Watercrafts by the seine

1

This episode occurred in one of the latter days of my stay in France. I was seated in a Parisian café at Boulevard Saint-Germain, fully lit with classic sapwood, and the eatery looked like a vessel, and the servers wore pirate berets. Algeria Somers, my companion of Asian travels, was to explain individual vagaries and I was also taking part in these intimate reviews. This was because of the fact that my better half temporarily left me for a respite in a cloister overlooking the Thessaly Plains. And as she said, she needs time for contemplation. Oh -that was quite fine of her. Because of these events, I was partially crushed and further was lost in reverie. But Mr. Somers was enjoying a version of Balzac as well as food, in his endless choice of foods, garlic bread, and corn cheese filling. I had tabbouleh. As some of the cafes had reverberations to the writers I cherished in youth, I bought some of these titles, such as "Sun also Rises'' summoning reminiscences of Hemingway readings in the University city where I lived for some years...

Now a couple came to the cafe, the most optimistic match, probably in the primary stages of conjugal bliss and obviously had much to take part in. Every good purport of the time, family aspirations or figments of a grand tomorrow. The young lady gazed into my eyes with all the precision and with a swift discharge of agitation grabbed my right hand and asked to my consternation, if I remembered her. Thia was almost overwhelming as I was in the haggard stages of old age and she in her angelic form in prime youth. I responded in negative.She mumbled, 'You bought me samosa in the Caxton Town'.Samosa is a famous Indian snack that I ate in the evenings during my sojourn in Asia, especially in Calcutta.

The name Caxton Town hurled a dazzling vibration to my heart. Yes, I abruptly recalled the wanderings around the amazing pastures with my friend, Aligheria. Watching the birds in their ligneous habitats.Those clubs of Woodswallows, Ioras, Shrikes and Monarch Grey Hypocolius, Larks, and Bulbuls... • And still, to my confoundment, thinking of the little lady who had such an effect on my life in the Caxton Town. I could not believe that the tiny girl who took samosa from me in one evening under a banyan tree could transform herself to such an extent. She said that she is an author now and taking one of the copies from the bag, extended it for me. The book had a plain black jacket with the name of the writer was on the cover and I had definitely heard the writer's name on my recent trip to a book celebration. Critics adulated the author's distinctiveness, the autopsy of the human mind and dynamic digressions in Laurence Sterne style. Instantly I felt delighted to see one of my former friends ascended to this estimated height and also the fact she recognized me in an eatery in Paris. She introduced her partner to me and told that I was her first mentor.

That was too generous of her. An exaggeration that confessed to her incorruptibility. This astounded me in a context when I noticed important people, even condemning their early mentors alive. One late occurrence was a famous soloist meeting his old mentor, who organized external tours, meeting the latter[in my presence], many years after, expressing, "Oh, we meet again", and swiftly turned to the more recent fans. He seemed to be more interested in the sale of recordings than honoring his first patron. These are the people who I think [not sure], go wrong to the grave, though I wish them otherwise. They have not been able to know the authentic thing in life.

2

My friend, A.Somers was to depart this midday as he got a call from his family. He proceeded to the apartment to collect the luggage...I really relished my walk in Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine, etching the brightest hues of Paris, that joined place de la Bastille and Place de la Nation which was signalized by a history of its own. It reminded of the “Bastille Storming” of 1789, an event considered as the beginning of the French Revolution. There was a traditional neighborhood nearby, a working-class type from the twelfth century, a center of trade and craft. I ate at a moderate restaurant, a bakery like a facade and some were coming and quitting with bright mackintoshes and ornate bonnets and were either talking about the past trips or the nearby destination. A cavalier opened a map from the gearbox and checked after keeping his camera down and his right limb crossed above the left one and after catching the call of a lady standing at the door, departed speedily and their mixed laughter like distant detonation echoed in the hall.There were much fervor and motion in the air.A couple of people dressed in cornflower blue and magenta pink were sipping a liquid at the next table. I selected an item, that was served as dense olio on a roof of injera, a fermented bread made from teff, a sort of old grain, that’s is an alternative to wheat. The food was savory and appeared Ethiopean.

There I met an old man and he had radiant eyes that seemed to look at you from another century and dressed in thick gaberdine and I thought he must be an offbeat sort of man and engaged in conversation. The old gentleman had a Johann Strauss II type beard, mustache, and sideburns. In the following dialogue which lasted for about an hour, we were talking mainly on beards as the old sire knew more about beards and mustaches than I knew about literature- In the fifteenth century, most European men were clean-shaven. Beards were allowed to grow in the sixteenth century, to an astonishing length, John Knox or Thomas Cranmer. Some beards of this time were the Spanish spade beard, the English square-cut beard, the forked beard, and the stiletto beard. In 1587 Francis Drake claimed, in a figure of speech, to have singed the King of Spain's beard. And he knew the whole story by heart. There were more growing and migrating groups of customers.

As I walked further into the boulevards, I met an aficionado, a companion on my morning walks and conversations about art and life, in general, took place. Although I have no profound insight into these areas, my hiking buddy has had interesting perspectives - who was connected to the art gallery of the Louvre and told me that many viewers took Mona Lisa to be a human being and not as a work of art, and used to do many acts of foolishness.

My friend Aligheria had left a note which I read now. A whimsical and sad stretch of minutes and I was incredibly surprised by the chain of thoughts. He had suffered some private wounds and had held back revealing them, perhaps looking for a better opportunity to share with me. The story of a mind that went truants and its annoying recollections, and a disease that began a few months ago and also some voices and dreams which troubled him. I had a similar experience in Warwickshire, hearing a sound of melody from a closed-door, in a manor house that had some Robert Bruce connections. A musical bell from the nearby room, which, somebody told was the visitation of a feudal count, who was a composer in his lifetime and on whose life, volumes were drafted. Later, these turned to be a big hoax. Through a messenger, I sent a note back to wrote back to Aligheria that he was, after all into many tough journeys corporally and intellectually, and his brain cannot apparently accommodate all that heavy stuff, and he needed sound repose or rest and probably simple walks in country greens, as a remedy. And about the voices, I have no knowledge about such questions so as to pass a judgment. Still, he should investigate it rather than believe blindly, and history abounds in such fabrications. He called me and asked me the name of someone seriously into these areas. I told him that presently no, still I shall try to find out someone. After that, and after a good gap, I made a friendly call, and we laughed simply, just to hear the sound of each other's laughter.

This note I felt quite sad to read and this was an additional labor for my brain and took my thought to several of our wanderings together in various parts of India. I have always liked it in a romantic way that life is the same wherever - human beings, gentlemen or ladies have the same kind of predicaments, although some nuances in this fabric are darker or weaker than the others, and a course from murk to light or from daylight to gloom is a relative story. I spent quite a lot of time in the streets and cafes with bas-reliefs to find sustenance.

In the present, in this Paris of the past, a mighty stream called The Seine flows, in its ever-widening and grabbing virtue, inspiring writers and performers, and explorers of all season, approaching to a radial net holding civilization on both sides with 777 kilometers of trail. I liked it anyhow and tried to put some of my sentiments in it like any traveler.Like Ms. Bovary or Hugo, this river termed Sena, once Sequana of Dijon, is a timeless entity that can influence. Maybe I will not come again. Maybe I will come again numerous times. But that does not matter.Sena, in this navigable holden, in pallid and cerulean essence. And individuals who have bought vessels and lived in pontoons and boats, crafts, which transmits trade articles and so on. I spent a day in the library as I used to do in India when there is enough time at hand. With a hundred or two hundred rupees per day, I can have the most amazing life in India, spending an hour on the benches of Connemara.

3

Paris is different. Please leave me for some time, when I recollect these old tales of war and love on both the banks of a river. How many tracks have transpired, amazingly wonderful, and still how could one retain that original splendor? This tenderness and history are fed into a certain part of my brain in order to get revived later. I took a cruise. The Eiffel Tower. There was a restaurant on the second floor. It was at Pont-Neuf, which was really the oldest.The nineteenth-century marvel. Notre Dame with its statues on the outside. And also Sainte-Chapelle with equally great Gothic spells. I have had some setbacks in the past few months, but that does not take away my freedom as a man on this planet.

In this royal realm, I will wander for an hour if breath allows with great enthusiasm -more viewing, more living, more engaging and exploring. Maybe we live once. Who knows for sure? Amazingly, I was also not ready to adjust to the spasms of the legs and joint torments that were upsetting me in the hiking. Paris remained vague, in dim sanctuary chambers, boulevards, and cafes and later in a growing diary of memories with lots of footnotes by various scholars. Causes, destinies, and challenges as in an epic story that can be rewritten by another author.

In my case, some disillusion apart, this was a lovely excursion. In the sense, I met you. River, I'm communicating to you. I have to assume that it is astonishing, sure. Furthermore, this is a felicitous comfort in moments of affliction as well as times calm. Before Sena, I bow down, humble to the last threshold of humility.A lady leaning down in the footsteps at the back of a rostrum. Another crouching figure may be a child, each by the side of the other, as a blanket to the other in a snowy landscape. And a fog that meets a few more frosty trees at a distance and receiving accolades from unknown hands.

I went to the left bank that had an offbeat aura with a diverse group of its guests, craftsmen, travelers, bards, vagabonds, and couples lost in their own dreams and gentlemen in waterproof and oilskins to adorn these winter days.From my small salon, I make a glance at this grand virtuoso not as an apprentice, but from an impartial point of view. Sena in manifold tones, similar to a great darling who gave her heart for a reason for the posterity to cajole, looking for treasures that are not of these worlds. In this life everything will be better than ever in the last scrutiny, I assured myself.

I saw it now, a colorful watercraft sliding to the bank with bantam sailcloths, not for some explicit utility, but for elegance and embellishment. And the mysterious sign on its frontispiece of my wife and mine at the betrothal season, with initials in stygian blue and crimson characters inscribed on it. Am I imagining it when once before taking the keys and throwing at the Pont de Arte? I asked a passerby who the owner of the watercraft was, and he answered that it was dedicated by a princess of Indian origin to her lover, for the poor passengers who can not afford a ride and wished it in the beautiful waters. And the lover had a name similar to mine. The envoy said he obtained this knowledge from an architect who is managing the watercraft in this season.

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