Paean for Paris

Ernest Hemingway said about his time in the French capital during the 1920s,

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”

I can totally relate to this!

Paris hums in my bones. The city shines under the azure umbrella. I find  the streets crimp like babies on my lap, whispering secrets in my ears. The river Seine sparkles in a merry sheen as the narrow trail flows like the protruded veins in my grandma’s wrinkled hands. A coy wind blows, thumping the heart of iridescent Champs- Élysées, where lovers meet and part, where moments melt like the droplets from icicle. I relish the aftertaste of kisses I never experienced as I stitch the embroidered wind on the percale of my being.

A man at the carrefour spouts poetry at the urchins, I’m instantly reminded of “Milkshake” poem from one of the scenes in Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke’s love romance film ‘Before Sunrise’. Each breath here in Paris, smells of Guerlain Aqua Allegoria, L’Eau Sézane, and the adolescent air rebels being hit by puberty, pecking hickeys on the bare nape of maidens. The rebellious gale makes my teeth grind behind my Rooby- Wooed lips.

There’s beauty that stands in Champ de Mars, flaunting her splendour, the Eiffel! Oftentimes, a dash of drizzle enthrones the tall tower , embracing her tenderly like a besotted lover.  She overlooks the diadem of Versailles and the narrow brow of river Seine. When the November chill teases my bare legs, I borrow warmth from the streak of crimson that plays hide and seek with the blue dome. I look up to spot the pinnacle of the tower, it kindles a spark in me. Here, noon retreats with bourbon warmth, behind the smudged lipstick of muted promises. I know the taste of loss, the rust of forced forgetfulness ,the castigation of memory gnaws through my rattling ribs. I lick the oasis of my own shadow being dwarfed by the Eiffel’s mammoth silhouette and choose to live the now. The park in front of the Eiffel breathes in sighs, its lungs full of moments and reflection. I sit beneath a hackneyed birch, its roots spread like story streams. Pigeons coo the city’s soliloquy, grey wings flutter, their feathers smeared in hope and despair, joy and sob, home and homelessness. I try to catch them but in futile. They have a monopoly on the fantasy of flight.

I move through the alleys like a vagabond. My bewilderment at the sight of Notre Dame that stands tall and poised, cinctured amid a milieu of effervescence. It reminds me of Victor Hugo’s ‘Hunchback of Notre Dame’, of Esmeralda, captain Phoebus and Pierre Gringoire! Moments spent there gifts a calm contentment, withers  away the dried petals of melancholy, and sows fertile seeds of hope and peace which germinates an eternal sunshine within, dousing the notion of the dichotomy of light and dark. It dawns on me that light is often imagined as the ability to devour darkness, while darkness is the eternal surrenderer which is perceived as defeat. But what if surrender, the act of acceptance, is a kind of strength? Surrender is not the absence of strength perhaps, but an art to trust in what comes next! I take a sigh of relief with this realization.

I tick my bucket list as I sit on a wooden bench of “Shakespeare and Co.”, on the left bank of Paris .Reading Joyce’s Ulysses. I soak in the vortex of old and new books. I’m reminded of Hemingway and Ezra pound. I inhale the moment and preserve it  in the innermost pocket of my quilted red jacket. There’s a little coffee shop on the roadside where I sit, sipping minutes and hours. I catch the reflection of Latte Macchiato, the smoke swirls making encrypted patterns like my arteries. The brown of the Capuchino twins with my eyeballs reflecting myriad hues in the core of my soul, eloquent and effectual.

The city’s tachycardia joins pace with my heartbeats. Its abandoned secrets, half-heard songs, half- baked symphony, soft jazz and cigarette haze, the bitter crush of loneliness. I drink black cups of dusk, gulping down tomorrow’s what ifs. I take a look at the meandering lanes etched on the pink of my palm and try to figure out the lane that cajoles me to visit Paris, every alternate year . On every visit, I find a New Me in the zigzagging paths of Paris. And I am reminded about all the times I have reinvented myself, only to be buried beneath yet another me, metamorphosed under the weight of encrypted questions and their abbreviated answers. As Bryan Weiss said –

“We were not the same person even ten minutes ago”.

Paris, You are the epiphany rattling me awake. I wear you like my second skin, flaunting you on the fringes of my dreams, unpunctuated. I, untethered, dip my parched tongue in your secret fjord, drinking your reflection like old wine. You see me through. Paris, you remind me through pushed notification, that you reside in me. They say we don’t choose who/what we love, love chooses us.

Have you chosen me?

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