Leaving the South, Paris, Vacations
Last week, I left Marseille (temporarily) and felt quite bittersweet about it — on the one hand, I was excited for what was to come, but on the other, I was already feeling quite nostalgic. On Tuesday, I took my train to Paris, with a huge suitcase (one of whose wheels had broken when I came to France). While the Marseille heat didn’t help with the huge physical weight that I was carrying with me throughout my metro and bus rides, the construction in the metro lines in the city added to my plight, which was further exacerbated by a delay of 35 minutes on the schedule of my train.
The last few days in Marseille were particularly eventful — I had to pack everything up (which is never a fun thing to do), which had been a huge source of anxiety for me for the past few months. Thomas was kind enough to keep my stuff at his place. Saturday was the last I saw Thomas. He brought his car to my place so I wouldn’t have to take the bus with all my luggage to his place. I honestly don’t know what I would have done without him — I often find myself asking the same question, “why are people this kind to me?” I am under the impression that I am annoying people when I ask for help, which is perhaps why I am so shocked to find people who go out of their way to help me. It is refreshing to see that they have no other ulterior motives to help me when they could very well ignore me! I feel like I will always be indebted to people like Thomas, who has, at all times, made me feel at home in France.
After leaving my stuff at his place, Thomas and I went to Aix-en-Provence, a relatively smaller town just adjacent to Marseille. I bought a few bottles of lavender oil from the roadside market there. We walked around the city and Thomas showed me the phallic balconies of Place d’Albertas, which was good trivia to have. Staying true to my new identity as a Provençal, I ate a fish burger for lunch (which again, Thomas offered to pay for me). Thomas was determined to give me a makeover that day, mostly because the length of my hair was becoming unbearable, but my indecisiveness and just a general lacklustre personality trumped his grit, and I ended up not getting a haircut that day (we both, separately got haircuts though). While Thomas was buying some T-shirts for himself, I just mentioned, in passing, that I’d love to play golf someday. He, being the benevolent soul that he is, swiftly arranged for us to play golf that afternoon. At this point, just having gratitude does not suffice. So, I gifted him a meagre pot of apricot compote that I had at my place.
Meanwhile, in Paris, Didier and Adeline had been kind enough to host my friend, Martin and me, at their place. Funnily enough, until that point, I had never met Martin. He is one of my many French language exchange partners from Switzerland. Martin had been waiting for me at the railway station in Paris for about an hour and a half (my train was supposed to arrive an hour after Martin’s would, but because of the delay, he had to wait a little longer). On arriving in Paris, I caught up with Martin, we took a metro card for the week, and headed to Didier and Adeline’s, stopping on the way to buy a bottle of wine. Martin knows his wine when it comes to Swiss wines, but is clueless about French wines, and I am, in general, oblivious to many aspects of culture, which made choosing a wine bottle fairly difficult. We ended up asking a kind stranger to recommend something for our hosts. That evening, we spent a lot of time chatting with Didier and Adeline, who were quite curious about Martin and how our friendship started over the internet. They had made us Ratatouille, baked potatoes and chicken for dinner. That night, just before midnight, Martin and I decided to take a walk to the Notre Dame — walking across the Seine river with someone that I had met that very day, but had been talking to for so long, felt bizarre, not because I had met him for the first time that day, but because it felt like we were old friends.
On Wednesday morning, Martin and I decided to climb the Eiffel Tower. I called my parents from the second floor to virtually show them the view. That afternoon, we met Ismail, another friend of mine from the internet: a Parisian (a term I am throwing loosely for him) with Pakistani origins. That afternoon, we walked around the quarters of Montmartre. Adeline had recommended to us a café called “Chez Plumeau” which was right below the Sacré Cœur but she told us that there weren’t many tourists who knew about that place. The irony of me complaining about tourists in Paris, while me being one of them, is not lost on me, but now that I have local contacts, I can give myself permission to complain.
Later that day, we met up with Soraya, another one of my language partners from the internet, a Parisian with Moroccan origins, who is deeply in love with the Indian culture, grew up watching Bollywood films, is learning Hindi, and planning to go to India next year. For dinner, we had Pakistani food which Martin found. We all liked the food. I went to the toilet in that restaurant and got stuck in there. I had to call Ismail (with a 1% battery on my phone) who came to save me. They all laughed at me, which is not an unusual thing since I often put myself in laughable situations.
On Thursday, we knew that it would rain, which is perhaps why, subconsciously, we decided to go to Versailles that day, to not face a lot of tourists. The morning became a bit hectic since Martin and I were a bit nonchalant with our scheduling, thinking we were at some place while being far away from there. On the other hand, I had to keep Ismail updated, as well as know how and where we would meet Gabriela, a Brazilian friend from the south. Coincidentally, we all met up at the same train station to Versailles. I am glad I was able to go to Versailles because that is something I had wanted to do pretty much ever since I started learning French in 2010. I, again, called my parents to show them Versailles, because the French Revolution is something that they both are quite well versed in.
That evening, Soraya took us to a Kathak recital. We all had varying levels of understanding of Kathak — since I grew up playing the tabla, and since I am a Hindi speaker, I knew and understood all of it. I was actually the annoying one explaining the little details to my friends here and there. Martin was the one who knew the least about Kathak, and he seemed to enjoy himself. Ismail had gifted us hats from his region in Pakistan and we wore those hats throughout the night! As midnight approached, we went to see the Tamil quarters of Paris, where we drank some rose-milk at a small Tamil restaurant. About half an hour later, we met the server from that very restaurant in the metro — she struck up a conversation with us, telling us she was originally from Mumbai, studying international business in Paris and working as a server part-time at night. She told us that she spoke five languages — Malayalam, Tamil, Marathi, English and Hindi, but didn’t speak French. Martin and I had to cut the conversation short as our metro station had arrived.
On Friday, Martin and I climbed the Arc de Triomphe — Martin being Swiss, his identity card wasn’t valid for a student reduction in the EU, which the cashier made sure to point out. However, the very next second, gave us two tickets with the student reductions, in a hasty attempt to get rid of us. We did not care for the attitude and grabbed the free tickets before the cashier would change his mind. Later that day, Ismail joined us to go to the Louvre, which we saw quite quickly, since I only cared for the Mona Lisa, as I wanted to show that to my mother. Fortunately for us, the Louvre wasn’t very busy that day, which is unusual for a Friday. Again, at the Louvre, Martin got a free pass even though they did find out that he was from Switzerland, which was fun.
On Saturday, I decided to not do a lot of things since I was about to leave for Delhi the very next day. So, in the morning, we went to Panthéon, where we met up with Ismail and Soraya again. By this time, I had made a WhatsApp group of all the people I knew who were currently in Paris so that I would not have to manage everything because I am not very efficient — in the past, I had always taken a back seat when it came to trips and vacations with friends, so doing this was new territory for me. This time, however, Martin had to pay the ticket fees because the cashier was adamant about not letting him be considered a European citizen. While I enjoyed most of it, I missed a huge portion of the crypt in the basement because I had to fill out a form for being able to enter India the next day, but I had fun nonetheless. Soraya recommended us a Moroccan restaurant where she explained to me how to actually eat couscous and tajine. After finishing almost the entire jar of harissa and practically annoying our server, Perrin joined us right in time for us to order our Moroccan mint tea. Later that evening, we met up again with Gabriela who surpassed several levels of comfort with Ismail as he had to administer an injection to her with the medicine she was carrying with herself — that was, after several failed attempts to get the injection at a pharmacy, finally, a pharmacist showed us a YouTube video of how to administer an injection (the pharmacist in fact asked me if I wanted to “participate” and I fervently declined).
I tried to sleep early that night, anticipating a hectic trip to the airport the next morning. These five days I had been wanting to go to the Invalides because I found the dome to be highly fascinating, but we didn’t have the opportunity. So when I reached the airport, Martin went there and showed it to me on call.
I had upwards of 11 or 12 hours to kill with my journey to India, which inevitably made me reflect on how crazy these past few days had been if we look at it at face value — I had never met most of these people, let alone spend entire days with them. And yet, at the moment, it really did feel like we had known each other for a very long time.
I reached Delhi in the wee hours of the Monday morning, tired and sleep deprived, while also having lost touch with the amount of humidity here — the air almost felt heavy. My taxi driver said that it was better than a few days before since it had rained recently, and I couldn’t imagine what it could have been. I reached home to my parents waiting for me — happy that I was finally home, whatever that is anymore.