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Episode details

World Service,04 Apr 2016,49 mins

Grieving Mother Directs Delhi Traffic

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Available for over a year

Almost every day, Dorris Francis stands at a road junction in Ghaziabad, a suburb of Delhi, and directs the traffic. She is not a policewoman, but over the years drivers who use that route have come to know her story and accept her being there. Dorris lost her daughter on this road and has devoted herself to stopping any further accidents there. Four years ago when she was in her early thirties, Lotje Sodderland suffered a massive stroke - she lost the ability to speak, to read, write, even to think coherently. From her hospital bed Lotje began to film herself on her mobile phone, capturing the detail of her painful attempts to regain her former brain functions and her sense of self - now her footage is being released as a documentary. The novelist Dimitri Verhulst grew up in a poor area of Belgium - his childhood living with his alcoholic father inspired his work. American conservationist Jon Slaght spends months at a time in the forests of eastern Russia following the world's largest owl - the elusive Blakiston's Fish Owl. Image credit: BBC

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