India My Love

Five Past Midnight in Bhopal and The City of Joy This is the extraordinary story of Dominique Lapierre’s love affair with India, from his first 20,000 kilometre drive across the subcontinent in a veteran Silver Cloud Rolls-Royce gathering unique testimonies for his epic account of India’s independence, to his later encounters with the country’s disinherited and its saints, who taught him a wonderful lesson in sharing and hope and gave birth to the internationally renowned book and film, “The City of Joy”. It is a tale of maharajas and rickshaw pullers, of interviews with Indira Gandhi and the brother of Gandhi’s assassin, of life-changing meetings with Mother Teresa and the victims of the Bhopal disaster, of pig sticking on horseback, of life in the slums with a Swiss nurse, and of saving a home for children affected by leprosy. Above all, it is an insight into how India, with its immense mosaic of people and fascinating culture stole a Frenchman’s heart and turned his life into a testimony to the fact that “All that is not given is lost”.