Still serving India’s poorest

Dayanand (in wheelchair) greeting a man at the ICOD grounds in Gohalopata, India. More than four decades after inspiring the best-selling novel ‘City of Joy’, the 86-year-old (pic, below) is still working for India’s ‘poorest’. — AFP

DECADES after inspiring a best-selling novel that brought readers into slums near Kolkata, 86-year-old ascetic Gaston Dayanand is still working for India’s poor.

His life helping people in the mega-slums of Pilkhana formed the plot of Dominique Lapierre’s 1985 book City of Joy, which was later turned into a Patrick Swayze movie.