Gaston Dayanand - 35 years with the deprived in Bengal

From wherever you came, from wherever we arrived, the meeting place was always the 'paradise chalet', hidden in

the pines, at 875 m altitude, above a village in the Swiss part of the Jura, where our parents lived happily.

Without any doubts, through this evocation, connected with the four seasons, many a souvenir will come round in your memory leaving a nostalgic feeling.

For instance, when at daybreak, returning from observing the Capercaillie we went through pastureland, softly treading these carpets of crocus covered with frost.

In such moments you probably forgot the 'inferno' such as the mines of Pas-de-Calais where you had been working, or the extreme poverty you lived through in so many towns north und south of Europe.

Later on, still enthusiastic, you nevertheless found some time to travel with us discovering Europe and some other countries.

You share our passion for certain remote parts of Nature, which were practically intact.

or our searches in certain marshlands, whilst ducks and waders flew over our heads or of this

During our campfires – unforgettable evenings, how many times have you talked about your aim – bringing assistance to the most poverty-stricken persons of the planet. You thought of the territory called the Big Lakes in Africa, or certain countries of South America.

And finally you have decided some years later to head for India, this beautiful, feverish Land of the legendary Bengal.

During an expedition in the Ganges Delta in 1968/69, our brother Albert and I myself were far from thinking that three years later these fascinating but dangerous regions would become part of your life.

In 1975 in the Sundarbans, when, for the last time you joined us travelling in a typical Bengali fisher boat, we tried to observe in one of the islands the splendid but dangerous tiger of the Delta.

For myself there is no doubt that in part thanks to Nature – this constant source of amazement and your firm will to preserve it, supported and encouraged by our parents, that has inspired you to create ICOD on a fallow land.

This fallow land which has over the months become an oasis thanks to the cooperation of all the friends who are around you, so that finally all can live and communicate together – humans, flowers, trees and animals, Indians and foreigners.

The Bengali Chronicles, which are on Internet now, restore the hard daily reality of your Charitable Institution.

As you have expressed it in your books, hope my perhaps be found better than anywhere else in 'Les Racines des Palétuviers' (The roots of the Mangroves).

Do you remember Gaston?