Sourav Ganguly celebrates after scoring the century at Eden. A Telegraph picture Dominique Lapierre with his wife Dominique at the launch of his latest book. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya

Do not mistake Dominique Lapierre’s Once Upon A Time in the Soviet Union for just another travelogue. Lapierre delves into a time, place and people hardly in the headlines as he tries to provide glimpses of his “extraordinary” motorcar journey on Soviet roads through the Iron Curtain in 1956.

In town for the launch of his latest book, translated from French and published by Full Circle, Lapierre talked about the time when a telegram from former Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev arrived at his home granting permission to cross into the USSR. Lapierre, a 25-year-old reporter then with a French newsmagazine Paris Match, and 27-year-old photographer Jean Pierre Pedrazzini, embarked on the impossible tour around Soviet Russia along with their wives and another couple. “I wanted to do something more aggressive than just report news,” smiles Lapierre, who set out on a cruise of about 13,000 km of the erstwhile USSR, never attempted by a foreigner.

But why tell a story that happened nearly 50 years ago? “Two years ago I picked up my notes from that time and felt it was history. I first wrote in French which sold more than 100,000 hard-cover copies and half a million in paperback, so I decided to get it translated in English,” says Lapierre. The trip lasted three months and 14-days, winding through Poland, the mountains of Ural and the villages and beaches of Russia. “We were warned by Khruschev that two weeks down the trip our wives might want to divorce us because the roads were so bad! Very soon we realised that it wasn’t our wives but our car that might divorce us. There was just one petrol pump selling high-octane gasoline and the fuel being sold was of such low quality that we’d need to filter it three times and clean the carburettor every 3 km during our journey,” says Lapierre. “A lady once asked us to deflate one of our tyres so she could breathe in the air of Paris,” he recalls, as he takes his audience through a short video footage of his trip.

They were travelling in a French car painted in two colours, which seemed to intrigue the Russians as they had not seen many cars like that. “Every time we’d stop somewhere people would mob us and ask us how much the car costs or how many cylinders it had. We were Martians to them and the car was like a space ship that had just landed,” Laiperre recounts.

The 76-year-old has recently granted the film rights of his book Freedom at Midnight to a British production house called Working Title Films that has produced Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth and Pride and Prejudice. “I just got a call from my agent in the US informing me that the book will be made into a 10-part television series for HBO,” said Lapierre. “I’m fine about the book being adapted for the television instead of the big screen since more people watch television and it has greater reach. I’m keen on someone who has feelings for India and understands their sensibilities to direct Freedom at Midnight.”

Now Lapierre is researching and writing his next book about the plight of those living in the Sunderbans and the settlements that are fast disappearing under water. “I’m through with almost one-third of the book. You can call it a sequel to City of Joy. It will be partly fictionalised to make it palatable for the world at large,” he gushes.

Dada-ism

Last week’s Test at Eden Gardens will be remembered as Sourav Ganguly’s comeback on his home turf, what with India’s last ODI outing having been washed away. So all eyes were more glued to the Behala boy than ever. On day one at tea recess, a quintet of former India and Pakistan cricket greats were taken on a tour of the ground in drinks trolleys. As the crowd cheered them, Sourav too was seen clapping from the sidelines. “Dada, tumi emon kichhu kore jao jatey tomakeo emon kore ghorano hoy (Do something here so that you do these rounds too),” an impassioned appeal rang out from the stands. It is not known if Sourav heard that, but he gave his thanks in tonnes (of runs, that is). Then, as the feisty left-hander leapt into the air in celebration of his century, in B block off came a shirt. A Tangra lad had decided to celebrate the feat emulating Dada’s own bare-bodied heroics on the Lord’s balcony. And the next day a poster appeared in D Block with a sketch of a muscle man, carrying the slogan “Dada is back”. The TV camera caught that and flashed it on the giant screen. The next shot was a close-up of the man himself standing at long on and chuckling. The sight, of course, sent Eden Gardens into raptures. All over again.

(Contributed by Mohua Das and Sudeshna Banerjee)