Hospitality, Veynes-Style

I had met him in Cameroon, more than a year ago at a Francophonie conference. He glowered at me as my translator slowed the day to a crawl.

Some translated fights later, we found common ground. Nobody was as mad about Africa’s weird fruit as he and I were. We could have written poetry on Cassabonga, if only we could agree on what language.

I went back to Mumbai, and he to his wife and three children in a little village up in the Alps. The odd e-mail dropped, I replied. Then I bragged in 45k mails about watermelons in January and the alphonsos in June. He retaliated with apple trees in his backyard and lurid details of pig slaughter and sausage-making. For an entire year, it was war.

I had a stopover in France and he coaxed: ‘‘Come visit. It’s so easy to get to Veynes. Come, we will take you skiing.’’

Liar. The wrinkled finger of a co-traveller on the plane slowly traced Lyon to Veynes, ‘‘four hours,’’ he said, folding a map as big and bulky as a Jaipuri bedcover. When Philippe visits me, I vowed, I’ll buy him a ticket for Patna instead of Goa.

I met him next morning, after a moonlight ride in a bus and a three-hour train ride up into the Alps. He introduced me to his wife, Aline. The two married when they were 18. Now one works for a couple of years and the other takes care of Celia, Hugo and Lea. Aline is a psychiatrist and it is her turn to work.

He threw my clean, black VIP suitcase onto the caked mud in the boot of his car. I smiled. I’ll tell him the best month to visit Mumbai is August so that he can wade through filthy, waist-high water to reach my office.

The house took my breath away. Two-storeyed, surrounded by fields of grass with massive windows facing a river and a mountain. The trees, however, were all bare. No apples, no almonds, no plums. “It’s your fault, you’ve come too early,’’ he had the gall to say.

The ‘river’ was a stream of melted snow from the mountains, with water cold enough to think you’ve got an electric shock. “He manages 15 full minutes in the water in the summer,’’ said Aline, shaking her head.

Inside the house, he showed off. “Everything belongs to his grandfather,” said Aline. The wood, that he had to rip off the floor and redo all winter because it had got something untranslatable, was back in place. Inside a magnificent storeroom lay apples from last summer and “our beloved pig’’ lined up in airtight bottles and a neat row of sausages in the freezer. But it was Hugo’s birthday.

Celia, a teenager and the eldest daughter, returned home to pack 80 sweets, separately, with used wrapping paper. Then we drove three miles to sled. I borrowed Hugo’s shoes and Philippe wore his grandfather’s glasses. We huffed and puffed up the snowy mountain for one hour, and zzzukk! We were back where we had begun in three minutes. Bah.

Then he asked if I’d like to see a 1,000-year-old church. “It’s magnificent,” Philippe raved.

Of course, it had to be locked. We walked around yelling for the caretaker and the restless wind in the trees replied. We read the names on the gaudy graves and then Celia and I decided to look for the key. Philippe had to pull Celia away as she nearly pulled off a loose 1,000-year-old stone step.

The birthday meal was lovely. Philippe baked a dish which went like this: Sauté onions, add an equal amount of sheep’s meat and add salt and pepper. Whisk six egg whites till they become snow and pour it on the meat. Lightly sprinkle with sugar (!) and bake it for 45 minutes. Anything tastes good after two glasses of wine and jazz from 50 years ago, and this Chilean dish did.

We drove out into the chill and the moonlight. At least, Philippe had the decency to order a full moon, though unnaturally big.

For once, I wasn’t complaining.

Back to the spot we went sledding. Moonlight on snow is enough to read hands by. We trudged up till our hearts began to hammer. I remembered how to climb on snow from the afternoon before. Bang your shoe into the snow, find balance and then the next foot.

I let him sing and whistle and dissect our Cameroon trip; I had more respect for the scene around me. An hour-and-a-half and we stopped. We sat, looked around and my tearless eyes began to water—from the wind, the moment—and then I felt the snow under me.

Strapped to the skis, they carefully took me down one slope. No balance. I gave up. It was the sled for me and Aline. Philippe became a slow black dart on white, leaving an iridescent trail behind. And as Aline kicked with her feet and we started on the sled, she later tells me, I yelled all the way from the top of the mountain till we stopped.

The rooster woke me up at 10.00 am. I had a breakfast of fresh croissants sitting outside with a massive mountain, bright sun and a chilly wind for company. Some strange insects had been kept on the table to be sunned. And the beautiful white cat Moumoune.

In turns, Lea played Fantaisie Russe on her violin, Hugo played the big set of drums and Celia played flawless Andantino on the piano and I realised I had discovered the present-day Von Trapps. Philippe is a classical singer and Aline, a guitarist.

Before lunch, we walked down to the village and there was not a soul on the street and not one shop open. “They follow strict lunch time,” Philippe explained. We walked up and down narrow streets with houses all shades of pastel and came upon a magnificent almond tree in full bloom.

Late afternoon, the children were dragged to a nearby lake for a picnic. Fringed with weeping willows (“crying trees,” insisted this Frenchman) and tall reeds, children from a primary school have written a book on the lake about a witch and the marsh and how she left diamonds around every time she planned a catastrophe. Everybody carried a reed like an oversized bayonet on their shoulder and walked a full circle around the lake with a perfect reflection of a snowy peak.

At 10.00 pm, my skiing weekend in the Alps ended. We shivered as we waited for the overnight train to Paris. A bottle of pig paté in my knapsack. We are so happy you came, Aline said. Come to India, I invited them.

At seven in the morning, I stood right under the Notre Dame waiting for the train to the airport reading the The Little Prince. The Eiffel Tower was two stations away. I had enough time to go and see both. Then Mr Exupery wrote: “What is essential is invisible to the eye….” And I didn’t go. Would anybody, after they’ve gone moonlight skiing?