Monday, March 06, 2006

Paris Unlimited - Chapter 2

The flight began it’s descent at about 6 in the morning. Brad did not get any butterflies in his stomach as most normal people would experience. He was so used to flying, that a flight take-off or a landing was as normal as drinking a good cup of freshly brewed coffee. The air outside the airplane was all foggy obstructing his vision of the terminal. He couldn’t wait to see if his decision of moving to a different country was a good one or not. He had admitted to himself that it was an impulsive decision, one taken in the heat of the moment; one that spread over 6 months.

As the flight captain took his time to bring the plane to a stop, Brad’s mind wandered over to New York. The clubs, coffee shops, the subway tunnels, the parks, the rivers, every place that he saw reminded him of Elixa. He knew that there was no escape if he continued to live in New York. He had to banish her thoughts in order to be happy. His optimism reassured him that ‘happiness’ was still an option; a choice that he could make. He decided to move to Paris for sometime. He knew he was running away from the place, he wished he could run away from reality. A break-up always brought out the escapist in him. He had done it before with Kim, and now he was doing it again.

Inhaling the fresh morning Parisian air for the first time, he felt alive after a very long time. The morning sun had burnt up the fog by then. With not much money in his pockets, or a very strong bank balance anywhere, he smiled at the adventure that awaited him in Paris. Bonjour Paris.

The first challenge came by way of placing a phone call to M. Hubert, (Monsieur gets shorted to M. unlike Mister that gets shortened to Mr.) his would-be landlord. M. Hubert had assured him over email that all what he had to do was to buy a pre-paid phone card at the terminal and place a call at a particular number. As he looked around for a shop at the terminal that could possibly sell a phone card, he thought of dear Ms. Cathy.

Brad felt guilty that he hadn’t got the opportunity to thank Ms. Cathy for all her help before he boarded his flight. Ms. Cathy spoke French and whilst in the United States, had acted as his interpreter in his search for apartments in Paris. Brad searched the internet daily for apartments to rent. He was open to being a roommate or a paying guest or just about anything that would put a roof over his head for a pittance. Every evening, Brad would sit with Ms. Cathy and the English to French dictionary, and talk to potential roommates who always wanted to meet him before they could decide on anything. Brad was beginning to resign to the fact that he would have to spend some money on cheap hotel rooms in Paris before moving in somewhere. And then, one fine morning, somebody had left a message on his voice mail in a thick French accent, stating that he would be willing to accommodate him in Paris. That was kind-hearted M. Hubert who took the trouble to place an overseas call to him, a month back.

The entire luggage weighed a total of 170 pounds, and Brad had done an excellent act of balancing them over one and other over the trolley cart. He trudged along, pushing the cart through the talkative crowd. Since he didn’t know the language, the chatter in the air, the music, and the announcements, all seemed like one solid ball of noise. He didn’t seem to catch any French word. Brad looked at the thin book that he was reading throughout the flight and a whole month before that, memorizing helpful phrases and words, but no word was getting registered in his head at that time. Clutching onto the trolley, he looked around for a friendly face.

A airport attendant walked by. Brad stopped her with a “Excusez moi!”.

“Oui?”, the female inquired with a concerned look. Like every other air terminal attendant, she probably got stopped a lot by tourists who didn’t speak French.

Without realizing that he had just uttered his first French words, he asked the woman whether she spoke English, in his own version of broken French, “Parlez vous Anglais?”. The niceties of attaching a ‘madame’ or a ‘madamoiselle’ were yet to be learnt.

Her ‘Yes’, seemed like the sweetest words to his ears. Enthusiastically, he asked where he could buy a phone card. In halted English and a very cute accent, she directed him to a shop at the terminal. Thanking her profusely, Brad started pushing his cart back to where he had started from. It had been exactly 30 minutes after he had claimed his baggage.

He stood in front of the pink phone where all the instructions were written in French, which did not make any sense to him. M. Hubert was informed of his flight timings, and had requested him to come to Opera using the shuttle bus, and that he would pick Brad up from there. Brad had been instructed to call M. Hubert from a blue phone and accordingly M. Hubert would wait in front of Opera in his car.

After about 10 minutes, Brad was beginning to doubt his visual capabilities, as a blue phone was not in sight at all. Continuing with his search dragging the heavy luggage, he was beginning to get frustrated that he hadn’t learned the language in the past 6 months. Right then, the blue phone peeked at him.

Brad stared at ‘Décrocher’ that appeared on the LCD screen of the blue phone. What could the phone possibly want him to do other than pick up the receiver, he thought to himself. Better safe than sorry, he fumbled through the dictionary to learn the meaning of the word. He struck his head, when the dictionary translated the unknown word to ‘Pick up (the receiver)’. Brad realized that he was beginning to fathom the depth of the iceberg that language difficulties would pose for him. It was going to be a grueling experience, but it was going to be fun, he hoped.

The phone card had instructions in English thankfully. Brad dialed the 4-digit number after picking up the receiver as directed in the 2nd instruction, the first being ‘to pick up the receiver’.

The next instruction was to dial the number that he wanted to reach, but he was interrupted by an automated female voice at the other end. She spoke in a robotic tone, but it was difficult for him to understand. Brad repeated the entire procedure of picking up the receiver and dialing the 4 digit number a couple of times until the female voice began to make sense, ‘Composez votre numero, sil vous plait’. Brad struck the receiver against his forehead this time.

He reached M. Hubert’s voice mail which presumably was asking him to leave a message. He realized that he would have to rely on assumptions, presumptions, and instincts to survive from here on. Brad didn’t realize that he would have to rely on a lot many more things as the future unfurled slowly and surely. He meekly left a message saying that he was at the airport, and would be at Opera in sometime.

M. Hubert had politely declined to receive Brad at the airport, as parking was extremely troublesome at Charles de Gaulle airport. Instead, he volunteered to wait at Opera as that would be easier. Without giving it a thought, Brad agreed to meet M. Hubert at Opera. Brad assumed that Opera was a place close to the airport and as per the instructions provided by M. Hubert, he was to catch a shuttle bus and he would be at Opera in no time.

It had taken a little less than an hour to make a phone call, Brad wondered, how much time would it take to find the shuttle bus that would take him to Opera. After traveling the entire length of the airport twice, he had discovered that ‘naivette’ stood for ‘bus’, and that he was one step closer to reaching Opera. All what he had to do was to look for a ‘naivette’ that would take him to Opera now. He looked at all the numbered bus terminals wondering which one would take him to M. Hubert.

Brad listened to the person who was helping a good-looking lady load bags into the bus, and then almost suddenly held her hand and started ostensibly flirting with her. He couldn’t understand the words, but the body language was loud and clear. The lady coyly shirked away, but the helper wouldn’t give up. Clearly, the non-French lady didn’t understand much of what her admirer was saying, but politely declined to reciprocate. Cautiously, Brad approached him for directions for the bus to Opera.

As if the words were bulleted for him on an imaginary blackboard, Brad stammered a ‘bonjour’ and waited for a customary ‘bonjour’ response, the norm in France.

“Je voudrais naivette Opera.” That sentence, if directly translated in to English would be, ‘I would like bus Opera’.

The amorous guy refused to comprehend the grammatically incorrect sentence forcing Brad to make himself more clear. Undeterred, Brad persisted with more grammatically incorrect sentences and incorrect spellings in his head, ‘Naivette Opera? Vous Connais’. Adding the extra, supposedly, ‘you know?’ The man just looked away. Brad scanned the area for somebody who would probably be more helpful than the helper standing in front of him.

(To be continued...)