Dominique Lapierre died on December 4, 2022 due to old age. He wrote ground-breaking books characterized by painstaking research. He was a gifted writer and also an exceptional human being. He was known for his generosity and his faith in humanity. He was fascinated by Man’s capacity to face adversity and to keep struggling to fulfil his dreams.
Collaboration
Together with Larry Collins, an American, he wrote “Is Paris burning?” (1965), “Or I’ll dress you in mourning” (1968; an absorbing biography of El Cordobes the bull fighter),“O Jerusalem”(1978; about the birth of Israel),“Five past mid- night in Bhopal” (1975; traces the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy),“The fifth horseman” (1980; a fiction about terrorism).
Dominique Lapierre was a military interpreter in the army and Larry Collins was a soldier. Later Lapierre worked for Paris Match and Collins worked as Newsweek journalist in Paris. In 1961 they teamed up to research and co-write “Is Paris burning?” about how Paris survived destruction by Hitler. They worked for years, researching exhaustively. The excitement they derived and the passion they felt were both evident on every page of their book.
They collaborated on “Freedom at Midnight” recounting the tempestuous last days of colonization in India and the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.They took investigative journalism to new heights and brought history alive, making it accessible to millions of ordinary readers in the narrative form. To “India Today” Lapierre explained that “Our book is a history book. And we claim we are historians. The only thing we do more than traditional historians is that we bring to history modern techniques of journalism which add much more to the traditional way history is written.”
Both were bilinguals. They wrote in the mornings separately, Lapierre in French and Collins in English. They compared their writing the next day. They would engage themselves in what La pierre calls “the fruitful process of discussion, translation, adaptation, and cutting”.
They worked over dusty documents and archives but they also went out, met people and witnesses, exchanged long conversations and then spent time cross checking the information received. Plenty of information collected that could not be confirmed had to be thrown away. They met people from every walk of life. Research and writing cost 4 years of their lives. 6,000 pages of research material were gathered and it took 2 years to compile the notes. Lapierre said, “A book like this is 9,000 pages of handwritten sheets, and each page is in fact about 5 pages because it has been written and rewritten.” A history-making film was made from the book by Richard Attenborough with Ben Kingsley in Mahatma Gandhi’s role.
Industrial catastrophe
The factory set up by the Americans to produce cheap pesticide was a dream come true for many peasants. A gas leak turned the dream into an unparalleled nightmare. “Five past midnight in Bhopal” with Javier Moro was a meticulously researched book. The writers got interested because the tragedy should not be one to be forgotten. In an interview La- pierre said that there were “200,000 personnes qui souffrent dans leur chair tout simplement, et qui n’ont jamais reçu leurs traitements adéquats, car jamais Union Carbide n’a révélé l’exacte composition du gaz qui a empoisonné des gens cette nuit-là.”
Lapierre believed in compensations for the victims and in the cleaning of the site as a priority, and those responsible for the tragedy must be brought to book. The December 3, 1984 gas leak killed some 30,000 people and injured half a million others. The book reconstituted the calamity in staggering details. But it also gave insight into the consequences of toxic gas on citizens. La pierre said that the book was never written in a polemical spirit, nor was it a pamphlet. It was rather a great human adventure.
In the epilogue of“Il était minuit cinq à Bhopal” (Éditions Robert Laffont, 2001), Lapierre gives us a chilling account of the sufferings encountered by half a million Bhopalis as a result of the gas leak: problems with the eyes, kidneys, lungs, the digestive system, the immune system, the genitals; cramps, unbearable scratching, migraine, pulmonary haemorrage, jaundice. Another phenomenon was at the psychological level: the gabrahat, a hindi word meaning the syndrome of panic and anxiety. Thoses uffering from vertigo were imagining themselves on the edge of a precipice; those fearing water had the sensation that they were drowning. There followed depression, the helplessness crisis, and anorexia. “Le gabrahat conduisit beaucoup d’individus au désespoir et au suicide.” (page 526).
Many Indians knew about his charitable work in Calcutta’s slums and asked him if he could do something for Bhopal. He went there, loved the place and its inhabitants, and grew curious about the details of the gas leak. 17 years after the disaster Lapierre opened a gynaecological clinic for women affected by the hazardous gas. About the clinic, the author wrote in a letter to the readers, “Elle reçoit, soigne et guérit des centaines de femmes que tous les hôpitaux de la ville avaient abandonées à leur sort.” In 1981 he donated $50,000 for humanitarian causes. He went back to Europe, wrote magazine articles and sent additional money. He “adopted” with his wife 200 children and in 1989 sent $1 million to an NGO struggling to help the underprivileged. Two thirds of the sum was his money. Moreover, he set up a primary school in the Oriya Basti colony in Bhopal.
Beyond love
AIDS swept across the planet, killing millions initswake.“Beyond love” was about scientists working against the clock to help save humanity. It was especially about the strong message of Christian compassion. Mother Teresa’s presence with her devoted followers all throughout the struggle was a valuable comfort.
How did he come to bond with India? It was thanks to an aesthete, a saint, Langza del Vasto. Long ago, this person had talked to him of India. His book,“Le Pélerinage aux sources”, marked Lapierre for life. “Vanity Fair” described the book as “no mere book, it’s a mission”.
One day he found a proverb “There are always a thousand suns beyond the clouds” on a bus shelter in southern India. The words stayed with him. He wrote “Mille soleils”. Attheheart of the book were stories of men and women pitted against oppression and misfortune and yet the human spirit ultimately emerges stronger. He wrote, “Mes rencontres m’ont nourri. Elles m’ont appris ce que sont la générosité, l’amour et l’espérance. C’est cette vision de la vie, courageuse et enthousiaste, que j’ai voulu trans- mettre dans Mille soleils.”
Asked by India Today if he wrote blockbusters to reach thousands of readers, Lapierre replied, “We do not write bestsellers.We try to write the best book that we think can be written on a particular subject. (…) The public decides if it is going to be a bestseller or a flop.