Slammed a Grand Slam...

The lips relax, the hands lose grip, the whole world around turns into deep shades of black, something inside tells you dont lose it up but someone else says give in to me, life is beautiful on this side, and then there in that dilemma someone shouts out in the most unearthly voice possible a single phrase which sounds like "Endoneel" and I realise that I had drifted off to a place much more wonderful than Switzerland called Sleepland sitting right there in the client office with my boss infront of me and my onsite PM on the other side eyeing me with disgust. The look on his face would say it all that if ever this project goes out of our hand, this sleeping beauty is the one who would be thrashed and smashed and bashed up in the most beautiful manner on the streets of chic Paris. The French obsession of removing the R when it comes to pronunciation of words with R has made me Endoneel from Indranil.

So here is a post from chic Paris with me desperately stopping myself from falling asleep after a tummy full meal of pizzas that had cheese spread on it in similar plethora as makkhan is spread on alu parathas in the dhabas of Haryana and Punjab highways. The pizzas with its thing crust and Margarita cheese toppings made the entire office crowd hog like anything and what better way to celebrate a bon appetizing lunch than to drift off into a siesta and bring the Spanish influence to France. Yet am alive and awake and am trying to procure toothpicks from somewhere so that I can hold the upper lids in place and not fall asleep. This unique technique comes from a purely British soul called Mr. Bean and considering the immense love for the Britishers that the French posess I might be a dead soul walking the streets of Paris if I tried any of my pure British ideas. Colonialization has had its own disadvantages as I see it now.

Chic Paris, as I refer to this place because of its obsession with anything fashionable gave me the chance of a lifetime last weekend to do something that I had so desperately wanted to do. Well later about that part but firstly about the fashion brigade called Paris. Everyday from dawn to when the metros and the RERs finally stop for the day late at night (lifelines of Paris, I take one everyday and I realise how important it is to my existence) , the streets of Paris seem to be transformed into big fashion ramps. The old, the young and even the kids on the street seem to be fashion concious and seem to be wearing something so chic, so fashionable that you can compare it with any of the glossy Vogues or Elles. So here I was in Paris where smooching on the streets is as common a sight as people peeing on Indian roads acheiving one of the rare dreams that I never thought would ever be possible. I got to watch a grand slam match (the French Open) at the Roland Garros. Even if it involved standing in the line for 3 long hours and being subjected to a real PITA sardar for some 6 hours yet at the end it was all worth it. The website of French Open apart from hosting an obscene amount of Maria Sharapova photos and thanking the sun for showing its face finally also talked in fineprints about entree de soir. Now going by my knowledge of French which is of as high quality as Jayalalitha's knowledge of Hebrew, I was able to understand that soir in French was evening. This was more to do with the complimentary copies of Direct Soir that are handed out every evening on the entrance of the La Defense station. So finally it was so deciphered from the site that evening tickets would be available for sale from 5 p.m for the last match of the day for seats that had got empty since morning. The optimistic sardar of MDI who had an opinion about almost every thing on earth wanted to see the best match that was being held in the Chartier court (a Nadal match) finally realised after about 40 minutes of waiting that it was not supposed to come our way. So finally Mr. Opinion had to change his opinion and shift to the second best. Thus we bought tickets for the Court 1 match without even knowing who was playing whom. A mere enquiry from a 40 something tennis enthusiast standing ahead of us in the line to get in the stadium about who was playing whom bought a sarcastic answer which sounded like McEnroe. Mr Opinion beleived in him and tennis enthusiast 40 something had a good laugh about this. Then there was another war of opinions between surd and tennis entusiast about Paes and Bhupati parting ways which slowly drifted off to discussions like if they were gay or not?

Hewitt was playing Nienmen (a Finnish guy) on court 1. The clay court's brown effect, the BNP Paribas green ads, Lacoste ads on the stands, the sheer power of Hewitt's serves, the stamina and of course the gibberish of Sardar made it all the more memorable. The sun shining down, the mexican wave and the match which lasted for 3 hours and the sheer stamina associated with it, enticed me. All in all it was a great day watching a great match which Hewitt one with his sheer stamina but with a Finnish guy giving him a tough time.