This page is an excerpt from Chapter 15 of A Thousand Suns. Half of the royalties of this book go directly to the children of Calcutta.

« Laxman Singh was eight years old, lived alone, and fed off the refuse on the garbage dumps. It took the James Stevens weeks to get to know his story and win over the little wildcat. He had been four or five when his parents took him and his brothers and sisters to the festival of the goddess Durga, the Hindu patroness of Calcutta. In the throng he had become separated from his family. He would never see them again.

Spotting the lost child, a passer-by had taken him home and turned him into a servant, forcing him to do all the most arduous chores about the house. In the end Laxman had run away. He had survived by petty theft and small jobs in the eating places and tea stalls of the huge city. When James picked him up, he had a patch of leprosy on his left cheek. Swollen with worms, his stomach looked like a balloon. He was also suffering from ulceration of the cornea. Could he be cured?

	Read more about James Stevens: • Udayan Resurrection Home • A Former Businessman Saves Thousands of Children from Leprosy • Curing and Educating Budi Ram