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ANIMAL'S PEOPLE began life in 1996 as a series of sketches for a screenplay which, according to my notes of the time, was to have been called Green Song. The idea of turning these notes into a novel came to me in the summer of 2001, when I was looking for a story to follow The Death of Mr Love (which was published in September 2002 but completed the previous year). At that time there was no Animal, and no Ma Franci. The adaptation did not work – despite trying every trick I knew the matter remained dark and lifeless.

Then came two unrelated events that changed everything. A friend mentioned having met a young man whose twisted spine obliged him to go on all fours. A few days later my daughter Tara told me about an old woman she had met in a nursing home, a Parisienne who had forgotten all speech except her childhood French and thought all other speech was just meaningless gibber. Thus I met Animal and Ma Franci who over the next few years became far more to me than fictional characters, they were my friends, co-conspirators and closest companions.

Animal has never stopped challenging me. His first act was to castigate me for not understanding the people about whose lives I was writing. He threw out my earlier efforts, took over and insisted on narrating the whole thing himself. When I protested at his foul-mouthed style he demanded that not a word of his be changed. It took me a long time to learn to trust Animal, but once I was able to do this the writing became pure pleasure.

Even now that our story is printed and we have had the thrill of seeing the first finished copies, Animal refuses to behave like a character in a novel. He continues to occupy his scorpion-infested corner of my mind, to mock me and laugh at my follies. I have known the wretched boy for five years now and he is as alive to me today as on the day I first met him. I hope you will enjoy his company as much as I have.

 

ANIMAL'S PEOPLE is dedicated to our friend Sunil Kumar, who died in July 2006, aged 34. It had been dedicated to him from the moment I began writing it five years ago. He didn't live to see it published.

Some of the stories Sunil told me about his life found their way into the novel, however the character of Animal is entirely fictional, as are his antics. Following reports in the BBC and elsewhere that the book chronicles Sunil's life, I want to make it clear that it doesn't - although Animal's ability to live on 4 rupees a day (£0.05, €0.07, $0.10) and his sense of humour were certainly inherited from Sunil. Sunil went about the city on foot and once accused me of being "an auto-riding superstar" just as Animal later accuses Elli doctress. He also once ran away to the jungle to live like a wild creature.

That's probably as far as it goes. New York Magazine has called Animal's People "scabrously funny", which delights me, but Sunil's life was anything but.

Sunil's whole life was shaped – and blighted – by what Bhopalis still refer to simply as that night, when poison gas leaked from Union Carbide's factory and killed thousands in the most hideous ways. Sunil lost all but two of his large and loving family. Those two were much younger than Sunil. Aged 12, he became the family breadwinner and right up to his death his first thoughts were always for his sister and brother. He was kind to other children too, helped form an organisation of orphans and threw himself into the survivors' struggle for justice, becoming one of its best-known characters.

His death, in July 2006, and particularly the manner of it, was reported all over the world. This tribute, which I wrote on behalf of all his friends, ran in UK newspapers in September 2006.

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After Sunil died, his friends vowed that never again would anyone suffering from mental problems get as little help as he had. Although there was no budget for it, a psychiatric department was opened at the free Sambhavna Clinic in Bhopal. Sambhavna is funded by the Bhopal Medical Appeal, which provides medical care to victims of the 1984 Union Carbide gas disaster. All consultations, medicines, treatments and therapies are completely free.

Thanks to a deal with Amazon UK, we get 60 pence each time someone orders Animal's People via a link on this website. We pass the money straight to the Bhopal Medical Appeal.

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