Love in Paris

 Day 26- Feel good Paris, full of surprises.The only city in the world where u can pay tribute to Jim Morrison at his grave, kiss Oscar Wild's tomb stone; attend a Mass in Latin; get serenaded by a flute playing clown, eat authentic Malabar 'parota', get roses sent to ur table just cos u r pretty, be called 'magnificient' by strangers who click ur picture... I know now why some people get married to Paris!


Soft golden light slipped in through Shilpa's French window, making pretty pattens on our sofa-cum-bed, waking me up ever so gently. The morning was warm and the street below had a happy buzz punctuated with muffled clicks of well-heeled Parisians, nibbling on baguettes and going about life with a definite purpose. I woke up to the fact that it was a Monday morning and for the first time in a long, long time, I wasn't fretting about waking up and heading to work. I was Paris and I was in love -- with the city, its sights and sounds and smells.

I loved this feeling of waking up and living a dream every single morning. But sometimes this heady hedonism scared me. What if happiness becomes a habit, I kept asking myself. Staying content, being at peace with whatever you have and whatever you do, was so easy doing what I was doing right then. And if it could be achieved back home, in the midst of our chaotic lives, then I hadn't paid attention. But I promised myself that I had to master this art of being happy, every single day. That's one lesson Europe taught me.

Another one is about love. And romance.

When India loves, it opens its heart out, asks no questions, sees no logic, seeks no answers. It just gives, till it hurts. And then just to love a little more, it gives some more. Till it hurts again. This is love for us. Be it mother-child, husband-wife, parents-children, lovers, friends... I don't know where we learnt this noble form of love from, but we are masters of it. I don't know if anyone else loves as much as we do.

India has a lot of love, that's what makes us work. Romance however, is another thing altogether. It's a pity. We have no romance in our lives, in our homes, in our relationships, in our thoughts, in our souls. If only all that unending love we have was peppered with a little bit of romance, we could create Utopia. But then I guess that explains it. It's Utopia.

Staring at the world passing by, together...

Europe, on the other hand, is full of romance. Couples here have a body language of their own. You'll see their fingers intertwined, eyes locked, their arms around each other in a half embrace as they go about doing mundane things in life. In metros, at supermarkets, on the road, in parks, churches, airports, on beaches -- they are everywhere, doing the same things, just lost in each other endlessly. Sometimes they stop in their tracks, in the middle of busy road to kiss each other tenderly. Then they open their eyes and continue walking to their destination. At other times you see them sitting in crowded metro stations or trains, eyes closed, heads buried in each other. As though they are breathing together. They hold on to their togetherness so passionately as if letting go of each other even for a moment will hurt. It's not just teenagers or 20 somethings. Married folks, young parents, gay couples, elderly couples, high school couples -- they all have the same body language. Something that's distinctly different from what you see in couples from other continents..

Everyone else disappears...

Romance here is serious business. And then again, romance is not restricted to couples alone. At least not in Paris. It took more than a week and a 100 little instances to convince myself that Paris is indeed the city of romance. It's not a tourism cliche. It's a way of life. If you need proof, you'll find plenty of it. But not if you are a tourist herded around in a group by a tour leader; not under the Eiffel tower. You have to live Paris and feel Paris like the Parisians do. And then you will see.

There's romance in the way a waiter serves you coffee at a cafe, there's romance when a passerby stops to ask if you have a lighter, there's romance when a stranger greets you for the first time and says he's 'enchanted' to meet you. Men open doors, pull chairs, lift bags and ooze chivalry in the most natural fashion. Women whisper and laugh, smile and pout, flirt and blush in response. Everyday. Everywhere.

Romance by the river

The French, like most others in the world these days, are too busy loving themselves to really love someone else selflessly. But they are masters at romance, just like we are masters at love. They even have a name for someone who loves you, or whom you love, but isn't your husband/wife/partner. L'amore -- they say. My love or my lover.

I met a pretty girl who said she has two such lovers. Both are not her boyfriends. My lovers, she said. She has no clue whether they have other women in their lives, nor do they know about the men in hers. But she is convinced they love her in the most true, pure way possible whenever they are around her. She is their Muse, they tell her. She believes.

And soon, I came across such lovers and love stories pretty much everywhere.

What will become of their love stories no one knows. But they believe what matters is the story itself. Not how it ends.

Can a life time full of beautiful, sparkling romances match up to a lifelong love that may be listless, spark-less? I don't know...

...I guess all that matters is that we don't forget to love.

--C

The old Bookkeeper

Day 25 - Haunts of bygone poets and authors still bustle with life, jazz clubs invite you in for free, medevial churches host chopin concerts every evening, ancient love stories hang in the air of every rue and boulevarde, owner of an antiquarian bookstore calls himself Don Quixote, colleges with no exams exist for the love of education.... they don't call Paris 'romantic' for nothing! Sigh!

Stuck in a time warp

Tucked away in a romantic corner of rue de la Bûcherie in Paris’ Left Bank is a tiny, antique book store and reading library. A yellow board announces proudly ­­­­– Shakespeare and Company, Antiquarian Books. Look closer and a plague with Shakespeare’s portrait solemnly greets you with an inspiring “Thou art alive still, while thy book doth live. And we have wits to read, and praise to give.”

And the Bard spoke...

It was a bright sunny October noon when we decided to go on a walking tour of Paris’ Left Bank. A few steps along the archaic Quartier Latin and we were suddenly in a time warp, transported to a simpler, more beautiful time. It’s an old, old district with much charm, character and hidden stories in every street.

We stop at this independent book store, the oldest English one in Paris. If in 1919, the likes of Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemmingway and James Joyce sat amidst these yellowing books to talk and write about life and revolution in the nineteenth century, today, young, bright writers meet there to discuss current maladies like modern love and other such indoor sports.


Tumbleweeds. That’s what they call these young writers, in a way only Parisians can romanticise anything. A perfect word to describe these present-day nomads, who tumble around in worlds of their own making. An enchanting universe of words, where they will be vagabonds forever. They roll in and out of Shakespeare and Company, living on the generous bedding offered for free for months together sometimes, while they write.  All in exchange of a few hours of work everyday and a promise to read a book a day. Two days, I read somewhere, only if it’s Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

One day, I hope to be that tumbleweed.

What touched me most about the bookstore was a quaint chalk-on-blackboard newsletter scribbled by George Whitman, who has been running this place since 1951. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve read, bringing  a smile on my face and tears to my eyes, at the same time.

The words, the simple honesty of them, reaffirmed my love for magic. Magic, not in the grandiose, miraculous sense. But the magic of ideas, words, everyday life. The old-world magic that is hard to find in a cynicism-ridden today. It’s the magic hidden in the little things that matter. Like spotting The God of Small Things.

These are those words.

If words were ever magical...

"Some people call me the Don Quixote of The Latin Quarter because my head is so far up in the clouds that I can imagine all of us are angels in Paradise. And instead of being a bonafide bookseller I am more like a frustrated Novelist. Store has rooms like chapters in a novel. And the fact is Tolstoy and Doestoyevski are more real to me than my nex door neighboors, and even stranger is the fact that even before I was born Doestoyevski wrote the story of my life in a book called ‘The Idiot’ and ever since reading it I have been searching for the heroine, a girl called Nastasia Filipovna. One hundred years ago my bookstore was a wine shop hidden from the Seine by an annex of the Hotel de Dieu hospital which has since been demolished & replaced by a garden. And further back in the year 1600, our whole building was a monastery called La Maison du Mustier. In medioeval time each monastery had a frere lamper whose duty was to light the lamps at nightfall. I have been doing this for fifty years, now it's my daughter’s turn.”                                                                                                                                                 - G.W.


-- P