An Evening In Paris

Arriving in Paris I swore that on no circumstance would I pander to the urge to showboat "that tower". It is too touristy and no one wants to look at that damn tower anymore, but like other star struck tourists I thought I have discovered "the shot", and so, another addition to the boring subject is here.

I wanted originality, something of Paris from angles which have not been looked at. Very high aspiration indeed, instead I ended with the mundane and forgettable shots. I thought it would be high culture, instead it was haggling with the Pakistani vendor at Pigalle over  tacky cheap souvenirs.

And it rained incessantly. It was not possible to go out and not be soaked. We did not try to brave the rain as it was freezing cold. After a few days the sky lifted and we had sunshines. Our sojourn coincided with the Id and we took the opportunity to celebrate with the Paris citizens at the renowned Paris Mosque. Unfortunately we missed the sermon. It would be nice to know in what language the sermon was delivered, French or Arabic ? The crowd was mostly of North African descent, so more probably it would be Arabic. If so, Islam would remain a foreign religion in France, and would remain outside the pale of the majority of the French. If you speak a foreign tongue it would be extremely difficult to reach out to the local group and Islam in France would remain parochial and race based.

But seriously, I cannot see the religion of Islam making any meaningful headway in this country. The structure of the religion itself is anathema to the Gallic culture. How on earth can you get a Frenchman from the heart of France to forego their wine, their national pride for thousand of years. It must be retold that in "The Tale of Two Cities" the citizens of Paris practically scooped the spilt wine from the ground with their bare hands, for a chance to imbibe it,  it just confirm the height and the depth this alcoholic beverage occupied in the  esteem of the people here. Asides from Judaism, Islam is the only religion that outlaw certain food and drinks and condemned its followers to permanent residence in hell for transgression of the dietary rules. With such impossible gulf between the twain, it shall never meet, unless the people is subjugated by force, a situation that will not happen more so after the Battle of Tours more than a thousand years ago. Even coexistence is barely tolerated as evidenced by the constant bickering between the government and the Muslims in France.

As a cyclist I kept a watch out for the cycling habit of the people in this city. Bicycles were available for rental from docking points around Paris. There were many docking points scattered around the city for bicycle renting. One could pick a bicycle from one point and return it to a different point. I thought of trying the renting but the system  appeared complicated to me and further more it was winter and the idea of cycling perished with the freeze.  I heard this public bicycle for hire scheme is highly successful and very popular among the cycling fraternity here.

The first time I was in Paris was in 1987, not counting the transit on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to London in 1984 by Pakistan Airline where we waited for the stopover in the Paris airport lounge. The price of the return economy class ticket then, was RM1,300.00 and what a journey it was. We departed from Subang International Airport around 10.00 pm by Airbus, tracked down south to Singapore to pick up passengers and then flew to Colombo for another stop where we arrived around midnight local time. I remember getting down from the plane to the terminal and was shocked to see people lying down on the floor sleeping. Like a coach journey, some passengers ended their flight here and some boarded. After Colombo we reached Karachi in the early morning and this time  every body  had to get down to the terminal and onward passengers were issued new boarding passes for the next leg to London this time by  B 747. It was an old creaky aircraft, my seat was falling apart but it was my first time on a jumbo jet and the excitement from the  novelty sort of evened out the anxiety. A lot of 'Shukriahs' later we touched down at Frankfurt around afternoon. We were not allowed to disembark but from the opened door I took photographs of white men doing manual jobs. Horrors, as all the while I had thought the white were a superior race of 'sahibs' dispensing orders to the 'coolies' to pick up the 'changkuls'. The notion of racial superiority now safely deflated,  we then flew to Paris where on descending I had my first sight of the tower. The final leg, at last, was London and we arrived in Heathrow late afternoon. The reason I am recalling this journey is to compare the time taken and the choices available to fly from Kuala Lumpur to London then and now. Aircrafts were not advanced enough to fly direct, refueling was necessary at some half way points. The cheaper the tickets, the more stops you have to endure. Today with non stop flight it only takes 12 hours as opposed to almost 24 hours then. But it is not as bad as it sound. One pound was only RM3.00, and a penny was not a coin to be sniffed at, as a Tube ride was 30p, Times 20p and London Bridge to Brockley return train fare 60p. B & B was 10 Pounds per person and the girl at the Marks & Spencer cash till looked at me as a celebrity by calling her friends to marvel at the 100 Pound note I handed to pay for the purchase.

In 1987, Paris was the last city I visited, on a train journey through Brussels, Strasbourg, Milan, Amsterdam, Geneva and Lucerne. After 17 days of rail travel, I was dead tired and was only looking forward to finish the business and just go home.  With 2 small kids in tow, it was a blur, arriving at strange places for the first time, hunting for accommodation, searching for food and sustenance, changing money, overcoming the language barriers, they all took a toll on my stamina. Europe that I saw was reduced to train journeys, train stations and hotel rooms with no energy left for anything else. That was the last of my attempt to see as much in the shortest time.

We had to apply for visa to enter France but not for other countries that I went to. The currency was French Francs and similarly Holland with their Guilders, Switzerland Swiss Francs and Italy Liras. The Italian Liras denomination was very small, something like hundreds of thousands for 100 US Dollars. Every time you crossed the border, you have to convert and to make it easy I brought US Dollars. Whenever the train crossed a border, immigration officers will board at the last stop to check our passports like the train conductors checking the tickets, and it meant that the passengers did not need to disembark for passport control like you did on Singapore-Malaysia or do on Malaysia- Thai crossings.

As Paris was my last stop then, I had been acquainted with the booking of accommodation through the information booths in the train terminal. Reservation was confirmed at the station and you were directed to the hotel that was booked. But in smaller towns when you arrived without reservation it was still plodding the streets asking for vacancies, and walking with luggage on your shoulders was not a joke. Then I tried leaving the baggage and family at the station and went hunting for hotel rooms alone. Both were not satisfactory and the best deal was always the information booth, time saving and less taxing on your energy reserve.

By the way, the title of this post is a tribute to the legendary Hindi actor, Shami Kapoor, who passed away a few days ago and is taken from a Hindi movie of the same name which he starred with Sharmila Tagore. The story is improbable but the shots of Paris are great. It is Paris in the 60s and if you followed the movie you could see that asides from the pesky scooters (model  Lambretta),  Paris today still remain refreshingly unchanged. One lovely aspect of Paris is that its architecture is frozen in time. 

From Kuala Lumpur to Paris we fly by Malaysian Airline, manned by these two fine pilots who let me a peek into their cockpit for this photo op.

We arrive into the wet, cold and gloomy Paris, it rains and it rains, and the streets shine like silver.

The hot crepes keep the cold away

A lonely pigeon in Paris

Really, if you must get a shot, try Trocadero as it is elevated and you can get interesting angles.

We join the faithful at Paris Mosque celebrating Id.

A shot of the Paris Mosque

After the Id prayers and later in the evening, we join the tourists in Champs Elysee to gawk at the Christmas lights.

He is happy because the customer is ready to pay, Turkish food for us as it is cheap and filling

A unique view of the distant Sacre Coeur bathed in the early morning golden winter sunshine, taken from our flat at Rue de Les Courbet.