Au Revoir mon Paris.....

I am back to Bangalore after the onsite project manager's profit and loss projections showed that keeping me employed in Paris was more like rearing an elephant. So here I am back to saddi des after almost a year of fromage and bacon and petit fille. So after a year of sipping red wine and rushing away home from office as soon as the clock stuck 6:30 PM, I finally left the city of Paris behind me and on one fine Sunday I took the Lufthansa flight out of Charles de Gaulle Airport and flew back to the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Airport. So here is the story of my coming back. It all started one fine day, when after months of calculation and re-calculation, the project manager proclaimed that according to his calculations kicking me out of Paris was very very beneficial to the project. Unluckily for the guy who was giving me the news (read as my manager) came to know that even he was being kicked out of Paris because of the same reasons. My departure's decision taken, the next step was to book the flight. Not to be left in the bad books of miss lady luck since while flying to Paris I had only got a meagre 20kg baggage allowance on Air France, I booked my tickets early and explicitly mentioned the 30kg allowance at least 3 times in the travel request. Since destiny never made anything easy for me, the people who were assigned the task to book the tickets by the system happily forgot to book it for almost a week. Reminder mails and constant threatening finally got me a response and after calling up agents in 3 different cities I finally had my Lufthansa tickets to Kolkata and a connecting one to Bangalore after a week in my hometown.

The last few days in Paris just seemed to fly away. It was heavily invested in giving knowledge transfer to another guy in the project whom everyone calls Bappa. I guees no one even remembers his true name which incidentally is Basant. Well I guess the French as well as the Indians find it difficult to pronounce and hence they have stuck to the name Bappa for ages now. The KT as it is called in the IT terminology was the longest ever marathon KT that ever happened in the history of AL--as proclaimed by a few noble colleagues of mine. A farewell party at our veteran Indian restaurant called Namaste finally gave me the feeling that the 11 months in Paris were finally getting over. While I shopped a bit, I always wished that my dad was the customs official who would just let me pass by with the loot of perfumes and wines and chocolates. Alas nothing of that sort was going to happen and so I had to be contended with the few euros of shopping that I did.

Another notable thing that I did before coming back was that we went drinking to a pub that once upon a time Sayee and Aravind my two flatmates had once been to. Well actually we thought we were going but alas we never reached that place because both of them could not locate the place and finally after an hour of seeing every street and asking every suspicious police guy we gave up the futile search. The general consensus was that the pub could only be found when both were drunk. So after going through the futile exercise we decided to haunt our favourite pub on Latin quarter near Notre Dame. Alas when we went there, we found that the place had been converted a bit and ordering drinks alone was not on their cards anymore. So we necessarily had to order dinner which consisted mostly of cold duck meat and some herbs and bushes and a rice and curry thing (well seemed like curry). I still do not understand as to why the French love all their food so very cold and refrigerated. I guess it is something to do with their laziness that makes them go in for refrigerating and half cooking their cuisines. So along with the not so happening dinner me and Aravind gulped down at least a litre of long island iced tea. Well the others were happy mixing all kinds of beer together and waiting for a misadventure to happen. The bartender with whoom we were chitchatting with was saying all nice things about India and Indians. The guy seemed to have a nest on his head, if you remember Rudd Van Gulit from the world of soccer you might be able to relate. Finally the appreciations about India and Indians did not last long as Kostubh also known as Chota Chetan for his huge height got fully sloshed and emptied his entire stomach contents on the table. We cleaned it all up and bid adieu to that place with a fully sloshed Koustubh and caught the M4 and M1 back home. The ride was a total misadventure with people literally running away seeing Koustubh vomit over and over again. And after tripping twice in the platform of the metro station Koustubh proclaimed that he is not drunk at all. The night had some more adventures in store. After reaching home we gulped down a 2002 wine bought from Saint Emilion which had been lying around for such a special occassion. The night finally ended seeing Nilesh dance or rather jump to the tunes of marathi songs. Well considering his size it was more like watching an elephant shaking his body.

The last day in Paris was spent having lunch at a typical French restaurant and trying to order good wine and cheese. Last heard courtsey Abha Dawesar's book A summer in Paris, the ideal combination of wine and cheese on ones pallete might cause an orgasm. Alas did not happen to me. And considering the quality of wine and cheese and the price of it in India its not going to happen for a long long time. After the lunch filled with wine that left Basant talking all rubbish we walked all the way to Eiffel. From the Eiffel we took the river cruise on the Seine finally touching upon all those places and alleys on the river bank remembering every bit of time that I had spent photographing on the banks of that amazing river. The nostalgia of the last one year spent in that beautiful city came back to me. As the sun set to my last day in Paris, I did feel a tinge of sadness leaving this wonderful city with its Rues, its river banks and its structures and churches and colleagues who had become good friends in a span of one year. Night fell and John Denver again raised his score with All my bags are packed am ready to go.......am leaving on a jet plane....dont know when I will be back again......on my laptop. Its a song of leaving something dear and every year I have been singing this song over and over again leaving one city for another, one home for another. The ride to the airport in the dead of night in the taxi with its radio humming soft french numbers and known and unknown territories passing by was equally nostalgic. Even I was leaving on a jet plane and even I never knew when I would be back again to this wonderful city called Paris.

Since misadventures never seem to leave me, back in the aiport they were not able to print my connecting Frankfurt to Kolkata boarding pass. Moreover I was given a word of caution when my cabin baggage exceeded its requisite 7 kgs restriction (happens when you stuff it up with all kinds of cheap novels bought at second hand english book selling stores). Moreover I forgot to collect that very piece of luggage after the security check and realised it only after a good 10 minutes. Finally I managed to get the second boarding pass and found to my utter dismay that all my dreams of buying liqour were going to be thrashed away as the duty free shops were all closed. But luckily the shop opened up 5 minutes prior to boarding, and I finally managed to dash and rush and get a Bordeaux 2004 red wine. And if Deeghii is reading this I did bid farewell to Paris in the" Tata Bye Bye" way....As the Lufthansa flight taxied along the runway and the early rays of the sun painted the eastern sky with its vivid red, orange and purple colours I bid farewell to Paris for the last time. Then the flight gained altitude and passed above the cloud cover and the city of Paris was out of sight. 55 minutes later I was close to Frankfurt over a sea of clouds and the sun shining bright on my side of the plane and I saw another 3 on different sides circling around in invisible circles as we prepared to land. The sea of cloud beneath meant that Frankfurt would be very cloudy. It indeed is a great city to be in though the streets are as deserted as a public museum on weekdays. Frankfurt airport is the hub for Lufthansa, and if you ever saw a taxi stand full of cabs, the airport looks more like a taxi stand for Lufthansa. The logo of a bird on a blue and yellow background was everywhere to be sighted. The bus left us at a terminal from where I had to figure out which way to go for my connecting flight to Kolkata. A small gutten tag to an airport staff did the trick and I proceeded to see a whole set of guys sitting at the passport control eyeing everyone suspiciously. My French carte de sejour was enough for them to not even glance at me twice and soon I was officially out of the European Union. I headed straight for the duty free to buy another litre of alcohol, this time a whisky which my father had wished I would buy for him. I bought a litre of Jack Daniels and saw that my flight was a wee bit delayed. The two bottles of liquor had ensured that my hand luggage had gotten all the more bulky and hard to carry. With two bags of duty free stuff and a hand baggage and the laptop I was way too much loaded. Frankfurt airport at any point of time in the day especially the terminal 3 looks like an Indian airport. All major cities of India are connected by Lufthansa, well except for Bangalore on sundays which is operated by Air India, and as usual Air India known for its worser than Deccan record of flying on scheduled time was delayed by more than 15 hours. Imagine the plight of the people who were to travel in this god forbidden airline. Luckily for me our flight was just about 45 minutes late and as the time for departure I came, I proceeded towards security check, which was in every mood to strip me of my clothes to check for any signs of me being a terrorist. France never does indulge in so many checks. The passport control guys in Paris are more interested in chit chatting and once for a colleague of mine, they did not even stamp his passport. The excuse given was that, there was a huge queue and they did not want to waste much time checking up everyone. After the security check, the waiting area seemed to be straight out of the cafeteria of any Salt Lake sector V IT company. There were all kinds of IT people who had all descended from various parts of the world (well mostly US) to take the flight back to Kolkata. And just like in any cafeteria of any IT company everyone was busy voicing their opinion about everything, straight from the falling dollar affecting their way of living in the US, to who was getting married and who was trying for a shift and who belonged to IBM and who worked for TCS. This was the face of India, that was taking up all the possible jobs thanks to the world becoming more and more flatter (this is how we call offshoring in Infsoys). So after another half an hour of hearing all kinds of possible stuff like onsite allowance, the cold weather and the worsening market for Dot net professionals, there was a call for boarding. The flight was one of those huge airbuses, and I was allocated an aisle seat thanks to a very boaring Canadian man who seemed to be in his later 50s. The flight took off after another 20 mins, and as usual there was a huge thrust common for such huge airlines. One really feels the power of these rolls royce engines during such take offs and ladings. Once in the air above the cloud cover, and the captain having switched off the fasten your seat belt sign I ventured to the loo to freshen up a bit. Not sleeping for more than 24 hours now had taken its toll on my appearance. While coming back an old lady blurted out help-help and I realised that the lady's husband needed assistance. He wanted to go to the loo and could not stop talking all the way. In those 10 minutes he had told me why he was on the plane(he was visiting his younger daughter who was married off to some person in the US), that he had had two heart attacks and his older daughter was in Australia and she had a beautiful daughter who was a chartered accountant and almost my age, and that he carried a photograph of her which he wanted to show to me. Now this is where, I was shell shocked. The old man repeatedly called me his son and asked me for my parent's contacts. So the Paris tag had made me pretty much a marriageable element, I thought. The old man on his way back from the loo wanted me to fill up the immigration forms required for stepping into India. Seeing the alley was being blocked by the cabin crew distributing snacks, I told them that I would fill them later. After a snacks of peanut and wine I found old man selling the same concept of marrying off his grand daughter to a man seated on their side, well a bit older than me who was busy filling up old man and old lady's immigration form.

These nine hour flights are damn boring when you have sleeping men in their 50s sleeping on both sides of you. I tried watching friends on my laptop, flipped through the channels of Lufthansa, saw half of Nicholas Cage's National Treasure and felt very very bored. Everyone else seemed to be enjoying their afternoon siesta. Mr 50something Canadian had not even touched lunch for the love of snoring. Then it was again time for dinner as I saw the flight plan saying that we had entered India after crossing over from Pakistan. In 2 hours after a great meal of chicken fried with some rice and an aborted landing attempt at Kolkata thanks to a Spicejet flight not listening to ATC orders, we had reached the parking area of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International airport. After seeing the biggest of them like CDG, Heathrow, Schilpol, Frankfurt and Fumicino, the internation one 7 kms from my home looked so small in comparison. After the formalities with the passport control and getting a range of glances from the customs officials and saying repeated nos to the porters, I finally could retreive my luggage and was on my way out to see Ma and my sister waiting there. The first word they said was that I had grown lot fatter than the last time they had saw me. After all a year of cheese, wine, fries and burgers were showing its toll. A short ride back home through the streets of Kolkata, the streets that I had grown up on during my school days again welcomed me back to known settings and there in a wee bit small corner of my heart I missed the year long experience called Paris......