A day and three guys in Paris

Half of my trip around a few European countries was spent with two of my friends. I didnt travel with them, except for a trip to Prague with one of them, and some sightseeing in their respective cities. They hosted me. Both of them are doing their studies, one in Paris and one in Berlin. They are the kind of people to whom you can talk about anything, with liberal no-hiding of-emotions, no-intention-of not-hurting-sentiments levels, thus having all the fun. Their rooms are not no-fart-zones, and its OK to wear only undies, and sleep on the floor. The Berlin one briefly visited us when I was in Paris, staying with the Paris guy. This is about our first day together.

So on that day, I crossed Paris to receive the Berlin guy at the bus stand. The Paris guy couldn’t come with me because it was Friday and he had office. The bus from Berlin was awfully late, and the Berlin guy, after cleaning his intestines and changing his clothes at the local loo, started theorizing immediately, about how stereotypes about Germany (or any other stereotypes) are not so true because the bus was so awfully late, thus breaking the German Punctuality Stereotype. We had couple of croissants, and I told him about my newly acquired French words, about cafe noir and cafe long, France is great and such stuff and random theories. We talked about his life in Berlin. Its amazing to see how lonely the life of guys who grew their mind through books, movies, newspapers and discussions, only to find that things are not so action-filled in real life, in fact it can be quite mundane, full of complexes and loneliness. Especially the guys who have been taught to not look at or talk to girls, during a major part of their teen and other lives. They go to no end meandering about self pity. There's so much common between us.

We walked out of the bus stand, and decided to go to Louvre. Berlin guy is a wannabe intellectual and wants to visit museums, but Paris guy is a fartaholic and anti-intellectual, and denied him any chance of museums when he’s under his hostdom. So Berlin guy found company in a confused personality that is me - who at once mocks museums and all things arty-farty, “I am so cool”, and next moment gets angry at a friend for explaining the expression of that Manet with "that guy farted, and this guy farted back, and they looked at each other's face, and then this expression was born, and Manet expressed it impressively" - and lo we went to Louvre, after shaking away from a Bangladeshi captain posted in Ivory Cost, who sounded so patriotic about Bangladesh-India-Pakistan and was introducing us to all the Indians who were selling water, that we found it weird.

We found that it’s so crowded out there in the entrance to the Louvre, with all the tourists, all the family, and all Americans in sunglasses, shorts and guide books and Da vinci code, and at once walked away from there, to find out Musee d'Orsay, me thinking of the “small is beautiful” book I’ve found in my college library in Calicut, but hadn’t read fully. We lost way and reached the Seine River, where we walked, and found Pont Neuf. We took pictures. I tried to picture a guy sitting on the bridge drinking, nothing and nobody nearby, just a pattern made by the long stairs of the bridge and the empty road in front of him, by adjusting the Depth of Field and Exposure, trying to highlight the pattern and the loneliness, and later trying to give Berlin guy some souveniers to boast about the-wannabe-intellectual-visiting-the-city-of- intellectuals, art and fine wine and blacks and arabs and streets with beautiful, old buildings, a dark, crowded, efficient, race-averaged-out metro, and kebab shops and Eiffel Tower, and lot of hot air and beauty, which makes you confused which is which, and what’s personal and what’s acquired. I tried to convey my favorite stereotypes of Paris to Berlin guy - who was not so much impressed about Paris yet - so that he’ll see the city in the light of stereotypes, and then see that he can appreciate it better. Leonardo de Caprio and Kate Winslet helped me with this about Paris, with “that’s the only city in the world where I want to go back” dialog (Revolutionary Road - great film). I don’t know why he thought so. The film is sad. Yet. It’s much easier to enjoy if you know some stereotype about enjoyment. Like girls eating chocolates to wear away sadness, and how shopping helps them if chocolates fail. I had half a mind to extend it to Homeopathy and associated phenomenon, but realizes that stereotypes help you to associate things rather than give you placebo. Or is it not? Like all the silly thoughts, this one dies a mundane death.

I surely failed in all that photography. Berlin guy told me that even with a simple camera pictures can come out much better, and I am having a DSLR. I tried to explain why, in terms of heavy sun and lack of experience. Then we went back to being single Malayali males, who knows about Simon de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan, and talked about Polanski, Kusturica's film on Gypsies (oh wait, Roma/Romani!) and Dostoevsky, and communism and Pinarai Vijayan, what's going on in his village and Kannur in general, what’s wrong with Kerala and its culture and politics and men and women, sexual starvation, why we were like we were, more self pity. We talk about sex, no one believing the other's words fully, yet extremely interested in the topic.

Berlin guy is obsessed about Hayek these days. He argued about why government is wrong, and why we need free market, game theory and mechanism design. I tried to explain about poor farmers in India, all the caste stuff and gory stories, and who will stand for them in a free-for-all world. He explained in Developed Countries they don’t have this problem and Hayek lived mostly in Developed Countries, may be India is not ready for free market yet. I told him that even though I support governmental actions and interventions and social security, I was wondering if I was actually going to do anything that helps the processes, let alone any direct action. I told him I am not feeling like. Then he told me, even though he’s moving towards Hayek and all that, in the end he wants to go back and do something to help others. We were clearly confused. It was getting hot, we were sweating and our water was running out (we argued if Berlin water is better than Paris one).

We go to Gare du Nord, to find out the Srilankan-Tamil area, to have some Indian lunch. Gare du Nord is so big, so we don’t know which exit to take, so we call our local expert, Paris guy. Paris guy doesn’t remember the exit street name, he tells us it starts with Ausgang or something. We look and find Ausgang everywhere, and Berlin guy explains it’s German for Exit/Sortie. We laugh at stupid Paris guy. Finally Paris guy tells something helpful, in terms of construction-going-on, the doors are wooden, etc, and we finally get out. Berlin guy is excited to see dirty roads and gaudy shops and Chennai in Paris. We go and eat. We go back to Paris guy’s place – who had been working on his PhD all day long. He’s kept some Johnnie Walker and beer bottles ready for us. There’s a world cup match going on in the TV in the common room. We start drinking. We drink, fart and talks about farts, and Berlin guy tells us the Kundera quote: “Men started acting when they started loathing their own shit”. He says what brings men close are alcohol, talks about girls, and talks about shit and fart. Because these are the real stuff, really close to our animal self. He quotes MP Paul to tell us why humans are different from animals because they don’t shit while eating. Thus we intellectualize shit. We fart together and laugh.

Then we go on about the Paris guy, who hasn’t yet touched his girlfriend of several years, telling him about what is true love and true romance, and made him promise several things about how to be a good lover, etc. Paris guy’s already a towering figure to us in terms of helping others, sending almost all his stipend money to needy things at home, and having already taken couple of loans to help other friends. We talk about all that. “Let money go and let power come” is heard many times. We talk about our friends in India, all college life. We decide to call our friends in India. We call them and call all sorts of ugly terms. They laugh. We have fun. Paris guy is sleepy. Suddenly he runs to the toilet and pukes. We go to see him after a few minutes and see him sitting on the closet, almost naked, sleeping. We help him to the floor, and let him sleep there. We drink a bit more, and go to see the football match in the common room.

We talk, he explains to me what Tarkovsky wrote in his “Sculpting in Time”, and about Malayalam films, what he finds wrong with Hollywood and what I find wrong with Hollywood, etc. I find the American Dream, Pursuit of Happiness and long shots of guys drinking beer happily or guy driving happily themes so oft-repeated in Hollywood. An awkward moment is created when I tell I found Adoor’s Elipathaayam boring, but found that Berlin guy loves it. We talk about his money that was stolen from his bank account in Berlin, and what happened at Police station, and how he got the money back. “Three hundred euros, that’s a lot of money”, says the African guy in front of us, even though we were talking in Malayalam. We watch Africans supporting Ghana fighting whites supporting Uruguay, the war of words, shouts, and sadness and happiness when Ghana was about to win, and when an Uruguay defender decided to protect the nets with his hands, and when the Ghana guy lost the penalty, the gloom when Ghana lost, unfold in front of us. He theorizes that small and new teams like Ghana, however beautifully they pay, are not perfect, and the old, experienced, money-rich opponent can exploit these imperfections, like missing penalty kicks. We too root for Ghana, thinking of our imperial victimhood and skin colour, and share the gloom.

We go back to the room to find the guy still sleeping in the toilet floor. Berlin guy wants to try to puke now, and he goes to the washbasin to puke. I take a picture of them in their current conditions, and later mailed it to all our friends, who all responded enviously to the obvious camaraderie we’ve had. We talk further; we theorize further, we move the Paris guy from floor to bed. Berlin guy says he wants to bury the obsession with intellectuality and politics and Kerala and wants to learn about new things to talk about. He talks about ordinary guys who talks about what they are going to do in the evening, and what they are going to do the next day, and how he wants to be like that. I feel that there’s no going back. We get hungry. Stomachs make grumbling noises, we both fart. We put some rice in the microwave, and make an omlette with eight eggs. Berlin guy wont put the yellow, except for one, “for taste”. We debate about health and fitness. I talk about my eighty five year old grandfather, who’s still alive and working in his shop, who plays cards with friends, but who has drunk 20 tea per day for most part of his life in the same, unwashed flask and glass, who cannot eat without rice and heavily salted daal, who never did any exercise and farts like crazy, but in the end decides that one-off-incidents like that are not enough to lift the average life expectancy.

We eat a heavy dinner, with lots of rice and well chillied omlette, and curd (time is 2 or 3 AM now). We are extremely sleepy, but still watch Namukku Paarkaan Munthiri Thoppukal while eating. I talk about why I find Mohanlal in this film such a hero. His dialogs, his way of drinking and living, caring about family and interacting with girls with heroic charm, his confidence and the Malayali hero style wearing shirts and pants and keeping the shirts not tucked in, the manly moustache, how I adore all that. I wonder why he tells “hot chappathi, and chilled chicken, the best combination” in the film, thinking that he might have intended “chilly chicken” and not “chilled chicken”. Who wants chilled chicken at 3 AM in the night (its 3 AM in the film as well).

We are sleepy. I take the floor. We have an air filled bed, and he takes it. The balloon bed is awful, and he’s going to get a back pain the next day, though we didnt know it yet. We sleep.




Please go to 08:08 for the chilled chicken line.