Dear IF readers,

It was in my youth that I found India. Upon entrance to University of Colorado, Boulder in 1987 as a transfer student, my small world of white, middle class, upbringing exploded and I met the rest of the world. I found it on a large, diverse campus of my choosing and the classes and books that I began to experience. One of those books was Dominique Lapierre’s 1985 City of Joy. Tonight when I revisited the book on Amazon, I clicked through to Lapierre’s charitable organization, www.cityofjoyaid.org. The story of Dominque and Dominique Lapierre’s work in India is as fascinating as his story. Please go to the site, donate, buy a book in which 50% royalties go to helping the children of lepers of Calcutta, you will fufill your mind and your heart.

City of Joy is a book about a slum in Calcutta, a medical clinic assisting lepers and a rickshaw puller. I remember the passion and the tenacity of the father in the book. I remember the traditions of Indian life that gave meaning to marriage and meals and spirituality that I had not known in my upbringing. I was raised in a non-cultural upbringing of five non-biologically related persons where possibly my parents felt it would alienate their adopted children to remember their Irish roots, or they had let their roots go long before we had arrived, I never asked.

The book City of Joy touched my soul in a way that re-ignited my soul to live and travel abroad again. I had been raised in the U.K. until I was six, and after my parents returned, my family had never traveled overseas again. I began to think it had been too long living in my small box of a life and I began to make plans.

A few years later, I was teaching English in Barcelona, Spain and I met India again. Truth be told, I am not as much a fan of Paella as Dal (I am not a mussels fan), and so I found myself out again and again at the local restaurant that served Indian food, and played Indian pop music videos. I loved the music and the food. The restaurant was stone with lit fire-torches and a dark back room, and sometimes, I imagined I would make my way to India as well. My son Brody is three, and I will begin to travel with him when he is five, and Jax is seven, I hope to make it there on one of my first trips abroad.

In the meantime, I listen to music that takes me abroad, Rough Guide’s World Music Network has a brilliant CD, “Indian Lounge”, fabulous - http://www.worldmusic.net/wmn/news/item/indian-lounge.

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