Dayal kaur khalsa biography of michael lewis

Dayal Kaur Khalsa. But the death of Dayal Kaur Khalsa last July has changed my mind. Suffering and awareness of the impending end can have positive values, if one can use them as Dayal did. They can concentrate energy, release extraordinary creativity and, most surprising of all, bring more pleasure than all the preceding years of careless living.

Dayal--during the last four years of her life while she underwent operations, treatments and recurrent pain, battered by the alternate hope and despair that cancer inflicts -- managed to write and illustrate seven books and write an eighth. They shine with joy, humour, and the fun of life. The five published before she died moved her to the ranks of those rare and precious creators of children's books who can both tell a good story and illustrate it spectacularly.

You can count on two hands their number throughout the world. But it was not the success of her books that was so important to Dayal, although of course the accolades pleased. It was the actual work of making them; she admitted to laughing frequently as she put in the mischievous detail. I don't think she'd have traded any of it for a quick and easy death.

Best illustrated children's books of all time

Her life had much loss and many disappointments. The first occurred when she was five. She records it in Tales of Gambling Grandma: the death of the Jewish grandmother who gave her love and imaginative stories uninhibited by fact. She grew up in Queens, New York, attended City College and then, in the way of so much youth in the sixties, wandered the United States and Mexico, living off little more than youth itself.

She accompanied a lover to Canada in , and stayed on after the relationship ended, supporting herself in desultory work that included cleaning other people's houses.