In the long bygone days, before smartphones and unlimited data, I was holidaying alone in the fascinating Paris. Well, technically ‘alone’ was a bit of a stretch as I was visiting a friend but this, for me, was high adventure. As the highly cloistered baby of the family, (with a protective dragon for an older sister), I had never really needed to confidently navigate the real world by myself. My inherent reticence meant I was neither adventurous, nor exceptionally brave. And having been always chaperoned made me awkward, apprehensive and rather timid amongst strangers. And here I was now, half a world away from India and my comfort-zone.
Day two in Paris I had planned to tag along with Vijay, to wait at his university library while he finished his exam, so that we could go see the Eiffel Tower. We were running to catch the metro when, in typical Hollywood fashion, he got onto the packed train with my backpack, just as the door slid shut and I got left behind on the platform. In panic, I managed to muster a watery smile and a half-hearted wave through the glass pane of the departing train to let him go on to his exam. All I was left with was my rudimentary cell phone, the metro day pass and some loose change in my pocket – in an unknown city, at an unacquainted metro station, amidst an unfamiliar language with 4 hours to kill.
The next train brought me to Cardinal Lemoine which the metro map showed would take me to the Pantheon. But once outside, the narrow, winding lanes and lack of signage had me lost within minutes and I found myself looping back in circles. I had no map for reference, phone GPS was not yet a thing and my timid appeals for help went unheeded by the French who typically disregard all conversations in English. I cursed the language or rather my lack of it, the unfriendliness of the people and regretted my decision to travel at all. However, I refused to give up and return. An eon of fruitless meandering later, bitterly cold, bone tired and nearly in tears I chanced upon a bus stop with a large printed map - Victory!
Much later, as I made my way back from the Pantheon, the appealing aroma from a crêpery and a gnawing hunger stopped me in my tracks. A warm crêpe sounded just perfect in the sharp November chill, but I calculated that I was nearly 2 euros short. I sadly smiled and shook my head at the enquiring chef and mimed my lack of adequate money and would have walked away had he not stopped me with a compassionate hand on my arm. He took the few coins from my hand and made me a most decadent egg and ham crêpe oozing with a mountain of melty cheese, the taste of which I have yet to replicate. This experience changed something within me, I suddenly realised that the world wasn’t so alien or terrifying after all; with a some perseverance from me, a little courage and a teensy bit of kindness of strangers I could pretty much handle anything.
In the following two months I learnt to appreciate and admire the refined elegance, passionate sensuality, restrained flamboyance, romantic sentimentality and subtle snobbery of the grand old dame that is Paris. I climbed the 300 steps up Montmartre to pay my respects at Sacré-Cœur Basilica and 669 steps up the Eiffel Tower; I walked the streets of Pigalle and got propositioned by a smiling Frenchman outside Moulin Rouge, sighed in awe of the Masters’ at the Louvre and ate the most luscious salmon rillettes at a quaint café on the banks of Seine. And best of all, I did it all by myself. Travelling alone terrified me, it exhilarated me, it overwhelmed me, it stirred me - the one thing it did not let me do is slip back into being a bashful wallflower ever again. Traveling alone was eye opening. Lost, in those winding lanes of Paris, with neither a friend, nor funds or French to depend on I found what I didn’t expect to find – Me!
