The man who owned the firm that published James Joyce stood in his doorway on the Rue de la Bucherie, regaling us about his ‘Bombay connection.’ Small world? Or was is a reminder of the appeal an Indian city has around the globe? When Ernest Hemingway first arrived in Paris in 1921, he rented a hotel room in the Latin Quarter where social life centered around the cafés on the boulevard Montparnasse. Hemingway wrote here in the daytime when there were few people to disturb him. Afterwards, he would walk down to Sylvia Beach’s bookstore, Shakespeare & Company. For expatriate writers like him, it was a meeting point, an information bureau, a lending library where Hemingway was a daily visitor. For his and Joyce’s sake, a couple of Indian hacks on a shoestring budget had trudged across the length of Paris on a literary pilgrimage. What we found was a quaint-looking store by the Seine with a plaque outside which said James Joyce’s Ulysses was first published here. We worked our way through a labyrinth of rooms, alcoves and stairways lined with bookshelves until we found someone sitting behind a writing desk, willing to talk in English. Turned out, he had even visited India. ‘‘This place is now owned by George Whitman, who was himself fascinated by India.’’ Ensconced in tranquil surroundings, the place was a bishop’s vineyard and a Jesuit retreat before the French Revolution forced the city to create space for more bodies. It didn’t make an impression on the tradition-loving French at first, so they transferred a heap of famous corpses there. Soon it became trés chic to dump your relatives at Pere La Chaise. Remember the Count of Monte Cristo at Valentine’s funeral. ‘‘The weather was dull and stormy, a cold wind shook the few remaining yellow leaves from the boughs of the trees, and scattered them among the crowd which filled the boulevards. M. de Villefort, a true Parisian, considered the cemetery of Pere la Chaise alone worthy of receiving the mortal remains of a Parisian family.’’ No one pays better tribute to the dead then the French. And there could be no better place than Pere la Chaise to dwell on the mortal condition and the immortality of souls. But it’s best to go there on one’s own. While you take in the serenity which reminds you of the fleeting nature of all life, you don’t want your travelling companions telling you to get a move on lest you miss seeing the Eiffel Tower. Talking about the Tower and the overrated view from it, the city is much better served by Montmartre, its highest hill, which is rich in the gypsum from which plaster of Paris is made. Topped by the Sacré-Coeur basilica, it’s the last village in the big city and has a unique atmosphere. Walking at random, you will discover gardens, old houses and steep streets with magnificent views on Paris. What’s more, if you are from Mumbai, it will remind you of Altamount Road and the decline of old wealth. The roads up and down the hill, flanked on both sides by quiet bungalows often in need of a fresh coat of paint, are evocative of one of Mumbai’s best neighbourhoods. The cafés, dance halls, and studios of Montmartre have been immortalised by painters from Toulouse-Lautrec to Picasso. You go past the many painters of the Place du Tertre who are always ready to sketch out your face, and they remind you of pennyless artists who lived there in the early 20th century (Renoir, Monet, Van Gogh and Picasso among others). We chanced upon a house Van Gogh lived in along with his brother Theo during his days of extreme hardship. There could have been no more awe-inspiring moment to complete a visit.
