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.'

So we went to Moscow and one day at a reception I found myself in front of Nikita Khrushchev himself. And I said, 'Mr First Secretary, my friend and I have a request to present to you: we would like that you give us the permission to come to the Soviet Union in our car and discover the country. We would invite a couple of Soviet journalists to come to France and do exactly what we were able to do here.'

Khrushchev looked at me and started to laugh and he said, 'What's the matter with you? Don't you know that after two weeks your wife will ask for a divorce?'

I said, 'Why?' And he said, 'Because our roads are so bad!' So we understood we'd never get permission to do that. The Russians didn't want their people to get close to us, to young people like us, because we might give them bad ideas, capitalist ideas, you know. So we gave up and came back to Paris. And one day in July, as we were going on our own vacation somewhere to the beach, a telegram arrived from Moscow, which said 'Permission granted. You will enter Soviet Russia from the city of Brest Litovsk near Poland. Just tell us about your itinerary.'

We got crazy, we had to get a car, pack up all kinds of things we wanted to take along, a lots of gifts to give on the way. In two weeks we got prepared and it was on July 14, a national holiday, we left Paris in a normal car that anyone could have bought. We didn't want one of those sophisticated jeeps or whatever. The car was painted in two colours and we put the name of our newspaper on the fenders. On the back, in Russian, we put up a board that said 'French journalists', and we left for Brest Litovsk. As we arrived in Soviet Russia, Brest Litovsk, my first memory, that I will never forget, came from an old Soviet lady. She came to me. As I was driving, I stopped. 'Can I ask you for a favour?' she said. I said, 'Yes, what is it, ma'am?' And she said, 'Can you deflate one of your tyres? I would like to breathe the air of Paris!' So this new book is the story of the three months and fourteen days that we (me, the photographer, and our wives) spent on 13,000 km of Soviet roads with a couple of young Soviet journalists. Why have I written this book today? Because today it is history. Ten years ago it would have been journalism. Today it's about a world that has disappeared, about people who are no longer there, about a regime that is gone. It has been an enormous success in France, and now, for the first time, it has come out in English, in India. Yesterday we had a launch at the French Embassy. It is not an exhaustive book about politics; it is just two young journalists opening their eyes without prejudice and discovering this forbidden world. Viola!

• LEHER KALA: You co-authored many books. How tough is it for the writers?

DOMINIQUE LAPIERRE: You have to find the right person you want to write with. The thing is that you mustn't have ego. You mustn't think that what you write is better than what the other writes. And when you have found this kind of character, you decide about the subject. Now you have a number of requirements for a subject. It has to be contemporary. Our strength is to interview. I'm not going to write a book about Akbar, because nobody is around from Akbar's time. But I'm going to write a book about people who are still alive, because my technique as a journalist enables me to get more information, so it has to be contemporary. It has to universal, because we don't write for the French, we don't write for Indians, we don't write for Mexicans, we write for the world. So it has to be a subject that will interest the world.

The third thing, and perhaps the most important, it has to take place in a place that we love. If you ask me to write a book on Eskimos, I hate the cold, I'll never write on the Eskimos even if you give me ten million dollars because I don't like being cold. So it has to be a place you like, because ours is always a long project. There is no secret. It only comes out after long, exhausting research that can take one year, two years, four years, whatever. But it has to be research from which ultimately you can write up to ten books.

When we (I and Larry Collins) researched for Freedom at Midnight, I think we could have written a book on Gandhiji's life, about Pakistan, about Jinnah, about Nehru, all those things. The problem is to write one book and make it as good as possible, with all the information you can put together. And then you write a script. It's like a cinema script. This is the story you want to write.

And each one of us wrote the episode he wanted to write. We were the only writing team in the world writing in two languages. He was writing in English, I was writing in French, and then we translated each other.

The process of translation is very interesting. When I had problems in translating Larry Collins into French, it meant his English was not good enough. When his English was good, there was no problem. It was the same for him. So we corrected each other, we edited each other. In the end you couldn't say who wrote what. Collins was from an Anglo-Saxon culture; I was from a European culture. So we brought both of our backgrounds into the same project. And that's how this book was so successful.

• MANDAKINI GAHLOT: What kind of research went into the writing of The City of Joy?

DOMINIQUE LAPIERRE: What happened was that I'd done Freedom at Midnight, spending months, years in India, and I fell in love with India because of Gandhi, Indian history, all that. With my wife, I wanted to show my gratitude to the Indian people, big maharajas as well as coolies from Calcutta. I wanted to show them my gratitude by doing something that could help them.

And that's how I went to Calcutta with the share of my royalties in my pocket and I wanted to see Mother Teresa. At 5 o'clock in the morning, I said, 'Mother, I have brought some money. Do you know an institution working for leprous children?' She said, 'It's God who has sent you.' There was an English gentleman who had opened a home in Barrackpore for leprous children from the slums, to cure and educate them. And he had no more money and was on the verge of closing his home, called Udayan. So I met this gentleman. We were very impressed to see everything. I gave him the money that I had brought and said, 'This is to help you pay your debts.' And I made an extravagant promise: 'You'll never close your home.' Then I went back to Paris and wrote an article about this centre. In the end I said if only 3,000 of us were to send Rs 1,000 every year, we could save 500 children from death. We were living near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and about a week later, our house keeper came up and said, 'Mr Lapierre, I don't know what's happening, but there is a truck from the postal service downstairs with nine postal bags for you. What should we do?' Fortunately, my wife comes from a family of nine children. She's got six sisters. So we told the six sisters to come to our apartment, took the nine bags, and for three weeks we sorted out all the letters. There were messages of hope: 'Please say to Mr Stevens in Calcutta he should never close his centre.' In one envelope there were two wedding rings, and on a sheet of paper it said: "We have worn these rings for 40 years of happiness. Today this gold will be more important for your children in Calcutta. Do not thank us.' I think we had tears in our eyes.

So we could send the most beautiful telegram to this gentleman in Calcutta, saying: 'You will never close your home.' And we went back to meet some of the members of the family that we had, in a sense, adopted. One day this gentleman took us to one of the slums where he had picked up his first leprous child. This (story) was to become The City of Joy.

I understood while meeting the people of that slum that I was a writer-journalist with the heroes of humanity. People who had nothing and yet seem to have everything. Because they were standing up, they were celebrating, they were sharing with those poorer than themselves. There's this beautiful line by Tagore: 'Adversity is great, but man is greater than adversity.' And I said to Dominique my wife (she's also called Dominique, but she's Big Dominique, and I'm Small Dominique): 'Let's buy some writing pads, some pens, and tell the story of these people. Because this is the story about the soul of humanity, the heart of humanity.'

And we stayed for two years in that slum. They are very poor. They have brought into an urban environment the culture of their villages. Every day, there was some celebration happening. Later working in the Bronx, with poor people, I found those who were disconnected from their past. But these people were not.

One day I was woken up by an orchestra walking by in the alley. I said to my friend, 'Which god are you celebrating today?' And she said, 'We are not celebrating any god, we are celebrating the birth of spring.' In a place with no trees, no flowers, no butterflies, no birds, these people had the guts to celebrate an event they will never see the manifestations of!

I thought these people are the heroes of humanity. And that's how I wrote The City of Joy. I went to my publisher, who said, 'Who's gonna read this? Come on, write happy stories.' I said, 'I don't care if two people read it. I have to deliver the story.' The result was than nine million copies of the book were sold. It was made into a major movie. Today it's a cult book. I still receive hundreds of letters from people around the world, some saying, 'I've just read The City of Joy. I was desperate, I was about to commit suicide.' One day I received from a woman in San Francisco a cheque of $ 1,500, and she said: 'I've read The City of Joy and I decided to stop smoking. And this is the amount I spend for my cigarettes in one year. You'll receive this amount every January 1.' I'm happy now that the book is very well read in India, which is very important.

• RADHIKA SACHDEV: You appear to be basking in the glory of being a champion of the underdog. You seem to have a missionary zeal. Your comment.

DOMINIQUE LAPIERRE: Missionary? No way! I go to Kolkata every time and I get my energy from there. I come back to France full of adrenaline. When you have spent one month Kolkata, finding a parking place for your car in the Champs Elysées is no longer a problem. In any case, I have always felt I was a reincarnated rickshaw driver. I have with me my Kolkata cellphone, given to me by one of the heroes of The City of Joy, a rickshaw puller called Assani Pal. Before he died, he gave me his voice in a sense. Maybe it's done 15,000 km. When I walk in the western world, come across people with their attaché cases, going to strike big deals but looking sombre and preoccupied, I hear in my pocket the voice of the rickshaw puller from Kolkata. There's nothing missionary about this. It's a word I don't like-'missionary', what does that mean? And it's not a matter of being a 'champion' of the underdog. It's being a brother of the underdog. I'm proud to have my brothers and sisters and we are sharing the same things. I'm just an instrument in their lives.

I tried to change their life for the better when I opened a school with a computer workshop and an English teacher. I'm giving a chance to very poor children to find a job and get out of their poverty. And I'm not advertising in any way. And this is really something that you as journalists should be concerned with. Because we are dealing with a world where there are two standards. There is the standard of the shining people and there are those who are not shining. I think everybody should be shining. And I'm very happy to bring a very small contribution to those who have given me much more than I will ever give them. I have learnt in that slum of The City of Joy these beautiful words: 'All that is not given is lost.' They gave me this beautiful Tagore phrase: 'Adversity is big, but man is bigger than adversity.' They give me this power to be able to beat the odds. That's why I was interested in these people, in changing their lives. Sometimes it's very difficult, and sometimes it's very simple. We have many schemes in education. I think education is the future of India. Education and women. For me these are the two real assets of India at the moment. And I don't like the word underdog. Underprivileged fits better. They have not had the chance that you had to be born maybe in an environment that enabled you to become a journalist. They had a really difficult karma. But they can emerge, they can become tomorrow the real, full-fledged citizens of this country if they are given the opportunity.

• COOMI KAPOOR: What do you think of what is going on in Kolkata right now, on issues like Nandigram?

DOMINIQUE LAPIERRE: I don't speak about politics. Please, I'm working in Kolkata, I'm a foreigner, I've got difficulties sometimes with some people to be able to make my projects come true. So please don't ask me what happened in Nandigram and about what I think of Nandigram. This is an Indian problem. I, as a French man, have no opinion that I will share with any of my Indian friends.

• COOMI KAPOOR: What about Tasleema Nasreen?

DOMINIQUE LAPIERRE: I can only can deplore the fact that a writer has to move from one place to another for reasons which might be security reasons, I don't know. I don't want to judge in any way those things. You have to help me, you know, to understand my position, you know, that I'm involved in a lot of projects, humanitarian projects, in West Bengal, which involve $5 million a year. Believe me, for one single man, a writer, it is difficult to find that amount. I give my royalties, I give the donations from my readers. I also give donations from supporters to make it work. And it works. I travel economy on Air France flights on my money. When you give me one hundred rupees, this is one hundred rupees that reach the poor immediately. It's a drop of water in the ocean of needs, but this drop is useful.

• ANURADHA NAGARAJ: How difficult was the transition from being a journalist to being an author?

DOMINIQUE LAPIERRE: Well, I am a journalist. You are a journalist. It's a disease. I think you are an inoculated journalist for life. In your life, you start by writing one story and then you devote more time to a whole book. But basically it's always, I think, the journalist who is at work when the author writes a book. I could never write a book just researching archives and dust. I have to meet people, to share with them. Sometimes, they have fantastic stories to tell. Sometimes they don't know how to say it. The talent of the journalist is to make them say it.

• MAHIMA KAUL: Many describe Freedom at Midnight as a Hollywood version. Your comment.

DOMINIQUE LAPIERRE: Who is the absolutely nasty person who refers to . . . Well, Freedom at Midnight is a theme for examinations at university, it has received all the awards in the world. . . This connotation of Hollywood version, what on earth does that mean, tell me? It's a work on history, it's not boring history! When I was at school I was bored with history. My books were boring. I thought it was not possible that history, which is so fantastic, was written that way.

• MINI KAPOOR: After Freedom at Midnight, you brought out a collection of notes on your interaction with Lord Mountbatten. Do you plan to put out other notes also, maybe on the Internet?

DOMINIQUE LAPIERRE: It has been evidenced by many universities, especially Harvard, that we have given them a very documented history. When we interviewed Lord Mountbatten, we found that he had maintained an extensive record at that time: he did not receive anyone (Gandhiji, Nehru, Jinnah) without immediately dictating to a secretary what had happened during the meeting. And he had kept this record and it was fantastic.

• LEHER KALA: You have been coming to India for so long. When you visit now, what do you see?

DOMINIQUE LAPIERRE: My concern is about a shining India for everyone. Some people from the islands in the Sundarbans asked me what I could do for them. I thought of taking them medical help by boat, since there are no roads. I bought an old ferry, converted it into a hospital, and started sending it to the islands. Now we have four ferries, City of Joy I, City of Joy II etc providing services to 54 islands. This week, I'm going to one of the islands where there are many blind people. We are going to take these blind people to one of our centres and operate them for cataract. We will keep them in the centre one day, and take them back to their island the day after. And after two weeks we are going to take them again to the centre to operate their second eye.

I'm also interested in micro-credit. I believe that if all the poor in the world receive micro-credit, they would no longer remain poor. But of course you need to have an education. I have taught women in 3,000 villages to read and write. And now I give them micro-credits. We get 84 per cent reimbursement!

• SHEKHAR GUPTA: Do you get support from the state government? Do they let you function?

DOMINIQUE LAPIERRE: I'm a single writer corporation. I don't get any support. But my royalties, donations from readers etc help. One day my wife and I were having dinner with the French designer Hubert de Givenchy. There had been a flood in Bengal and one of our schools was flooded. We were in a state of despair. And Givenchy told us, 'I'm going to give you something that might interest you – the dress I designed for the film Breakfast at Tiffany's, the dress Audrey Hepburn wore in the film. I'll give it to you. Maybe a collector will buy it for $ 10,000 or 20,000.' We took it to Christie's and finally the dress was sold for $ 900,000 in London. We could build 15 schools. You don't have to be Bill Gates. You can just be a writer and those things will come to you. Before I started a book on the Bhopal disaster, a journalist asked me, 'Why are you going to write this story?' I said, 'Miss, I'll personally introduce you to 100 destitute women affected by the gas in 1984 who haven't received the smallest treatment.' This is a scandal. The rich people received compensations, the poor did not. I said that with the royalties from the book, which has become a world bestseller, I'll build a hospital, an ecological clinic.

• SHEKHAR GUPTA: France is very popular in India . . .

DOMINIQUE LAPIERRE: Yesterday, I met the French ambassador, a young man, 45, wonderful man. He asked me: 'How has the official India recognised your action?' I said, 'Nobody (has recognised my action). But it is my privilege to be a honorary citizen of Kolkata.' On my grave I want it mentioned: Dominique Lapierre, Date of Birth, Date of Death, Citizen of Honour of the City of Kolkata. I have 50 awards from across the world. I don't want anything other than this mention.

• SHEKHAR GUPTA: W. Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is not your fan. He does not like your movie.

He was really against using the movie for his own propaganda. A newspaper in Kolkata published twisted pages from my book, invented phrases, and said I was attacking the poor. That was terrible. You know, in Kolkata, you can pay someone to demonstrate for a cause for ten rupees. Next day, the same person will demonstrate against the cause for another ten rupees.

• CLAIR McDOUGALL: You seem to have great faith in the idea that the journalist can be a facilitator of social change. How can journalists bring about change?

Well, by the stories you write. For so many people, you are the eyes, the voice, the ears. According to the way you write your stories, people will have a certain opinion. The choice of your stories is so important. If you don't do it, who is going to do it? You know, I see journalism as a religion. You are in the service of the readers, in the service of the people. If you write something wrong, you really cause something wrong. But sometimes you have to go so fast, because that's the basis of journalism, that you have no time to check some of your information and without knowing it you can hurt. The workforce of a newspaper is also the reflection of its leaders. When you are leading a newspaper you are invited to follow the right cause. When I was in Paris Match, I had my gods in that newspaper. They could have asked me for anything, because I respected them. I thought that when they asked me to do a story it was always a good idea. And when I was coming back with the story, if it didn't match their expectations, they would tell me. You have to have this sort of leadership. That's very important.

• RAVISH TIWARI: If you look at the political economy of the erstwhile Soviet Union, would you say that the events that followed were bound to happen?

It was easy for the people there, because from birth to death they were take care of, taken to school, sent to hospital if they were sick, if they looked for a job they found a job. So that was really easy for them. Most of people that we met were really comfortable with the system. Only freedom was lacking. And the day freedom could be brought to Soviet Union, the system would not last.

During our travels there, a man kissed the French flag in front of all the people there. He said he wanted to talk to us. We were scared because he was an Armenian, from Soviet Armenia, one who had come back to the Soviet Union, but did not like it. He tried to escape across the border to Turkey. One day he tried: he put 12 cats in a bag of potatoes on his back, knowing that the river which separates Russia from Turkey is patrolled by police dogs. He knew that when he opened the bag, the cats would run and all the police dogs would run after the cats. And he would jump in the water and tried to reach Turkey. He missed it, he was caught, and spent five years in a gulag.

After five years he had just been freed and he wanted to talk to us. He said, 'Please help me get a visa to go out of this country.' To make the story short, one day I received a phone call from the city he had his origins, in France, and the person speaking had the same voice as him so I thought it was himself. But it was his brother, and he said: 'Mr Lapierre, you published the photograph of my brother in Paris Match, kissing the French flag, and you know something extraordinary has happened: the Soviets have given him an exit visa! But now the French don't want to give him an entry visa! Can you do something?' The next day I went to see the big shots of security of our territory, I said, "Look at this photo, this guy has taken the risk to kiss the French flag in the middle of the Soviet Union and today the French don't want to accept him in France?' They told me: 'Mr Lapierre, you might be a very good journalist but you just forget one thing: don't you think the Soviets let this guy out as a KGB agent? Of course he's coming back as a spy! So why should we give it to him?' I said, 'He might come back as a spy, but I'll tell you one thing, after two weeks with his family in Marseilles, he's no longer going to work for the KGB. I promise you.' Nothing happened. Four months later, I found 80 red roses in front of my door, with just a card on which was written: 'Thank you. George Malcan.' He was back. I met him 25 years later. When he died, two years ago, I got a letter from his wife: 'You were the last joy of George, who just passed away.'

Ravish Tiwari: You did not reply on what was happening in Nandigram. But will you comment on what is happening in France, and what dilemna Sarkozy is currently facing with the strike by railway workers?

I would even less comment on what Sarkozy is facing! I know he was facing divorce and now I understand he is with some woman who happens to be a journalist. You see journalism leads everywhere. You can even go to the Elysee palace if you are a journalist and into the bed of the president.

• SHEKHAR GUPTA: Can Sarkozy make France a European country?

I think France is definitely a European country and he is a pro-European man but he's trying to change a number of things and these are leading France to financial disaster. You know, to change what has been accepted for so many years is terribly difficult! Air-hostesses are used to working 35 hours a week. If you tell them to do 40 hours, they will go on a strike. You have to be prepared to do a transition. Sarkozy will, because he is a tough guy, and he's a good guy. I'm happy he's coming to India.

(Transcribed by Gaelle Gonthier)