Since my phlegm ridden state couldn’t keep my away from it, I’d say Paris has a charm to it. But that perception was perhaps consecrated over the period of forty-eight hours I spent in this city, where people surprise you as much as the beauty of the tour Eiffel or the din of pedestrians at Champs Elysees. So I am prompted to say : Not sure about the third so much, but fourth time is definitely a charm. However, the apparent purpose of this blog ( is there a purpose, of any blog, apart from some subtle ego-massaging to ostensibly enlighten the world with your eclectically giddy words ?) is to extol the people I met and perhaps the spirit of the humanity in general.
It started with the lady Thai-Chinese taxi driver who drove us cheerfully to our hotel on Rue de Rome whilst chanting concerned instructions about protecting our bags in the underground metro. My experience with lady taxi drivers has not been the best in general, and that would be an understatement. However this particular creature had the spirit that was contagiously cheerful and she happily shared her holiday plans for the summer and apprised us that Thai airways is offering splendidly cheap return tickets to Bangkok. Noted, Mademoiselle Sunshine. Another taxi driver who drove us to Tour Eiffel the next day from Tunisia, told me that Freddie Mercury had lived in India and his parents were Indian. I did not know this. Oh well. Bohemian Rhapsody has a new found meaning in my life. We also conversed in English, Spanish, and I even tried my hand at some Arabic and repeated some extremely tongue-wracking French sentences. My contribution was the longest word in English – Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (Well, as far as coined words in English language go, and well Mary Poppins says so).
There was also an interesting tête-à-tête with a souvenir seller near the tour Eiffel. He was from Punjab, lured to Paris by an agent, having mortgaged his land to pay Rs. 10,00,000 to arrange his new life. Ofcourse, it was a ruse, and he ended up selling brass eiffel touwers to tourists on the road. He wanted to go back but well, he didn’t have the money, he told me. He seemed oddly at peace with this turn of fate though, and well I urged him to figure out a way to study more (he’d only finished high school). Once he realized I had nothing to offer more than some unsolicited advice, he decided to move on to the next potential customer. And yes, this was the underbelly of the city, a side I had not encountered before. This encounter also answered some questions that had floated around in my naïve mind as to the presence of multitude of Indian souvenir sellers around the Tour Eiffel area.
And thus, with these sweet and sour moments, the Paris sabbatical was wrapped up, sitting on a bench near the Seine, the proverbial tourist as always, staring up at the Eiffel Tower, as it gleamed golden in the rich blue Parisian sky.
As for the Latin in the title this blog, I shall let the incoherency hang.
PS: Midnight in Paris by woody Allen; is a must watch. Delectable , heart-lifting and magical!
