Oh Bengal!

Dominique Lapierre's never-ending affair with India takes him to the deep east.

"Le Dada de Dominique & Dominique: A fait merci pour votre generosite abundante"

The message, scribbled in big blue on a white board and wired to a tree, welcomes Dominique Lapierre and his wife to Udayan, the home for children of leprosy patients which they have been helping to maintain for the past 25 years.

The emotion expressed in the placard is undoubtedly sincere "" you have only to see the easy familiarity with which the children come up to garland their patrons and their European friends. But, equally obviously, the words have been supplied by someone else (although whether "dada" refers to the Bengali for older brother or the French for hobby-horse is not clear). Most likely, it's Sophie Dickinson and Abbey Baker, the two British girls from GAP Activity Projects volunteering in Udayan. It's they who have also taught the boys and girls to sing You Are My Sunlight, Mathilda.

The guests are visibly moved.

"This is where it all started off," says the 75-year old Lapierre, a far look taking in the freshly-painted residential blocks and school building, the grounds and the children milling around. The reference, clearly, is as much to Udayan as it is to Lapierre's engagement with philanthrophy. It was Mother Teresa who introduced Lapierre to James Stevens, an English businessman who set up Udayan. That was 1981 and Stevens confessed to Lapierre that he had run out of money and would have to send back the children to their leprosy-struck parents. The Lapierres, so goes the story, opened their purse, emptied whatever was inside and vowed that Stevens would never again have to consider closing down for lack of funds.

The Lapierres have kept their promise. They have also expanded their sphere of charity. At present, it emcompasses the four hospital boats, TB clinics and lately schools in the Sunderbans, the Howrah South Point Homes for handicapped children, the dispensary in Belari in rural Bengal, and some others. Half the royalties of Lapierre's books goes into supporting all this. But it's not enough. To give an indication of the scale of funds required, Lapierre says that each hospital boat cost $60,000 to acquire and refit, and requires another $50,000 a year to maintain and stock. "There are four now, but we need six to cover all the 54 islands in the Sunderbans," he says.

Since official support has not been particularly forthcoming, Lapierre has turned to private charity, bringing to it the sincerity, energy and charisma that make him such a darling of the media. Every time he comes to India, which is about twice or thrice in a year, he brings with him a group of co-workers and potential donors. This time it is Michele Migone, who had been coordinating the distant adoption scheme for the children of Udayan in Europe. Also in the group is Mara Louisa Galante, who works with hearing impaired children in Florence.

On this, her second trip to Calcutta, Galante has been busy making an imprint of the inner ear of around 30 children of the Howrah South Point who will be fitted with Ampliphone hearing devices.

The company will be sponsoring these hearing devices, each of which costs Euro 3,600, and will also be sending a technician to fit them on the children.

There's also Dominique Decoster, a wine-grower from south-west France, who has been so moved by all that he's seen and heard that he's thinking of sponsoring a school.

It's a network of do-gooders that doesn't have too many Indians, a gap Lapierre is aware of "" "It's very hard to get Indians to donate," he explains.

This time, for the first time, Lapierre got nine Indian businessmen to accompany him to the Sunderbans. "They have since committed to financing one of our projects."

The Sunderbans encounter is also about to bear fruit of a different kind. Lapierre is writing another book, this time on the Sunderbans.

The writer has already begun researching it, and later this year Lapierre will be back for more work on it. In Lapierre's words, "It'll be about ordinary people doing extraordinary things, about heroic people in a forgotten place in the world."

After City of Joy, this will be Lapierre's second book that takes off directly from his charity and the fourth on an Indian subject.

The connection doesn't weaken, does it?