By MARGIE THOMSON
In 1984, Wellington writer Jean Watson fell in love with the south Indian town of Kanyakumari, met a man who was collecting for an orphanage, and slowly developed her relationship with both place and people to the point where she sold her Wellington house to raise money for another orphanage there. That orphanage has transformed the lives of many children, providing educational opportunities and giving them a chance to succeed in the world, as many of them since have.
In this new edition of her 1992 book Watson updates the story and includes several pages of colour photographs.
Her writing is extraordinarily evocative of the world she still visits for several months of each year, and very moving: it's not often we get to see how an individual, through fate and empathy, can make a real difference to so many lives.
Three Sea Stories is a trilogy of short stories, set in the same beautifully realised south Indian landscape where the Bay of Bengal, Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea converge.
It's a fictional version of Watson's own story, but the fictional form allows a deeper, more spiritual and emotional rendering than the more straightforward, frank recounting within Karunai Illam.
The Story of an Orphanage in India
Karunai Illam Trust
$24.95
Three Sea Stories
Daphne Brasell Associates
$17.95
(Both books distributed by Greene Phoenix Marketing, 11 Oxford St, Palmerston North)
<i>Jean Watson:</i> The Story of an Orphanage in India; Three Sea Stories
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