A
Book Review of :
by Dominique Lapierre
This is a
story of hearts in Calcutta. Dominique Lapierre,
world-renowned journalist and author, narrates and interviews the lives and
struggles – eventually intertwined – of Hasari Pal (a peasant driven to the
city by a drought which devastates his village), Stephan Kovalski (a Polish
priest seeking to identify with the poorest of the poor, and getting more than
he bargained for in the slums of Anand Nagar) and Max Loeb (a Jewish-American
medical grad responding to Kovalski’s invitation to help out for a year).
Everything revolves around the ‘City of Joy’,
the name given to the slum of Anand Nagar in the heart of Calcutta. Lapierre’s descriptions are fascinating and
insightful in their detail and colour as they are horrifying and unbelievably
stark in their vividness and actuality.
He opens us up to the afflictions, hardships, rituals and occasionally
care-free living of lepers, rickshaw pullers, eunuchs, peasants, scrap yard
rag-pickers and hovel life in the slum.
He explains the intricate and wondrous minutiae of Indian wedding
negotiations, festivals, funerals, even toilet rituals; the scheming and
inhumanity behind the blood (and skeleton!) donation business, the foetus trade
business, the rickshaw business, mafia operations; the sad and almost comical
inefficiencies of a Calcutta post-office, hospitals, traffic control; the
horrendous adversities brought by floods, droughts, scorching summers, even a
cyclone. Along the way we’re also
treated to an exciting kite-war, fought between child and adult alike along the
slum’s rooftops, plus a glimpse of Mother Teresa’s ministry in the Place of the
Pure Heart (Home for Dying Destitutes) beside the Temple of Kali.
For the
poor, even their only source of joy - their families and dreams - are
vulnerable to separation and shatter.
A family
living on a pavement reluctantly and sorrowfully agrees to let their children
beg for food when their father can no longer give them food, even after
donating blood from his severely under-nourished body (the donation centre
extracts surplus blood from him, causing him to faint). The father eventually becomes a rickshaw
puller – after his predecessor loses a leg and dies a few days later in
hospital – and is overjoyed despite having to run hundreds of miles in
the heat and rain, suffer the humiliating treatment meted out by his passengers
and people on the street, and risk the loss of his rickshaw from corrupt
authorities. A mother seeks to
alleviate her family’s food problems (she and her husband has to feed four kids
- not to mention themselves - with only a handful of rupees a month) by selling
her then-unborn baby for experiment purposes.
But the operation, performed in a sleazy ‘operating room’ by even
sleazier characters, goes awry. She bleeds
helplessly, and the traders take her foetus and relief her of the
upfront money she received. Worst of
all, she’s left for dead, becoming a target for the corpse business. And her family doesn’t know and never sees
her again. A cyclone destroys an entire
area of hovels and fills the streets with excrement, filth and carcasses. A defender of the rights of rickshaw pullers
(who live hand to mouth and cannot afford a rise in ‘taxes’, as opposed to
rickshaw owners who live fat, comfortable lives) is shot in the head after a
successful campaign; a clinic for lepers is destroyed by thugs with
zero-toleration for the non-payment of ‘protection money’, ridiculously high
especially given the extant poverty; a rickshaw puller dives into a row of
burning rickshaws to save his ‘bread and butter’ (confiscated and condemned for
profit motives); a father breaks his back to produce a dowry and make wedding
arrangements for his daughter and dies of sheer exhaustion in the middle of the
ceremony, his body straightaway gathered by human bone traders (to whom he sold his skeleton to pay for the wedding).
The list
goes on. Yet the book is filled with
expressions of awe and sheer emotion by the main characters, through whose eyes
we see the acts of selflessness, giving and caring which permeates slum-life,
in spite of the numerous tragedies and heartaches experienced. There is just so much sharing going
on in the book, even by those who have almost nothing for themselves, you’d
suspect that giving is an occasion independent of circumstances and
resources. This speaks powerfully to
our modern calloused hearts, more often than not desensitized to the poverty
and pain of the world (yet strangely overwhelmed by the self-inflicted stress
of greed and ambition of urban society). The
City of Joy shows us the joy and celebration in the midst of utter
destitution, in a world where starvation, sickness and filth (the word-count
for ‘excrement’ is surely in the dozens) are integral to life. It reveals hope and delight from the simplest
of things, the barest of providence.
And it teaches that smack in the thick of demonic conditions, hopelessness
and tragedy, the greatness and beauty of love still shine through.
The pictures in the book are also a call for
Christians to be faithful ‘lights’ to the world, a firm reminder that love and
self-giving is how we must touch the world.
In places like Anand Nagar, there is no room for cold dogmatics and
abstract metaphysical speculation on God and the ‘problem of evil’. What people need to see and feel is His Body
of warmth, sensitivity and caring provision and outreach. The love of Christ, expressed in our actions
and words of compassion, are probably the only form of Gospel having any
currency in the slums of the world.
Jesus as Lord and Saviour of the world only ‘works’ in places like the
City of Joy when Jesus is first seen - through us, His Army of grace -
as Bread-Provider, Flesh-Healer and Soul-Comforter of the world. And it is to my shame – being a comfortable
‘first world’ Christian – that often I’ve wasted away on doctrinal minutiae and
church ‘politics’. Whatever my
theological squabbles with Mother Teresa’s Catholic beliefs, I am but a
wretched inferior to her as one who embodies the plea to ‘do something
beautiful for God’ and be His light unto the world. I fall short of her – and God’s – timeless instruction, given to
an American volunteer regarding a dying man (told midway through the book), “Love
him…love him with all your might.”
Finally, many inhabitants of the City of Joy
are no doubt role models of devotion and loyalty to what one believes. The numerous prayers and quiet thanksgivings
of the slum- (and pavement) dwellers reveal an integration of ‘religion’ and
‘daily life’ sadly missing in many a Christian. Lapierre speaks, maybe without knowing it, ‘true religion’ in the
story of Hasari Pal and many other Hindus and Muslims in the slums. Worship, offering and self-giving continues
ceaselessly in spite of want and suffering; I know of few other testimonies to
a pure faith.
For me, this book enriches the heart and brings
necessary tears of repentance at how much I’ve taken for granted. The reality of the lives in the City of Joy
will be an everlasting reminder of how far and deep the love of God can and
must reach. The City of Joy can show
me, if I pay attention, how lovely will be the City of God.
Alwyn Lau
Note: See also Lapierre’s City of Joy Aid website for more
information on his life and work in Calcutta.