Bless you my Brothers and Sisters

	For my wife, Dominique Didi, and me, our annual pilgrimages to the various activities of SHIS always represent a memorable rewarding experience. We usually arrive totally exhausted by the long trip from Paris and mainly by the pace of our hectic working lives to find the financial resources to support the various budgets of our humanitarian crusade to help the poor of Bengal.
Just entering the Bhangar center to share the morning prayer of the social workers about to spread to all their different tasks, and it’s like a resurrection for us.

Meeting Sabitri and Wohab, meeting the doctors, the patients, the surgeons of the eye clinic, meeting all this marvellous humanity who each day make true the beautiful line of Tagore which says that “Adversity is big but man is bigger than adversity”, is for us like a revelation. Here at SHIS is proclaimed everyday that poverty, malnutrition, tuberculosis, ignorance are not fatalities. That the poor, the unwanted are not abandoned. That there is always a reason to hope and beat the odds.

It is now almost twenty years since Dominique Didi and I have been associated with the destinies of SHIS. Twenty years during which we have all together accomplished so many miracles fighting poverty and its consequences under the devoted leadership of our sister Sabitri Pal and our brother Mohammed Abdul Wohab, and all those they have trained in serving those in need. Twenty years during which I have shared the royalties of my books and collected donations from readers and friends for the benefit of my Indian brothers and sisters.

My strongest wish is that the Indian and Bengal governments increase, whenever necessary, their support to SHIS because private support, such as mine might not always be available to meet all the needs and emergencies. I am now 76 and one of my main concerns is to make sure SHIS will always be able to continue its beautiful mission of love, compassion and justice for the benefit of my beloved India’s less fortunate citizens.

Poverty of the populations of the Sunderbans, tuberculosis in the villages, lack of education in remote parts of the state, lack of proper drinking water and sanitary equipment in so many areas… SHIS is fighting on so many vital fronts.

I want to tell all the soldiers of this battle that they will always have their brother Dominique Dada and their sister Dominique Didi fighting till their last breath at their side.

Dominique Lapierre
Author of “Freedom at Midnight”,
“The City of Joy”, “It Was Five Past Midnight in Bhopal”
Citizen of Honour of Calcutta
Benefactor of the Sunderbans