Summer of 1971

Paris is perhaps the worlds most beautiful city. There is beauty so evenly spread out. It's in the air, the sky, the wrought iron balconies.When I was very small, I was taken for afternoon walks to a nearby park by Ma. I was two or three years old then and don't remember much except that the air smelt fresh every afternoon, after the drizzle and the park had the most beautiful railing.

However, nothing to beat the Summer of 1971 I was in Paris on a shoe string budget. Fresh out of School, not yet in College. My Dad thought I was too young for College. My Ma thought it was asking for trouble to keep me at home for months on end. Hence, I was packed off to Europe.

I stayed with a crazy French family, who threw me out every morning at 9 sharp. I was expected to be back by bedtime. So, I walked the streets of Paris with my high school French and an air of very false arrogance. Of course, Paris was overwhelming, but why on earth would people be allowed to understand my apprehension. I walked along the Seine, I walked in the rain, I walked in the parks, I walked the Louvre several times over. Paris roads are confusing, the language rather awkward, the food was expensive, but I survived on fresh air and love  ..... I loved Paris.

One evening the Paris sky was streaked with pink and purple clouds and the air was soft. The drizzle had stopped and the city smelt ever so fresh.I sat on the kerb in front of a bistro looking for a food-cart, and there was a table (at the bistro) with a "Biggles" held over a brown head. 

English! 

Bingo! 

I got introduced to Tim over "Biggles goes to War" Tim was a school-leaving Brit, although 2 years older than me. My French was decidedly better, but he had more pocket money. Furthermore, his family paid for his meals, and of course meals can always be shared ..... whoever did not know that? So we latched on to each other  ....free food for me, and my (broken, but better than his) French to get by with. 

Tim actually lived in a garage! This lifestyle was totally new to me. He slept on a dirty mattress with a Slenvo guitar and a mongrel called Daisy .... for warmth, he assured me. I was 14, Tim was 16 and we went around Paris exploring. We had all the time in the world. We walked and we sang, Tim played the guitar ("Love me Do" most often) and got a few francs on the Montparnasse.Going up and down the butte  (of Montmartre) was a lark for us. We haunted the  chaotic La Rive Gauche till late evening with the artists and the Sorbonne students. The Boulevard Saint Germain fascinated me. On the Right Bank we marvelled at the lights of Champs Elysees. Thomas was a waiter at the Moulin Rouge, and he lived near my villa. Of course he took us to his grand restaurant. No food though. No Can Can either.We got caught in the Paris drizzles (Oh! the drizzle in Paris!) and frequently stole bread and fruit and ate it with the cheapest wine,

On warm afternoons we lay flat on the grass at Champs de Mars and took in the blue Parisian sky. One morning, barefoot and barelegged we were wading in the Seine to get to the Isle of the Swans, except  le flics chased us. Daisy, the dog, chased the police away ! Under the bridges of Paris existed a different and exciting world. We loved it. A Gitane went a long way those days and the short stubby Gauloises had us choking. Today, I believe the French prefer Marlboro. Strange !

It was the most idyllic summer. 

Funnily enough we explored Paris from individual perspectives of History and Geography. In a few months time Tim went on to study History and I came back to India to study Geography. We both became Professors. Rather odd that.

My Dad had arranged for me to stay in London with his Danish friend. Tim and I spent a few months in England. The London we explored no longer exists, but what a summer it was! France and England .... mostly on foot. Sometimes on cycles. Definitely on the wings of wonder. 

....

Pice Hotels

What with all this 'fine dining' experience and  'specialty restaurants' the average street-food eater in Calcutta is on the verge of forgetting pice hotels. I heard of this term in the early 60's when my Dad would tell me about the excellent machher jhol-bhat he used to have at Goalonda Ghat, on the ferry. The machh would be ililish of course, straight from the river. This meal would cost him less than one pice in the 1930's. 

When I grew older, and was in college, I went looking for 'pice hotels' in Calcutta. I spent an entire summer walking the streets of Calcutta discovering among other new things, 'pice hotels' There were several near Sealdah Station and Howrah Station. I remember a vegetarian meal in 1972 would be about 2 to 3 rupees. Fish etc would be a little dearer. The food would be hot and served on clean kolapata. In the Sealdah area the Tower Hotel, was not exactly a pice hotel, but I always loved the food there.

The essence of pice-hotel-food is that there is no choice. The question of a la carte menu.does not exist. Fresh vegetables, fish etc are brought from the market everyday. Only a few items cooked and typically all the food is over by 3pm.(The evening meal is a simple roti-sabzi). A basic daal-bhaat and vegetable curry would cost Rs 10 or so in 2000. Rs 15 in 2011. These pice hotels are not fancy, but they are clean, well lit, no offensive crowd and terrifically good service. 

The hotels, which are now obsolete started in the early 1940's primarily to cater to the large influx of shelter-seekers from East Pakistan. The food was always simple and inexpensive, hence the concept of pice hotels stuck around. I have taken Shantam to Tower Hotel and some other similar places around Sealdah. a meal for just Rs 10.!!!

The Young Bengal Hotel at Khidirpur (Karl Marx Sarani) is another pice hotel which has been around since the 1940's. The original owner Tarapada Guha is no more, but his daughter now runs the place. This is now an upgraded  pice hotel. About 40 covers. Plain board tables. Stainless steel ware (washed in hot water and soap), but what excellent food. Rice and daal, Fish curry, vegetable curry. All for under Rs 20. Maybe Rs 25. Squeaky clean, well lit, good food, good service...... what  else are we looking for?

Pice hotels will have a slate at the entrance. On it will be chalked a simple menu.   

Pabda machher jhaal, 

Lau chhingri, 

Posta alu etc etc etc 

With prices. 

 In recent times, there is cooking gas, Aquaguard drinking water, a refrigerator,  There is a clean wash basin with liquid soap, If you have not eaten at a Calcutta pice hotel ..... well, your search for good Bengali food remains incomplete.

 

Gay Paree

I found an ancient photograph of Tim and his Parisian mongrel, sitting on a stone bridge over the Seine.

I have a bad cold and an infectious fever, which got cured by a French drug. The medicine worked like magic.

R has a French "lady friend". All of nineteen years. No doubt, a very virtuous Mademoiselle..

I learnt that an old college mate of mine is now posted in Paris.

So much French in my life ........ took me back in time......

Paris is one of the most beautiful cities - perhaps the most beautiful city - in the world.  But certainly it is very poorly planned. Oh. No No. It is not the planners fault. The fault is ours, we emigres. Our poor countries never had any town planning.

Thoroughfares radiating out from the Arc de Triomphe is the basic pattern of town planning in Paris. For the first-time emigre, this is most confusing.

1.Roads are NEVER parallel, instead they diverge. 

2.The streets are radii of a circle.

3.You are always in fear of getting lost.

4.You always have the humiliating feeling that the late Euclid (whom you have just shaken off in School) would have found the rue Longchamps ..... armed with sextant, dividers, paper and drawing board, of course.

Parallelograms were unknown to the planners of this dream city. All roads are pseudo-parallel. specially constructed to get any reasonably educated and mathematically oriented person in a state of total confusion. 

Addresses :  Every city has a Postal system which sorts out addresses. In Paris every address is a Relative Address. By this I mean..... next to, across from, near, practically next door. 

"It is, mon cheri, near the cafe". Now Paris has thousands of cafes.....so, which cafe? No policemen ever help. Even if they are twenty yards ( oops, it's metres in Paris) from the Metro, they will sagely say "Nous, nous"

Food and drink is a national passion for the French. In Paris, the passion is enhanced exponentially. An average Parisian culinary habits are well worth observing. He eats no breakfast. Drinks coffee instead. The secret of this is that he simply has to get rid of that hangover. Eating is out of the question when you are quite sozzled. Hence, for the love of God, you CAN NOT get a decent brekker in Paris. You would HAVE to settle for C&C (croissant and coffee). Incidentally, Parisians don't drink milk.

The rest of the day a Parisian will eat the most gourmet food, exquisitely

served with such unrefined manners, that one is left in a "off-food" mood for hours. 

Food is outrageously expensive in France. Paris.... even more. This is one of the main reasons for the permanent economic crisis that the country has been facing for the last 60 years. Buying food all the time is out of the question. To eat frugally is almost a sin. To earn money is a worse sin. By the time tested method of hit and miss I found that it was easy to get hold of a garcon who (at a small price and a big smile) would gladly steal bread and fruit for you. The easiest, simplest and the most economic way of obtaining food in Paris.

Of course there is the Maxim, which still survives. Remarkable, it's existence, considering it's bourgeoisie price list !!! A bistro by the Seine is always a better option, i.e, if you actually want to pay for the food you eat.

Drinks.It is not a passion. It is a habit. The English like their whisky, the Irish their beer, but they can carry their drink, or the drink can carry them.Not all men are sober all the time, but the French rarely drink to excess, they drink regularly. Like breathing in. Breathing out.A little wine for breakfast, a glass or two at lunch. Some more at tea-time (actually the French have no tea-time) and of course after 6pm they are just impregnated with alcohol. After all, 'moderation' is a foreign word !! 

Plain drinking water is practically unknown is Paris. Little boys in grey shorts sit in cafes at 11pm drinking beer or wine (read vinegar) Their wine drinking begin when they are born. Wine for the weakling, wine for the crying child. Wine in the winter cold, Anytime wine. At any age. In Paris, unlike any other city in the world, one has to buy water. And that too at a premium. A bottle of Perrier or Evian  does not come cheap.

The French Language. The least said the better. If truth be told, the French don't much care what they say actuallly....as long as they say it with great fervour. They will fling their arms and gesticulate wildly. Gesticulation is a part and parcel of French grammar. it is an organic part of it. Just as much there is a noun, and those horrible verbs, there are rolling eyes, and shrugging shoulders, clicking sounds (entirely grammatical) with tongues and also fingers if needs be. It is quite a spectacle to watch a Parisian speak his mother tongue in his own home ground. To the uninitiated, is can be daunting, because you tend to lose the thread of the conversation/monologue by watching the flaying arms and rolling eyes.

Do not even try to speak French the way a Frenchman does. Your arms may get a foreign accent, your eyes may catch a foreign intonation, as for your internal organs..... a grave grammatical error may be committed in convoluted intestines. O-la-la.

In the poor country where I belong, the janta tries their best to be nouveau-riche.It is considered fashionable to show off your swanky car or the new white Italian leather sofa (nevermind the fact that the leather came from the hide of an Indian cow). The French are snobbish in a different way. They pretend to be nouveau-pauvre. They look unkempt, disheveled and unwashed only when they own a few vineyards and half of the Riviera.  

In Paris you are always an emigre . Which is an advantage. Whatever you do is wrong. Next step la police or les flics catch you. However, you are a foreign national, and anyway they don't speak your brand of French. You can not gesticulate and roll your eyes (our grammar does not have it), hence the Interpol may be called. Then you are on safe grounds, because with some luck you may get deported..... without luck, your Embassy steps in.

Notwithstanding such trivial trials.....Gay Paree, I miss you.

 

.

The Lady and The Dog

My aunt possesses the most mighty ancestry and the most pristine lineage. She has a peculiarly crushing arrogance . She looks down her long nose through frosty eyes, as if most beings are quite beneath her dignity. On her forehead she wears a frown that has been known to cause the most loquacious visitors to fall uneasily silent when she turns the light of her countenance disdainfully upon them.
Oh, she is very, very beautiful with a complexion like old ivory. Even her wrinkled skin is pale and delicate. Her eyes are dark pools of emerald green water...... which can quickly turn into fire. Her hair is dark, still dark, at age 84. It is held back on to her noble cranium with a small french knot at the nape of her slender swan-like neck. She holds herself erect, and will stay erect as far as the proud curves of her tall elegance allows.

BUT, her dog is everything she is not. To begin with, it is part terrier, part Labrador, with a fair bit of sheepdog ancestry, a flavour of a collie (in it's tail), a suggestion of a hound. The Vet refrained from giving his expert opinion. The problem, he said, was beyond him. The dog had come as a puppy some three years back, on a rainswept evening. Something had yielded within the tough Trojan heart of my aunt. The dog was given shelter, and thus he is now there. The Tramp with it's completely unknown background is whitish gray with black patches. A huge brute of a dog with a huge tail. A most wxpressive tail, if one may comment. The Tramp's tail is tremblingly responsive to his every mood and his moods are many. The mistress is so proud that she never permits herself ever to feel a weakness, let alone show it. The dog, un-upheld by the arrogance of race and beauty, feels many weaknesses and shows them all. He is frightened, he is unhappy, he is anxious, he is overwhelmingly joyful. He is penitent, he is shy, he is coy, he is passionately loving. His tail like a dirty curled ostrich feather trembles, droops, waves, rotates, rises, falls or simply disappears altogether between his hind legs, according to those emotions that is ravaging his faithful breast. For faithful the Tramp undoubtedly is. Inspite of the extreme nervousness of his highly strung temperance he would have died in defense of his dearly loved mistress, who he considers to be his sacred property. The Tramp's loving faithfulness is very visible in his bright button eyes that peeps out of the whitish thatch. The loyalty also shows its fine fettle dripping in streams of saliva from the end of his long pink tongue that he lowers out of the side of his mouth in moments of emotion. He always dribbles when he loves people and he loves all people. The Tramp with flapping uncontrollable ears, sprawling uncoordinated legs is loved by all and loves all.

How these two diametrically opposite creatures co-habit in the sprawling bungalow is a mystery!

Male Tantrum Management

"Male Tantrum Management" said Ritu.

Ritu is 28 and obviously knows enough of the Syndrome to devise Management Techniques to tackle the syndrome ... and of course Males.

How many Males could Ritu possibly have known in her 28 short years? Men who are 28? 30? 32? Just out of their mother's apron strings? Men/Males at 50? 55? 60? 75? ....... will Ritu know how to manage their tantrums?

Of course girls these days know more of men, about men, number of men, from men .......(any other prepositions?) than we did at age 28. Our generation, most of us, got stuck with/to one man, and for better or worse have stuck it out. And tantrums? ....... the medicine was "WAIT. He'll get over it". So our Mother-in-laws told us. We told ourselves the same thing while bringing up our sons. The same I'll tell the wives of Adarsh, Buju and AJ and the other so called 'sons' to whom I have been a surrogate mum.

Of course my personal tactic was 'What tantrum? You throw a tantrum? HA!!! Wanna see what a tantrum means?' This approach worked like magic. Most men, family or otherwise, would take a step back. I really did not have to demonstrate. A threat worked as well as the real thing.

So, if the Male Tantrum has to be Managed...

Methods

a) Play along. Pamper his ego. After all this is His Eminence.
b) Wait till he gets over it. Can be time consuming. Not worth the time and effort.
c) ..... or else ..... there is a Hindi word, Manao. Not too bad an idea. Bittersweet, kind of.
d) IGNORE the guy and his bloody tantrums.

Nevertheless, MTM is indeed a very good coinage. Some people could make a career out of it. I know of several who can be clients of this highly specialised profession.

There is

Disaster Management
Water Management
Portfolio Management
Agro-Business Management

And now there is Male Tantrum Management.

I wish for you

For

Krishi Singh (20th August, 2010)
Nandini Viveka Chatterjee (21st September, 2011)
Nayantara Ray (21st September, 2011)
Meera Dasgupta (10th November, 2011)

I wish for you all the flowers that you can talk to, and all the trees you can climb. I wish for you all the rivers you can wade in, and the hills you can climb.

I wish you castles made of story books ( for bricks/stones) and all the wonder that they may contain. May they never cease to amaze you.

I wish for you the soft gentle breeze that rustles your silken hair, but I also wish you the thrill of an occasional gale and you at the helm of a ship.... or at least the feel of a strong wind as you pillion ride a motor bike.

I wish you "twinkle toes" feet, so that you may travel and travel, AND travel. but may you always return and to bring for us the scent, the flavour, the feel of the places you visit.

I wish for you stories and books, pencils and pens, paper and note books.... may all of you love to read, and above all, to write,.

I wish you the colours of the rainbow, along with crayons and pastels, Caran d'Ache and canvas, Faber and charcoal, never mind what others say/ feel about your piece of art.

I wish you a mind that is razor sharp ( but never to hurt others). A mind that never ceases to think, A mind to seek, to analyses and to reflect , to feel, to touch.

I wish you the Music of the Heavens and of the Universe. Some Joel and Denver, Dylan and Cohen, Bach and Tchaikovsky - may there always be music in your lives.

I wish you large expanses of the blue sea and deep in this ocean, may there be a wave for you. I wish you a high blue sky and high in the sky may there be white fluffy clouds for you to ride.

I wish you strong sturdy legs that you are good to walk, and walk, .... and walk , and may the walks be forever enjoyable. Also a a pair of strong arms to help, to protect , to guide, to carry.

I wish for you Magic Carpets and race horses, lemon drops and peppermint creams, ice cream and roller skates, cycle rides and bear hugs, warm bread puddings and rocking horses.

I wish for you numerous animals, cats and dogs, rabbits and squirrels Teddies and Poohs, panthers and tigers : out of Corbett and Ruskin Bond. Always love the animals around you, don't bother too much about the homo sapiens.

May in your life be plenty of laughter, lots of smiles and sunshine, but solitude and dark clouds ain't too bad either.

May you dads throw you in the air to catch you again in his strong arms. May you mothers share all your happiness and doubts, may all of you have siblings to share the ups and downs of life. To squabble, to fight, to sneak to stick up for, to love and to hate.

I wish you all the luck and love, and blessings that will make you grow up strong and tall. May you all live long happy lives. And may you all meet each other at some point of time.

May this song of mine wrap it's music around you and keep you forever safe and secure.

Rocket Attack on AJ

This young man I know did his Diwali CSR or good deed or whatever one would like to call it by going to an old-age home and join them for a fireworks show. All very good, except that this boy is more-than-normal scared of fireworks. To his credit, he braved the fear and went to the show. He sat quietly, and watched others do the cracker job. Without much warning a "rocket cracker" (0r what was called whistlers in our times) shot across the ground and found a neat target ....... our dear protagonist's toes. The toes were singed, the young man bawled, a doctor was got..... etc. etc. etc.

The moral of the story :
1. At Diwali shows always wear shoes and socks, always wear full sleeved shirt and trousers.

2. It pays to study 'Rocket Science' perhaps ?????? Did the guy who lit the whistler read the science??? At the USA?????

I do not know whether to laugh or to condole, but it re-affirms by belief in 'armoured Diwali garments'.