Remembering a Butterfly...................

“Man can be destroyed, but never defeated”
Ernest Hemingway

Jean Dominique Baubay continues to soak my eyes .It is the Tenth Year of publication of his remarkable autobiography-“The diving bells and Butterfly”. What makes it so special, enduring and unforgettable? Just because it is an heroic endeavor by a common man almost going to be deleted from the pages of life.

Brought down by a rare kind of stroke to the brain stem (the link between the brain and the spinal cord), Jean Dominique Baubay (43) , the editor in chief of the acclaimed French magazine Elle . He decides to write an autobiography after 20 days of coma, with a paralyzed body expect his left eye. It blinked as sign of unimpaired mind. He feels like a body prisoned in an invisible diving bell, or in other words jailed inside once own body. “………at times like crab dug into his rock”.

Blinking to selected letters one by one, he eyed this remarkable autobiography. As the result of a Herculean task, he brings to through this book us the whole spectrum of human sentiments – bliss, deep dejection, annoyance, etc .Though his body is pinned down by fate, mind shatters these fetters and travels far and wide. The memoir starts with a Prologue, moving on to its first section entitled ‘The Wheelchair’ ending the text with an optimistic chapter ‘Seasons of Renewal’. His deep attachment to his family is clearly brought out through two incidents –seeing his children Theophil and Celeste and hearing his aged father’s voice on the phone. It also sketches the Hi-Fi life of French fashion world and cosmopolitan Paris.

This heart breaking memoir is as Elie Wiesl says”…..about transforming pain into creativity, human despair into literary miracle” . One fully agree with Cynthia Ozick when she says “….most remarkable memoir of our time – perhaps of any time” .

Jean Dominique Baubay died two days after the French publication of this book .