Lapierre weaves fairytale into flame of education

Bishnupur, West Bengal, Mar 1: The power of an altruist French author and the spirit of a Holywood diva blended together in a fairy tale story to kindle the flames of knowledge and life in rural Bengal.

Dominique Lapierre yesterday opened a school 'Bodhadaya Vidhya Mandir' at Lakshmikantapur under Bishnupur Block-I and in the process opened the gates of hope for hundreds of village urchins to get free education.

''I was in Paris when I got a call from here. 'Dominique Dada the school is gone'. Somebody had opened the dikes in Bihar and water had swept away the school I had opened a few months back,'' the author of 'City of Joy' told UNI.

''I was distraught. There was mud upto five metres high. Only the school board was visible. I did not know how to get money to reconstruct the school and shared my pain with my designer friend Hubert de Givenchy. He offered me a black dress Audrey Hepburn had worn and the rest is history,'' the celebrated author recounts.

The black dress that the gorgeous superstar wore as the naive, eccentric socialite Holly Golightly in the masterpiece 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' is now the foundation of a future of hundreds of children in rural Bengal. Yesterday one school was inaugurated and 14 more will follow across the state. And 13 years after her death, Hepburn was still the spirit embodied of Godwill Ambassador that she was of UNICEF, after giving up acting at the age of 39.

''A fairy tale was coming alive here,'' Lapierre said.

When Lapierre reached the village he was greeted by hundreds of children shouting 'Dominique Dada' even as 'Tazz Band Party' churned out patriotic songs and a lone village microphone blurted out a welcome message in broken english and cockney Bengali dialect. It was like a village fair in motion as the man and his wife along with an entourage of 20 odd French and German friends and host of mediamen broke through the village path.

While people lined the narrow mud-mortar path, lifesize cutouts of Audrey Hepburn decorated the route. Dominique posed in front of a few and the village girls stood thronging other posters and cutouts making the mythical actress come alive as one of the faces in the crowd. The sleepy village of poultry farming and bannana plantations had come alive to the occasion, as fire crackers went off and a fussilade of flashbulbs and probing booms of electronic media took centrage.

''What is very special about this education centre is that I have financed its construction thanks to the sale of the iconic evening gown,'' said Lapierre.

The dress was handed over to Dominique Lapierre last spring by French fashion genius Givenchy when he found that some of Dominique's schools were devastated by floods. Givenchy thought the dress would fetch about USD 10,000. Lapierre took the dress to Christies' Auction House in London and sold it for USD 825,000 last December. The money was enough to repair the old schools and build several others.

''At first I was thinking of one village school, maybe two and now I am thinking of 15,'' he said paying homage to Hepburn.

There could not have been a more befitting tribute for the actress who dedicated the later part of her life to helping destitute children in Africa, South American and Bangladesh.

Soon after he headed for Keoradanga village in the same block where he inaugurated the Lapierre Centre of Excellence for Disabled, Asha Bhavan Centre. While inaugurating it he lauded the government and the people for auguring remarkable growth in West Bengal.

''The future of Bengal and India as ith anywhere else in the world is in education. I will help you in the small way I can,'' he promised.

''Unless they are educated they cannot come out of the hands of the local mafia who often rule them,'' he felt.

The speech was in Bengali, incidentally.

He was presented a citation on this occasion by Keoradanga Gram Panchayat Pradhan Ranjan Mondal.

''I am anguised to see the differentially handicapped people left out of the development process. I urge the government for a more proactive role in this regard,'' Lapierre said.

Lapierre's other projects include Community Based rehab centres and four medical boats SISH that run in Sunderban areas.

Since 1982, Lapierre has shared his royalties with the on-profit City of Joy Foundation, which provides aid to slum children in Kolkata and other parts of West Bengal.

The royalties from his book 'Five Past Midnight in Bhopal' went to the Sambhavna Clinic in Bhopal which provides free medical treatment to the victims of the 1984 Union Carbide Bhopal disaster.

The Lapierres have been working in rural Bengal for 25 years funding treatment for leprosy, cholera and tuberculosis. They have set up four hospital boats to provide medical care to 54 remote islands of the Sundarbans.

UNI