Down and Out in Paris (and London)

with apologies to George Orwell


We were finally in France on the home run to Paris. We discovered why not a single French driver would stop for us and give us a lift. The French car insurance prohibited the driver of a French car from giving strangers a lift and in the event of a claim for injury, would refuse to pay. No driver was prepared to take that risk. A Scotsman gave us our next lift out of Grenoble to the edge of a small town north of Lyon. We were warned not to find ourselves outdoors without shelter during the night as it was not unusual for dogs to run loose in the town and villages, and they would tear apart any person foolish enough to be wandering around. All we could find in this little town, was an unattended rail station and vast farms with stone outbuildings with windowless walls and the smell of slurry and hay.

It was getting to be dusk and we were anxious to be indoors. But there were no farmers to be found. All was eerie silence with the occasional sound of a dog barking. We remembered Sherlock Holmes’ The Hound of Baskerville and felt even more anxious. Finally we spotted a stocky, and surly farmer who was about to shut the main gates. Using my school French, I made my case for shelter in his barn and some food for the two of us. The farmer agreed reluctantly, provided us with a blanket each and a loaf of bread and some water. He said he wanted us gone by the morning. We fell asleep on top of a stack of hay covered in blankets reeking of diesel. Early in the morning, we tiptoed out of the farm and discovered we were in fact on the edge of a larger town, a much scaled down version of Grenoble. We could see old ladies peering at us through the blue slats of their shutters. People on the street with bread baskets covered in check gingham tea cloths stopped and stared at us and whispered sideways even if they were alone. This sort of bush telegraph seemed to have its inevitable conclusion. A policeman on a motorbike pulled up and asked us to accompany him to the constabulary. This was a rerun of our experience with the Greek immigration services: incomprehension at our status as Indian Journalists found wandering with two suitcases in the middle of France with no money. We felt like aliens from a different planet.

Hours of fruitless interrogation later, we were dropped off on the Lyon to Paris highway by a police car. We were in luck. An Italian driver who lived in Paris gave us a lift with the good news that he was driving the 460 km all the way to Paris. We were welcome to share his car. This indeed was the home run we had been praying for.

The Italian driver dropped us off in Quartier des Italiens in Paris close to the entrance to the metro. Using an underground transport system for the first time is both intimidating and exciting. We staggered on to a moving escalator with our suitcases threatening to escape our grip. It must have been 7 in the evening. People in a hurry pushed past us casting unfriendly glances and often swearing “merde” (“damn” is a polite translation of the word) as they negotiated the narrow space past us. Once in the hallway we were faced with a bewildering array of tunnels and a few maps on the wall. I had boasted to Subhash that I knew the lay out of the Paris metro and could direct us to my “uncle” M’s apartment in the Cinquième arrondissement without problems. The tunnels were dimly lit as if in some science fiction nether world; as they moved, men and women looked as if made of smoke and could move through each other like transparent holograms. “Parlez-vous Anglais” produced a loud dismissive NON....We were headed for St. Germain des Prés – up market Left Bank in Paris, and I felt I knew its streets and its brasseries with their famous clientele like one knows the contours of the face of a lover. It was a surprise to see so many Africans on the metro and in the streets. It was France’s colonial inheritance from North and West Africa. It added a touch of intimidation and glamour in my mind.

We were at our destination and above ground finally, walking the famous boulevard St. Germain, passing la Coupole, the legendary café where the same window table was always occupied by Jean Paul Sartre, Simone De Beauvoir and their friends like Albert Camus, sipping a consommation. I was disappointed not to have caught sight of any literary celebrities. Window display of Seafood platters, the size of a king’s crown glistened their moist enticement to passers by. There were American voices on the street in search of a restaurant they had read about in their Baedeker guides or the Paris Review for an evening of conviviality. Would I catch sight of James Baldwin, the celebrated black American novelist whose book Fire Next Time I had carried all the way in my suitcase? What about Hemingway, Lillian Hellman, Gertrude Stein and a young Normal Mailer and the ghost of Scott Fitzgerald? And Picasso and Matisse and Dali? I could only walk this street with reverence in my heart, the literary golden mile in anyone’s book.

After a few more enquiries from friendlier faces and we were standing in front of the building where uncle M had his apartment in Rue Pierre Nicole. This would be my dream come true. To live in Paris and rub shoulders with celebrity writers, both French and English and American. To live in a garret with a skylight for a window and to write that definitive novel like The Great Gatsby. M would shelter and feed us – so we hoped, lend us clothes and money, introduce me to his literary friends. I would chat with his American writer wife over a drink in La Coupole. We were up the stairs with our suitcases flying ahead of us like in a fairy tale, light as feathers, bounding two steps at a time. I checked and re-checked my little address book to ensure we had the right street and apartment number. The corridor outside the door of the apartment was dimly lit. You could hear a hubbub of voices coming from inside. With trepidation, with my heart pounding I pressed the door bell.

Voices from inside the apartment seemed to stop in unison, suddenly. Minutes seemed to passed, although it might have been mere seconds. The door was then opened and M stood there, his face in shadow, evidently unable to recognise me. I spoke my name in a trembling voice and tried to explain why we had not warned him of our arrival. There was a long silence. “HOW dare you” said M in sudden controlled rage. “How dare you leave India so irresponsibly without telling your parents! They are now blaming me for this. How dare you expect me to provide hospitality! How dare you even come up these stairs and interrupt a cocktail party I am giving for a few close friends to night!” He paused and ruminated. “Go away and sort yourselves out.” I tried in a feeble voice to explain that we were penniless and had not really eaten for a while. Could he not provide us shelter until we sorted ourselves? “Sorry I cannot be responsible if you engage in irresponsible acts and expect someone else to pick up the pieces.” “ Sorry Uncle M” I stuttered. “I am sorry too, but I have to get back to my guests.” said M and slammed the door shut. Thirty seconds passed and I burst out in tears.

This is the right part of my story when I need to explain why in retrospect I realise that MVK owed me no obligation of kindness or hospitality. M, contrary to the general impression I created was no blood relative, although through tenuous reconstruction of various family trees and through a marriage of my elder brother I could perhaps lay claim to my right to call M an uncle. M accepted my using the honorific “Mam” (uncle) placed reverentially if somewhat intimately before his first name. I was a university student when I first got in touch with M who was then a correspondent for a major Indian English language daily in Bonn. I had sent him a shamelessly pleading letter enclosing a 100 page novella I had been working on, asking for his critical advice and his help in finding the first rung of a career ladder as a novelist. M must have been touched by this unsolicited cry for help. His American wife, a literary critic was agreeably impressed by my work. It was meretricious like spun sugar, derivative pastiche that borrowed stylistically from Faulkner, Saul Bellow, William Styron (my favourite book then was his Lie Down in Darkness), Nabokov and our own Raja Rao - the narrator of whose Serpent and The Rope was my alter ego: living in France with a French wife, and talking endlessly in dialectical riddles.

M replied to me with kind words, saying he trusted his wife’s evaluation of my writing, He was going to speak to a influential friend of his who was the patron founder of a new English language daily in New Delhi and I might be offered a job as a staff reporter. M made this miracle happen and completely changed the course of my life. Touchingly he bundled and sent me some 50 magazines, all the way by airmail from Bonn: mostly past editions of the New Statesman from London with its distinguished panel of writers like Karl Miller, Stephen Spender, V.S.Pritchet and our own Victor Anant. On a visit to India, M and his wife made the effort of seeing me, speaking encouragingly, renewing his promise to recommend me for that job a thousand miles away from my South Indian fastness to the glittering metropolis of New Delhi. Soon after I had a letter from his famous friend offering me that job. Beyond this great act of generosity, M owed me nothing and looking back he is blameless in his shutting the door on me.

I now reflect on my own duplicity in committing a similar act. Years later when a few strangers claiming to be friends of my Indian family turned up at my London home, I turned them away with mock indignation, and harsh words - unconcerned that they were without much money and had a poor grasp of English. They were confused, in dire straits and in need of help.

M had his own values and principles about personal responsibilities and acted accordingly. It was a much needed wake-up call.

Subhash was once again stolidly comforting. Through my veil of tears street lights in St. Germain des Près looked like fair ground illuminations of coloured glass bulbs and like a rainbow in streaky fragments. We crossed the street full of celebrity-chasing American tourists to a park across the street and set down our suitcases. We were in a highly distressed state and I could not stop crying. Curious passers by stopped as if to ask if we were alright and quickly changed their minds and hurried along. A young man with car keys looped and twirling on his forefinger stopped firmly in front of us and asked us who we were and why I was crying. He seemed so astonished by our story – that we were two Indian journalists, penniless and without shelter or food in a cruel unfriendly city like Paris. He was a German in Paris. He scratched his chin and reflected for a while. “Come on” he said presently, “ come with me”. Without further words we followed him to the underground car park. He drove us to what looked like a cheap hotel near Gare du Nord, a million miles away from swanky St. Germain. A couple were checking in ahead of us. The man was a scruffily dressed North African and the woman wore a sleeveless summer frock. One could not help looking at this plump young woman as she stood behind her escort, one arm raised and folded at the elbow, lustily scratching her armpit with its array of little soft curls of hair. This vignette was straight out of a Degas sketch with its erotic undertones. It was clear to us that this was no ordinary hotel but a place where rooms were rented by the hour. Our saviour paid for a night’s accommodation and assured us that the morning breakfast was included. He thrust some French franc bank notes in our hand, saying “that should buy you a Jambon - a ham roll for tonight”. With that, his car keys still looped and twirling round his forefinger, this stranger, this kind benefactor disappeared down the street to his car and was gone in a flash. He never gave us his name or his address and we never saw him again. In my dreams that night I kept hearing doors opening and slamming, and beds ventilating on their carcase of springs.

By morning, my optimism had come back. I had other friends in Paris. What about Inderjit, the Delhi painter and a colleague of Dhawan who had hosted us in Belgrade
so generously. Inderjit lived in a studio flat in a hotel with a watchful concierge. He was pleased to see us. We laid our cards on the table, and Inderjit was moved. We could sleep on the little floor space he had as long as we kept a low profile and helped him cook the daily staple of rice and dhal and the occasional luxury of a Dhahi Khadi with vegetables in it. There would of course be the French baguette (crusty bread) to fill the spaces of a rumbling stomach. We hugged and kissed Inderjit on an impulse and swore to repay his hospitality in the near future, when we would be settled in London.

Then for a day or two life was all sweet and happy. French croissants and coffee in the morning, heated on the small stove in the corner of the bedroom; we washed our cups and plates in the little basin next to it with a plastic label in French warning the user NOT to flush solids down the sink as the plumbing was made of very narrow bore pipes. Lunch would be a ham roll in the company of Inderjit’s artist friends from Ecole des Beaux Arts and Nadia Boulanger’s music school and the odd philosophy student from the august Sorbonne. There would always be a kind friend who had just received his monthly bursary cheque and would recklessly buy us all a round of drinks, mostly cheap red wine in carafes. Evenings, we would retire to Inderjit’s small flat and cook our rice and Dhal. Sitting in the shadow of the great Notre Dame with a glass of wine in one hand, life could not be sweeter.

Subhash had other plans. He had a proper work permit and visa to enter the United Kingdom. One evening he made up his mind to leave Paris, however agreeable for the time being and head for London, his final destination, and look for a job. I felt angry, orphaned, abandoned and bitter. I thought that all those days and weeks when we were on the road to Europe, when we were starving, Subhash had prudently clung on to his tiny stash of money. I knew my thoughts were uncharitable and unfair but they welled up in me and ended in a bruising argument before Subhash left Paris one morning. I sulked and stayed in the flat and refused to see him off at the station. I refused to hug him and thank him for saving my life along the way. I felt utterly alone and cried noisily, and theatrically in the apartment in front of a mirror as if I was rehearsing for an acting part. Since then Subhash has assured me that he was as broke and penniless as I was, but had replenished his cache of few extra dollars by selling a  piece of Indian silk he had brought along, to Inderjit’s French girl friend  which she intended to turn in to a luxurious blouse and a scarf. I was too blinded by my anger to realize this at the time. I know I was insensitive and wrong and trust Subhash has forgiven me, generous man that he is.

My travails were far from over. I would still be homeless, friendless and heading towards the bridge spanning the Seine for a night’s shelter. I would once again see my romantic rainbow fragmented through stereoscopic tears. And I would no longer remember Juliette Greco’s song or its melodic line. Inderjit had been hinting that he needed privacy to see his French girlfriend from time to time and I was the gooseberry in the middle. Everyone seemed to ask why did my well placed uncle not help me?

Then I did something Inderjit could never forgive, and provoked him to throw me out one evening and summarily withdraw his hospitality.......

Next >> Journey's End