The French connection

Since I started this blog "n" number of people have asked me why I changed my name to Shruti Pense (read Pensey as in a Maharashtrian surname). Earlier on I was feeling extremely smart about having been creative about coining a blog id for myself. How flat it fell!!! I had to keep on explaining about Shruti being one of the names given to me in the cradle and that pense is def not Pensey but a French verb which means to THINK.... so literally it means that "Shruti thinks".... Oh well she can certainly do that huh..... surprising as it may sound to some! Being a Francophile I thought I could give my blog id a French connection but did not consider the fact that there would be a cross connection much like the way it is thrown up by our MTNL.
My French connection started when I was in the university and we had a cultural exchange between the 2 countries. I was a part of the group that visited France and earlier to that we had a group of French girls visiting India. Quite excited about going to a country of which I had only heard..... I landed on the French shores. Though I had travelled within the Indian subcontinent had never been to a Western country. I reached there all wide eyed... complete FOB....though I had taken the time to learn a bit of French just to tide me in case of emergency. How I thought it would tide me over is beyond me cos the first time I decided to use my meager vocabulary to ask for road directions it sent the Frenchman into an outburst of such volatile gesturing and rapid fire French that it could have competed with the TGV for speed. I realised I was lost in "all" ways! The pride I felt at having mastered a few useful lines from the travel books and having taken some tuitions from a French speaking aunt went to dust.... completely.
I stayed with a nice French family. Most of the other girls stayed in normal dysfunctional families (which was more the norm than having the required set of parents and grandparents). The girl.. I’ll call her Fifi... had this boyfriend... well we'll just call him BF (very original)... who was TFH ( that’s Tall/fair/handsome as against the pre-requisite in mills and boon TDH tall/dark/handsome). Since Fifi had visited India earlier I had a bit of know how of the French customs. The form of salutation being a hug and kiss on the cheek. Fifi introduced me to BF and as was the custom he approached me to hug me..... and Fifi screeched a loud "STOP" (read that with a French accent). BF stopped mid stride ( well you have to start men on house training very early if you want them to respond to the orders).... he had this big question mark on his face.... he asked Fifi what the problem was..... Fifi's profound answer being "She's Indian". I am telling you my Indian sensibilities always desert me in stressful times. For the life of me I couldn't get the connection. I was as puzzled as BF. So Fifi elaborated "You can't kiss her as she's Indian and they don't kiss". BF, the poor chap had no knowledge of India (probably only knew the latitude and longitude) went red in the face. It was then that I realised how good it is to be dark skinned. However embarrassed you are it doesn't show (after that I never touched Fair and lovely.... and after I told my friends this episode fair and lovely lost quite a few clients and devotees). Here I was in a Sita like situation wanting the earth to open up and swallow me but it didn’t show on my face at all, while BF’s face resembled a ripe strawberry.
There was another moment when BF went all fire engine red. Fifi, BF and I visited Lille. When we reached there we spent a long time searching for a car park. Finally we parked and when we went to the apartment, I saw a huge car park right in front of the building. I was surprised at having parked at a distance (cos it was very cold and my Indian bones had still not acclimatized and I was shivering, and after having braved the cold, I was a bit put off that BF had not used the car park close to the building). So I definitely did have to voice my question…. Which I did very politely and BF’s reaction was resembling a strawberry… finally when he got back to being TFH he told me that the car park opposite was used as a pick up site by gays. So he didn’t want to park there. In the 80’s I wasn’t even aware if there were any gays in Mumbai….. and imagine having a pick up site for them in France or rather in Lille which was small town compared to Paris….. really the difference between a developed and a developing nation has never been brought to me so starkly. As is said that whatever happens in a developed nation happens in a developing nation after about a 10-15yr gap, they were already out of the closet so to say where as I wasn’t even aware whether the closet existed in Mumbai. After that I kept my counsel about asking BF embarrassing questions and enjoyed my stay in Paris.
It was an enchanting 2 weeks for me. This was the time I fell in love with the very Bohemian Mont Martre. It’s my dream that someday I can go there armed with an easel and different colour mediums and of course with a bottle of lovely dry white wine and paint La Guee Paris in all it’s splendour. I just love the view from Mont Martre.
Getting back to Mumbai I would regale my family with anecdotes from my visit. Once I was visiting my uncle. He had a friend who had also visited Europe around the time I was there. This man was in his 40’s. He had also been an FOB as this had been his first trip to foreign shores. He was telling my uncle how things were in Europe and then he said when he was in Paris all he heard everywhere was (this conversation took place in Marathi so here goes) “Chakchuk chakchuk”… so my uncle was puzzled. He asked him what he meant by that. His friend replied that anywhere and everywhere he looked he would see people kissing/smooching etc(which certainly bothered his Indian sensibilities as the generation then was used to being shown two flowers meeting up instead of the hero and the heroine enjoying a romantic clinch). My uncle looked at me and said but she never told us about that. All eyes were on me and I felt as if I had been caught coming out of a cinema after watching an adult film. Very clinically I explained the rules of kissing in France as explained to me by Fifi. If you are just introduced to a person then on parting you give one kiss on the cheek….. if you meet up again and you have started knowing the person socially… 2 pecks on the cheek… on becoming better acquainted 3 pecks and if you become very good friends then 4 pecks. If you want to check this out all you do is take a metro ride. When a station approaches the sooner you hear the kissing sound the better friends they are… otherwise it’s just a peck and off the train :) I thanked my stars that this person had not visited the Latin quarter. Otherwise the poor chap would have been rendered speechless and had he mentioned the scene I would have had another Sita experience.
So here I end the story of my French connection. Hope you guys haven’t dropped off…. And if you are reading this line then you haven’t ,so I must thank you for bearing with me thus far. :)