrying foreign women. On the eve of independence, taking advantage of his last moments of supreme authority, Lord Louis therefore made the nawab of Palampur's Australian wife a "begum", thus elevating her to the status of highness.

Thirty years after this episode, as I was signing books after a lecture I had just given in Geneva, I saw a woman coming toward me. She was dressed simply, her wrinkled face wore no makeup and her gray hair was hidden by a scarf. She placed on the table a very dog-eared copy of Freedom at Midnight and timidly asked me to autograph it.

She hesitated. Then with a hint of nostalgia in her eyes, she replied: "To the begum of Palampur."

After independence, she and her husband had left India to settle in Europe. The nawab had died in relative financial insecurity. The woman whom Mountbatten had made a highness was now giving English lessons to rich Arabs living on the shores of Lake Geneva.

In a modest cottage in the Sussex countryside, I met Sir Frederick Burrows, the last British governor of Bengal. Nothing about this former trade-union leader suggested that from 1945 to 1947 he had been sovereign of an area more populous than Great Britain and Ireland put together. Calcutta, capital of the province, was the largest British city after London. Raj Bhavan, the governor's residence, was a splendid palace with 137 rooms in the middle of a 30-acre park. The former governor who had once had a staff of 500 liveried servants now only employed a local country woman to do his housekeeping.

INTERVIEW: DOMINIQUE LAPIERRE

On the phone from Paris, the writer spoke to Senior Correspondent Anna M M Vetticad on his books, his heroes and his future plans:

Some people feel that if Lord Mountbatten hadn't hurried up Partition, there wouldn't have been so much bloodshed. Is that fair?
It is India's and England's good luck that they had such a giant of history at that very crucial time in history. As a Frenchman, I can only regret that we didn't have such a person in Algeria and Indo-China.
Of the thousand suns in your life, who are the brightest two?
Gandhi and Mother Teresa.
Why are there so few references to Mother Teresa in this book?
I think there are enough. I've explained how she inspired me and led me to the person (James Stevens) with whom my involvement started.
Some people feel Freedom at Midnight was pop history.
They are probably people who wrote a history book that nobody read.
Why don't you do another book on Indian history?
Maybe in future. I don't like to write history when it's still hot.
You mean too controversial?
No, no. Things have to cool down before you are able to put things in perspective. Twenty-eight years had passed when Larry (Collins) and I did Freedom.
Why India for the global launch of your new book's English edition?
The royalties from this book will further serve those I have always wanted to serve. The launch of the book on my boat dispensary in the Sunderbans will be a sort of mystical communion between a writer and those who will benefit from his work.
This reads like a last book. Is it?
If you knew about the great book I have in the pipeline, you wouldn't say so.
What is it about?
Call me a year from now and you will be the first one to know.

Before my bemused eyes, he leafed through his photograph album, records of the final stages of British rule. He hid neither his nostalgia nor his bitterness from me. Britain might have given the people she governed their freedom, but she had been unable to stop them from killing each other as soon as she left. He told me with sadness how his own rule had come to an end. While Lady Burrows and he were closing their luggage in one wing of their palace, hundreds of rampaging demonstrators had invaded the rest of the building, pillaged the crockery and silverware, torn down the curtains and danced for joy in the reception rooms, landings and stairways. The last sight of their bedroom had remained engraved upon his memory: dozens of little dark men who had never slept anywhere but on the beaten earth, jumping about and bouncing up and down on their bed springs as if on a fairground trampoline.

Sir Frederick had kindly provided lunch as a break from our labours. The man who had had 500 servants at his disposal brought in the dishes himself. At the end of the meal, he got up. Pointing to our plates and cutlery, he asked me: "Mr Lapierre, would you regard it as an inconvenience if we were to continue our conversation in the kitchen over the washing up?"

In 12 years, Englishman James Stevens had wrested more than a thousand leper children from poverty and death in the slums of Calcutta. He had once had a prosperous business, selling shirts and ties, but had sold everything he had and given up his comfortable existence in England to devote his life to saving children otherwise doomed to total destitution. The home he had founded on the outskirts of Calcutta was called Udayan, a Hindi word meaning "resurrection".

Our visitor's cheerfulness and florid complexion were a facade that masked the crisis he was going through: he was on the verge of closing his refuge and sending the 150 children it harboured back to their misery. He had exhausted all his personal resources and had been unable to find financial support to maintain his work. An island of hope in the depths of hell was about to disappear ...

We arrived at the most important time of the day: lunchtime. The 150 children were sitting cross-legged on the ground. With their hands together, eyes closed, concentrating intently, they were singing away in shrill voices. In front of each brown head was a banana leaf containing a small mountain of rice, a few pieces of meat and some lentil puree. Stevens was singing the grace too. It was a prayer by Rabindranath Tagore. "All that is not given is lost," it asserted. When they had finished singing, James said a short invocation in Bengali. A hundred and fifty small hands then descended on the food, to work the various ingredients into an initial small ball that was immediately raised to their mouths and gulped down. But for the sounds of chewing, there was complete silence. Every face was focused on a sacred act, every mouthful was scooped up with gravity, every movement carried out with dignity.

James took us next to the dormitories that were also used as classrooms and places where judo, yoga and gymnastics were taught. A smiling picture of Jesus, another of Vishnu and the text from the Koran adorned each room. One wing of the house harboured the workshops where the children learnt to become tailors, mechanics and electricians, skills that would guarantee them a job when they left the centre ... On the walls of the infirmary small posters denounced some of the prejudices relating to leprosy. No, leprosy is not fatal. No, it is not necessarily contagious. No, it is not hereditary. No, it is not a shameful disease. Yes, it can be treated. Yes, you can be cured of leprosy.