The City of Smiles

Stories of Survival in Bombay

Martí Gironell

This book offers a set of sensations and stories that are full of dignity and hope as the fruit of two trips to Bombay. Martí Gironell portrays, in a straightforward style, a city that is full of contrasts through the eyes of a western aid worker. In this account of his experiences, the reader learns of the struggle of workers in an NGO as they try to offer a brighter future to two highly vulnerable groups that are once the pillars of any society, including India: women and children. He describes the efforts these women and children have to make in order to deal with a present that might guarantee their future. Through the power of these stories of real-life individuals, most of them burdened with disease and serious problems, Gironell takes the reader to the threshold of hell so that he or she can share the yearnings, frustrations, desires, anxieties, emotions, happiness and misfortune of a number of people who never lose their smile or their personal dignity in their struggle to overcome illness and poverty. The setting is the city of Bombay, the economic capital of India, where life and death walk hand in hand.

Martí Gironell

Martí Gironell (Besalú, 1971) has a degree in journalism from the Pompeu Fabra University and another in English Philology from the University of Barcelona. He embarked on career as a journalist at the age of fourteen with Besalú Radio, after which he went on to Olot Radio, RAC 105 and Catalonia Radio. He was also simultaneously writing for Diari de Girona and producing reports for El Periódico de Catalunya and Marie Claire, while working as the presenter of the television programme “En Directe” and in news programmes with Channel 3/24. He is presently working in the news programmes of Televisió de Catalunya as head of the Weekend News programme. La ciutat de somriures is his first book.