DOMINIQUE LAPIERRE: I'm happy because I'm with my family. When you have started in life as a journalist, you are journalist all your life. You always congregate and associate with those who have chosen this beautiful profession. Thank you for receiving me, and best wishes. I have a particular respect for the Indian press because it has always been a free press. Your role is very important and I'm very honoured to be with you. You can definitely play a great role in developing India. Make sure that shining India is shining for everybody.

The new book, Once Upon a Time in the Soviet Union (recently launched and co-authored with Jean-Pierre Pedrazzini) is about when I was 25, a young reporter with the Paris Match. With me was a photographer from the magazine. Our wives were with us. At that time, in 1956, you could go to the moon, but you had to have some resources. It was not easy for a young journalist and his photographer friend to go to the moon. Or you could travel on the roads of the Soviet Russia. Because this had never been done. You could go to Soviet Russia but you were always with the tourism department, with the police escort . . . nobody had ever been lost on the roads of this country. One day we said, 'What if we can get authorisation to do that, to be the first in the world to do that?' As luck would have it, a news agency said the Kremlin had invited the then president, Jules-Vincent Auriol, for a visit. We went and said to him, 'Mr Auriol, you are invited by the Soviets for a visit. Can you take us along with you so that we can present a request, which is really an unusual request, that is to travel on their roads?' He said, 'Oh, it will be a great idea if you could do that.'

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