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I was finally in Paris, my Mecca, and had endured 40 days of overland travel with no money to get to it. I had a map of Paris in my head, each known name of a street or an arrondisement connected to a famous writer. Whilst my kind host Inderjit was at the Ecole des Beaux Art, I would get up late, help myself to a strictly rationed portion of French baguette, get ready, and then, without the help of a map, wander around these famous streets. That is how I came to walk down the Marais, where Balzac had lived and where his Comedie Humaine series of novels had their genesis. I rediscovered where Maupassant wrote his stories, where Emile Zola conceived his novels of human passion and human crime on such a grand scale. Flaubert, Molière, Gide, Malraux... they had all lived there at some time. I had read all these writers, voraciously in my Indian village home, sleeping on a cotton bedroll on the floor, with an oil lamp for light, deep into the night, unable to put down a book whose pages kept turning, unfolding new raptures.
Galleries Lafayette.It is impossible to describe both the euphoria and the disappointment I felt wandering in Paris. At the back of my mind, I knew that my predicament was very serious since I might have to turn back again when my French Visa ran out, by road once more and this time, all alone. Subhash had left Paris and gone on to London, confident of finding a job as a subeditor in a regional paper. I was deluding myself that things would work out in the end and all would be well.
When my hours and hours of walking around Paris and peering at its shrouded courtyards, often magically illuminated by a shaft of sunlight failed to lift my spirits, I went and sat in a window seat in a Brasserie by the river side and saw the pleasure boats filled with tourists pass almost within arms’ reach . I remember I had Jean Cocteau’s The Testament of Orpheus in my hand but I had no desire to read it. In a state of slow burning depression and anxiety I retreated to Inderjit flat for my re-heated lunch of left over rice and Dhal. I was too depressed to eat alone. Without thinking I flushed the remaining rice on my plate into the sink only to realise a second later that I had done the unthinkable and blocked the narrow gauge drain. A warning not to do so, written in large letters on a yellow plastic board hung by the sink. Inderjit appeared shortly after and was puce with rage. It was hard enough for him hiding my presence from the Concierge, and now I had blocked the drains of the whole of the second floor. Inderjit exploded into a flurry of choice Punjabi swear words. I was no longer welcome to sleep on his floor. I had my marching orders. The only place I could go to for shelter and a bed, I was told, was the Youth Hostel in Pigalle in Montmartre, famous for the Lapin Agile, the night club where Edith Piaf and a multitude of singers sang their famous chansons. Inderjit flung a ten francs bank note at me and a ruck sack to carry some essentials and pushed me out of his apartment. Whilst I hung around hoping he would change his mind, he was still burning with a cold rage and his door remained firmly shut.
I was unused to carrying a clumsily large ruck sack on my back and having to make a dash through the half doors that closed access to the platform as the Metro train arrived. These gates were unique to the Paris metro and prevented a last minute tide of passengers flying into the train as its own doors closed. I was not agile enough and got trapped with one door slamming shut on my sternum and the other pressing on the ruck sack on the back. My fingers were jammed on top of the rucksack in a vain attempt to pull the bag through. Alarmed fellow passengers tried unsuccessfully to free me. The train pulled out of the platform and I was released as the access gates opened again.
This was a discouraging omen. Pigalle Metro station was deserted except for a few Algerian women squatting on the floor busily sorting their wares of beads and bangles. The street outside was deserted too and it was hard to find anyone to ask for directions for the Auberge de jeunesse. French spoken here from the smoky throats of Pigalle habitués was pretty much impenetrable and seemed a world away from the polished elocution of Montparnasse. Finally I managed to piece together what I did not want to hear: the Youth Hostel had been closed for several years.
An hour later I was back sitting forlorn and depressed at an empty aluminium table on the pavement of a cafe drinking plain water being watched over by a surly waiter. This was just a block away from Inderjit’s hotel. I kept my face down, hoping Inderjit would be coming down the street and seeing my predicament forgive me and take me back. A smartly dressed Indian Sindhi gentleman stopped by my table and asked if I was from India. He was a trader, he told me, who had been living in Paris for a year and did not enjoy his experience. He had a gold watch with small diamonds set in the gold strap designed to look like a bracelet. I noticed he wore a shiny expensive looking suit and his shoes were polished and gleaming. His cheeks were pink and he smelt of fresh eau de cologne. He casually picked up the book I had on the table, a Cocteau perhaps or a Anouilh play. There was a chasm that separated us that no bridge could conceivably span. I dozed with open eyes when another pair of shoes stopped by my table. I shielded my eyes from the evening sun and looked up. It was Inderjit. “What on earth are you still doing here, hanging around ?” he said in an irritated voice. I explained that I had indeed made the journey and found the Youth Hostel to be closed. Inderjit noticed that fingers of hands were covered in dried blood which I had not noticed myself.
He presently sat down saying: “Oh Kini, oh Kini, you bastard” and ordered two beers. “I cannot take you back, at least not for tonight” he said and paused. “My girl friend is staying overnight”. He picked up my ruck sack and indicated that I follow him. It was getting dark and the streets were full of revellers. We passed the Café de Paris, a nightclub that gaudily displayed mammoth posters of scantily clad women kicking their legs up in unison. We pushed our way though a sea of bodies and turned off into a narrow cobbled street. Inderjit indicated again that I follow him. We stepped into a derelict looking building tall and narrow, blocking all light. There was a reception desk and a black receptionist with bulging eyes, dressed in jeans and a tea shirt with a logo of a winged leopard. He spoke in guttural French which made it sound like German. This was indeed an unrated doss house, a hotel pompously called Hôtel du Rivoli, where down and outs could find a room for just a few francs. Inderjit checked me in, paid for the night. “ I will see you tomorrow,” he said in a soft voice and patted me on my back. “You better have a good exit plan by then”, he said. He stopped and turned round as he was stepping on to the street... “ you might as well come for breakfast and meet my girl friend”, he said. “ Have a good night’s sleep”.
I climbed the six flights of stairs as there was no lift, to an attic room no bigger than a single bed and a skylight above it. I stood on the bed and peered out expecting to see a sea of zinc roof tops gleaming like frozen waves in the dark. I had a wonderful surprise in store. I was staring at the famous roof of the of Notre Dame, it seemed just a couple of feet away. If only I could open the skylight, I felt I could reach out and touch the legendary cathedral. I felt redeemed and in a state of exaltation just standing on the bed feeling this primeval architectural force. Even Alexander Dumas could not have conceived of this looming view from the skylight. One had to be destitute and living in this divine little space to see this miraculous sight.
I had my exit plan in place by the time I turned up for breakfast at Inderjit’s. It was eleven in the morning and his girlfriend was still in bed wrapped up in blankets pretending to be asleep. The room smelt of sleep, intimacy and coffee. Awkwardly I sat on the corner of a chair and helped myself to a coffee and flaky croissants lush with butter. Inderjit was pottering around the little floor space in his bare feet. He sounded magnanimous as a king about to grant large favours. I explained my simple plan: Inderjit would go to his art school then on to the Sorbonne which had some thousand students and stop any and every student who crossed his path and show them a leaflet explaining my brave journey to Paris by road and asking for financial help to get me off on the last leg of my journey to London. “This won’t work. I can tell you that for nothing”, he raised his voice scornfully. “Students are poor and cannot spare a sou (penny) in mid term. Besides when they hear the whole story, they would all ask why your uncle is not helping you”.
Reluctantly Inderjit decided to give my plan a try. I expected him back late afternoon. “No way would this scatterbrain plan would work. This is like begging and I am embarrassed even to ask”, he had said in parting. Instead of waiting in the flat I decided to pay uncle M a visit in his office.
An unexpected host appeared in the form of Basrur who was the director of the Indian Tourist office in Paris and who happened to be a friend of uncle M . I was sitting as usual in the armless chair in the lobby, at a distance from uncle M’s large desk and two phones. It appeared as if something had been worked out between uncle M and Basrur. Uncle M whilst continuing to appear disapproving and unhelpful had in fact reached out to me through his friend. I was to stay with Basrur in a quaint but spacious flat above the Indian Tourist office for a few days whilst he arranged for a return train ticket for me to London. If I managed to settle in London, I would return the unused portion of the ticket for a refund and in any event refund Basrur the cost of the ticket.
I rushed back to Inderjit to tell him the good news. Inderjit was back already. He had a big surprise for me. He had gone to the Ecole des Beaux-Art most reluctantly to make a collection from fellow students, certain in his mind that this would fail. Instead virtually every student he had encountered had been moved by my story and had donated generously. There were several hundred francs in his little bag to give me. Inderjit handed the bag over for me to touch and handle the franc notes. We headed for the bar to celebrate.
“You won’t believe it”, he said, still playing with the franc notes. “I had to stop asking, because I could have collected twice as much. Everyone I spoke to was moved by your story and opened their wallets”. “You lucky bastard, Kini”, he kept swearing.
I had a surprise phone call from Eli, uncle M’s wife, who had an aura of kindness about her. She asked me to meet her at uncle M’s office in the morning. I turned up in his office one morning and sat meekly with my hands folded between my knees on an armless chair. Uncle M was busy on the phone. From time to time his large doleful pensive eyes would focus on me as if he was formulating comforting words but unable to speak them. Presently Eli, his wife appeared in the door way, dressed in a green top and slacks, friendly and seemingly restrained from speaking as she felt. She reached out to shake hands with me, but realising I had awkwardly hidden my hands between my knees, she touched both my shoulders in greeting. I half stood up and folded my hands in a Namaste. M was still on the phone talking economic numbers of GATT trade talks of what was to become the European Union, scribbling notes as he spoke. I realised he was interviewing on the phone some luminary of the GATT treaty. M’s wife got presently restless and broke into M’s telephone marathon. She addressed him by his first name; “I am taking Kini for a coffee to the bar round the corner. We will be back soon.” Uncle M got up, his phone still glued to his ear. He walked round his desk, towards the ornate coat stand and took out his sumptuous hay coloured gabardine trench coat and swung it off its hook and handed it to me. “I am told it is cold in London. You will need this. Keep it”, he said, still holding the phone to his ear. “You are generous”, said his wife without sarcasm, but in a sharp voice.
Eli and I sat in a window seat of the Brasserrie for a long time talking about museums and art galleries in London where admission, unlike in Paris, was free.. Elinor insisted I should make the most of this and of the British Library as these were the ultimate anchors of culture. It seemed to me that Eli was trying to do or say something. Finally she seemed to make up her mind. Casually, she opened her purse and handed me several dollar bills. “That should tidy you over in England for a while”. I protested in sheer amazement at the size of this generosity and tried hard to refuse it. “Consider it a loan until you are able to earn and return it” she said and patted my hand as my fingers curled round the greenbacks.
Suddenly I was unbelievably rich, or that is how it felt. I had a return rail ticket to London from Basrur, the Indian tourist office chief. I had a pile of dollar bills in my top pocket from Eli. I had several hundred francs that Inderjit had boldly collected from his fellow students who had generously opened their wallets. My idea that no one would miss a few francs but that, taken together, it would amount to a significant sum had worked. I left the cafe with Eli and on an impulse kissed her on the cheek like I had seen the French greet each other. I walked down Boulevard St Germain wearing uncle M’s shiny soft gabardine trench coat with its dandy epaulettes, and the elaborate James Cagney waistband knot which secured its vastness around my 8 stone waif thin frame. My shoes were splitting on the side, heck, I was on top of the world.
Inderjit was waiting for me with a fresh batch of rice and dahl and he had even gone to the trouble of making a cucumber raitha and dug up from some corner of his cupboard a savoury mango pickle. There was half a bottle of red wine left over from his dinner the previous night with his girl friend. We ate and ate and smiled at each other in triumph. Guiltily I hid the fact that Eli had given me a small fortune in dollars which was burning a hole in my top pocket. I had a return train ticket to London which I did not tell him about either. I had casually laid my new gabardine raincoat across Inderjit’s bed as a flag declaring my new found affluence and independence.
A few days with Basrur were pleasant as we discoursed on literary and cultural and socio-political subjects. I paid a final visit to uncle M who seemed bemused by my change of behaviour, less respectful and more bold, as I sat in front of his desk instead of cowering in a corner with my hands between my knees.
My long journey was finally coming to an end. I was leaving Paris and the grand Haussmann architecture of Rue de Rivoli and the Champs Elysées, the wide boulevards of St. Germain. My mind was once again concatenating long Proustian sentences, a word game I played with myself, which I believed kept my creative mind alive. One afternoon I clambered aboard a long shiny black train at the Gare du Nord, bound for London with my large battered cardboard suitcase full of books, my writing and my dreams . This suitcase had a life of its own and survived in the gloom of a London attic for a further 30 years. My carriage was already full of a school group of Scottish girls in tartan skirts and blazing white shirts with an emblem of an egret stitched on it. They stood by the door singing Auld Lang Syne in a shrill voice waving little paper flags as the train pulled out and plunged through the Parisian suburbs towards England.
When my hours and hours of walking around Paris and peering at its shrouded courtyards, often magically illuminated by a shaft of sunlight failed to lift my spirits, I went and sat in a window seat in a Brasserie by the river side and saw the pleasure boats filled with tourists pass almost within arms’ reach . I remember I had Jean Cocteau’s The Testament of Orpheus in my hand but I had no desire to read it. In a state of slow burning depression and anxiety I retreated to Inderjit flat for my re-heated lunch of left over rice and Dhal. I was too depressed to eat alone. Without thinking I flushed the remaining rice on my plate into the sink only to realise a second later that I had done the unthinkable and blocked the narrow gauge drain. A warning not to do so, written in large letters on a yellow plastic board hung by the sink. Inderjit appeared shortly after and was puce with rage. It was hard enough for him hiding my presence from the Concierge, and now I had blocked the drains of the whole of the second floor. Inderjit exploded into a flurry of choice Punjabi swear words. I was no longer welcome to sleep on his floor. I had my marching orders. The only place I could go to for shelter and a bed, I was told, was the Youth Hostel in Pigalle in Montmartre, famous for the Lapin Agile, the night club where Edith Piaf and a multitude of singers sang their famous chansons. Inderjit flung a ten francs bank note at me and a ruck sack to carry some essentials and pushed me out of his apartment. Whilst I hung around hoping he would change his mind, he was still burning with a cold rage and his door remained firmly shut.
I was unused to carrying a clumsily large ruck sack on my back and having to make a dash through the half doors that closed access to the platform as the Metro train arrived. These gates were unique to the Paris metro and prevented a last minute tide of passengers flying into the train as its own doors closed. I was not agile enough and got trapped with one door slamming shut on my sternum and the other pressing on the ruck sack on the back. My fingers were jammed on top of the rucksack in a vain attempt to pull the bag through. Alarmed fellow passengers tried unsuccessfully to free me. The train pulled out of the platform and I was released as the access gates opened again.
This was a discouraging omen. Pigalle Metro station was deserted except for a few Algerian women squatting on the floor busily sorting their wares of beads and bangles. The street outside was deserted too and it was hard to find anyone to ask for directions for the Auberge de jeunesse. French spoken here from the smoky throats of Pigalle habitués was pretty much impenetrable and seemed a world away from the polished elocution of Montparnasse. Finally I managed to piece together what I did not want to hear: the Youth Hostel had been closed for several years.
An hour later I was back sitting forlorn and depressed at an empty aluminium table on the pavement of a cafe drinking plain water being watched over by a surly waiter. This was just a block away from Inderjit’s hotel. I kept my face down, hoping Inderjit would be coming down the street and seeing my predicament forgive me and take me back. A smartly dressed Indian Sindhi gentleman stopped by my table and asked if I was from India. He was a trader, he told me, who had been living in Paris for a year and did not enjoy his experience. He had a gold watch with small diamonds set in the gold strap designed to look like a bracelet. I noticed he wore a shiny expensive looking suit and his shoes were polished and gleaming. His cheeks were pink and he smelt of fresh eau de cologne. He casually picked up the book I had on the table, a Cocteau perhaps or a Anouilh play. There was a chasm that separated us that no bridge could conceivably span. I dozed with open eyes when another pair of shoes stopped by my table. I shielded my eyes from the evening sun and looked up. It was Inderjit. “What on earth are you still doing here, hanging around ?” he said in an irritated voice. I explained that I had indeed made the journey and found the Youth Hostel to be closed. Inderjit noticed that fingers of hands were covered in dried blood which I had not noticed myself.
He presently sat down saying: “Oh Kini, oh Kini, you bastard” and ordered two beers. “I cannot take you back, at least not for tonight” he said and paused. “My girl friend is staying overnight”. He picked up my ruck sack and indicated that I follow him. It was getting dark and the streets were full of revellers. We passed the Café de Paris, a nightclub that gaudily displayed mammoth posters of scantily clad women kicking their legs up in unison. We pushed our way though a sea of bodies and turned off into a narrow cobbled street. Inderjit indicated again that I follow him. We stepped into a derelict looking building tall and narrow, blocking all light. There was a reception desk and a black receptionist with bulging eyes, dressed in jeans and a tea shirt with a logo of a winged leopard. He spoke in guttural French which made it sound like German. This was indeed an unrated doss house, a hotel pompously called Hôtel du Rivoli, where down and outs could find a room for just a few francs. Inderjit checked me in, paid for the night. “ I will see you tomorrow,” he said in a soft voice and patted me on my back. “You better have a good exit plan by then”, he said. He stopped and turned round as he was stepping on to the street... “ you might as well come for breakfast and meet my girl friend”, he said. “ Have a good night’s sleep”.
I climbed the six flights of stairs as there was no lift, to an attic room no bigger than a single bed and a skylight above it. I stood on the bed and peered out expecting to see a sea of zinc roof tops gleaming like frozen waves in the dark. I had a wonderful surprise in store. I was staring at the famous roof of the of Notre Dame, it seemed just a couple of feet away. If only I could open the skylight, I felt I could reach out and touch the legendary cathedral. I felt redeemed and in a state of exaltation just standing on the bed feeling this primeval architectural force. Even Alexander Dumas could not have conceived of this looming view from the skylight. One had to be destitute and living in this divine little space to see this miraculous sight.
I had my exit plan in place by the time I turned up for breakfast at Inderjit’s. It was eleven in the morning and his girlfriend was still in bed wrapped up in blankets pretending to be asleep. The room smelt of sleep, intimacy and coffee. Awkwardly I sat on the corner of a chair and helped myself to a coffee and flaky croissants lush with butter. Inderjit was pottering around the little floor space in his bare feet. He sounded magnanimous as a king about to grant large favours. I explained my simple plan: Inderjit would go to his art school then on to the Sorbonne which had some thousand students and stop any and every student who crossed his path and show them a leaflet explaining my brave journey to Paris by road and asking for financial help to get me off on the last leg of my journey to London. “This won’t work. I can tell you that for nothing”, he raised his voice scornfully. “Students are poor and cannot spare a sou (penny) in mid term. Besides when they hear the whole story, they would all ask why your uncle is not helping you”.
Reluctantly Inderjit decided to give my plan a try. I expected him back late afternoon. “No way would this scatterbrain plan would work. This is like begging and I am embarrassed even to ask”, he had said in parting. Instead of waiting in the flat I decided to pay uncle M a visit in his office.
An unexpected host appeared in the form of Basrur who was the director of the Indian Tourist office in Paris and who happened to be a friend of uncle M . I was sitting as usual in the armless chair in the lobby, at a distance from uncle M’s large desk and two phones. It appeared as if something had been worked out between uncle M and Basrur. Uncle M whilst continuing to appear disapproving and unhelpful had in fact reached out to me through his friend. I was to stay with Basrur in a quaint but spacious flat above the Indian Tourist office for a few days whilst he arranged for a return train ticket for me to London. If I managed to settle in London, I would return the unused portion of the ticket for a refund and in any event refund Basrur the cost of the ticket.
I rushed back to Inderjit to tell him the good news. Inderjit was back already. He had a big surprise for me. He had gone to the Ecole des Beaux-Art most reluctantly to make a collection from fellow students, certain in his mind that this would fail. Instead virtually every student he had encountered had been moved by my story and had donated generously. There were several hundred francs in his little bag to give me. Inderjit handed the bag over for me to touch and handle the franc notes. We headed for the bar to celebrate.
“You won’t believe it”, he said, still playing with the franc notes. “I had to stop asking, because I could have collected twice as much. Everyone I spoke to was moved by your story and opened their wallets”. “You lucky bastard, Kini”, he kept swearing.
I had a surprise phone call from Eli, uncle M’s wife, who had an aura of kindness about her. She asked me to meet her at uncle M’s office in the morning. I turned up in his office one morning and sat meekly with my hands folded between my knees on an armless chair. Uncle M was busy on the phone. From time to time his large doleful pensive eyes would focus on me as if he was formulating comforting words but unable to speak them. Presently Eli, his wife appeared in the door way, dressed in a green top and slacks, friendly and seemingly restrained from speaking as she felt. She reached out to shake hands with me, but realising I had awkwardly hidden my hands between my knees, she touched both my shoulders in greeting. I half stood up and folded my hands in a Namaste. M was still on the phone talking economic numbers of GATT trade talks of what was to become the European Union, scribbling notes as he spoke. I realised he was interviewing on the phone some luminary of the GATT treaty. M’s wife got presently restless and broke into M’s telephone marathon. She addressed him by his first name; “I am taking Kini for a coffee to the bar round the corner. We will be back soon.” Uncle M got up, his phone still glued to his ear. He walked round his desk, towards the ornate coat stand and took out his sumptuous hay coloured gabardine trench coat and swung it off its hook and handed it to me. “I am told it is cold in London. You will need this. Keep it”, he said, still holding the phone to his ear. “You are generous”, said his wife without sarcasm, but in a sharp voice.
Eli and I sat in a window seat of the Brasserrie for a long time talking about museums and art galleries in London where admission, unlike in Paris, was free.. Elinor insisted I should make the most of this and of the British Library as these were the ultimate anchors of culture. It seemed to me that Eli was trying to do or say something. Finally she seemed to make up her mind. Casually, she opened her purse and handed me several dollar bills. “That should tidy you over in England for a while”. I protested in sheer amazement at the size of this generosity and tried hard to refuse it. “Consider it a loan until you are able to earn and return it” she said and patted my hand as my fingers curled round the greenbacks.
Suddenly I was unbelievably rich, or that is how it felt. I had a return rail ticket to London from Basrur, the Indian tourist office chief. I had a pile of dollar bills in my top pocket from Eli. I had several hundred francs that Inderjit had boldly collected from his fellow students who had generously opened their wallets. My idea that no one would miss a few francs but that, taken together, it would amount to a significant sum had worked. I left the cafe with Eli and on an impulse kissed her on the cheek like I had seen the French greet each other. I walked down Boulevard St Germain wearing uncle M’s shiny soft gabardine trench coat with its dandy epaulettes, and the elaborate James Cagney waistband knot which secured its vastness around my 8 stone waif thin frame. My shoes were splitting on the side, heck, I was on top of the world.
Inderjit was waiting for me with a fresh batch of rice and dahl and he had even gone to the trouble of making a cucumber raitha and dug up from some corner of his cupboard a savoury mango pickle. There was half a bottle of red wine left over from his dinner the previous night with his girl friend. We ate and ate and smiled at each other in triumph. Guiltily I hid the fact that Eli had given me a small fortune in dollars which was burning a hole in my top pocket. I had a return train ticket to London which I did not tell him about either. I had casually laid my new gabardine raincoat across Inderjit’s bed as a flag declaring my new found affluence and independence.
A few days with Basrur were pleasant as we discoursed on literary and cultural and socio-political subjects. I paid a final visit to uncle M who seemed bemused by my change of behaviour, less respectful and more bold, as I sat in front of his desk instead of cowering in a corner with my hands between my knees.
My long journey was finally coming to an end. I was leaving Paris and the grand Haussmann architecture of Rue de Rivoli and the Champs Elysées, the wide boulevards of St. Germain. My mind was once again concatenating long Proustian sentences, a word game I played with myself, which I believed kept my creative mind alive. One afternoon I clambered aboard a long shiny black train at the Gare du Nord, bound for London with my large battered cardboard suitcase full of books, my writing and my dreams . This suitcase had a life of its own and survived in the gloom of a London attic for a further 30 years. My carriage was already full of a school group of Scottish girls in tartan skirts and blazing white shirts with an emblem of an egret stitched on it. They stood by the door singing Auld Lang Syne in a shrill voice waving little paper flags as the train pulled out and plunged through the Parisian suburbs towards England.
