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On Saturday, Anjali climbed with Aasha up a steep Montmartre hill. Basilique de Sacré Cœur loomed at the top. Anjali was feeling a bit ragged. All the men that they had stood near on the Metro, all the guys they passed in the street, all were staring at Aasha, who was shaking out her long black hair and striding as though she knew she looked great. Her hard heels rapped assurance on the cobbled street. The sound rang between the stone buildings, so close to each other in the narrow rue.
With each rap, Anjali felt worse. She had a big nose with a strange bump on it when viewing her in profile. Her face looked better with short hair around it, so Anjali had had it chopped off in feathered layers. She felt envious of Aasha’s looks—and the confidence she enjoyed because of them. Anjali fought to let go of it. If she loved Aasha, she would be happy for her. She decided to at least be willing to be happy for her.
Just then a tall young Frenchman, with a balding head and exquisitely trimmed dark beard and mustache, approached them as he descended the hill.
“You look like an angel,” he said to Aasha in passing, admiring her.
Anjali would never have anybody say that about her. She thought, I’m willing to try to be willing to be happy for Aasha. Her shoulders drooped. As usual, she was fading next to this luminous flower of the East, as a colonizing, patronizing Brit in the days of the Raj might have said.
The two young women ascended the last incline.
“Almost there,” Aasha gasped.
And finally they reached the place at the top of the hill, with the steps to the basilique leading even further upward. They paused to look over the city.
“What’s that ugly black skyscraper in the middle of the city’s low, white buildings?” Aasha asked.
“That’s the Montparnasse Tower, silly, where I work!” Anjali poked her in the ribs.
“It’s an eyesore,” Aasha said.
Anjali was silent, feeling like one herself. A group of young men near them were looking right past Anjali at Aasha.
“I love the view from this spot. You can see that Paris is a small city,” Aasha said. “You can cross it by Metro in less than an hour, even though it makes eighteen stops within city limits. Nothing like Mumbai.”
“It’s a pearl of a city,” Anjali said.
Aasha’s and Anjali’s parents were friends. Aasha had forged the way to Paris as a young single Indian woman, and Anjali was grateful because she didn’t think her parents would have agreed if Aasha’s hadn’t. Aasha had preceded Anjali to Paris by one week. It was enough to put Aasha forever in the role of expert.
They lingered over the view, and then agreed without speaking that it was time to tour the basilique. They climbed the steps and went in the door on the left.
Signs posted around called for silence and no photography. They took a circuit around the edge of the basilique, stopping to look at each chapel. Then they took seats in the front half of the church.
The mosaic of Jesus above the altar captured Anjali’s eyes. He was portrayed by the artist as the most important figure, with much smaller figures facing him. The folds of his robe, the fingers of his hands, the expression on his face, were portrayed by tiny pieces of colored tile. Anjali thought, the artist wrought a miracle, using hard bits to give Jesus a kingly yet compassionate face.
She pondered the mosaic and felt her spirits lift as she identified with the huge effort that had gone into making it. The artist had painstakingly chosen one piece after another until millions of pieces made a picture, telling a story that moved human hearts. As a writer, she did the same thing, choosing word after word, nearly one hundred thousand words for a novel, considerably less for a screenplay, but with the same goal—touching hearts.
The girls stood and walked to the exit. Outside, in the sun, with the city spread at their feet, they stood and gazed.
“I love this city,” Anjali said.
“You’ll never be the same for coming here,” Aasha said. “You should be proud of yourself.”
“We both should be.”
“I can only stay three months,” Aasha said. “Not that I want to stay longer. Lucky for you, you were born in Pondicherry. You could stay forever if you wanted to.” Pondicherry was a former French colony, and its citizens automatically had French passports.
“Being born of parents from traditional, restrictive old Pondicherry ought to have some upside to it,” Anjali said.
“Thank God they moved to Mumbai, don’t you think? So much more progressive.”
Not that Aasha was all that progressive, Anjali thought.
“But growing up in Mumbai, we were caught between two worlds,” Anjali said. “Our parents let us ‘hang out’ with friends, but only until the sacred curfew. Remember lying that we had to go meet our study group, so we could leave and go home without looking uncool?”
“Yeah.”
Aasha doesn’t seem to feel the constraints the way I do, Anjali thought.
Just then a couple went by chatting in French, the girl wearing a short flippy skirt and deeply scooped blouse. There must have been a push-up bra under the blouse.
”Look at how Parisian women dress: everything so short, so much cleavage. It’s so different from India,” Anjali said.
“Don’t you think they ought not to reveal so much, to keep a little mystique?”
“But it’s so free!” Anjali had been eyeing a blouse in a boutique window that would reveal a little cleavage. If she bought it, her parents, if they visited, must never see it amongst her things, must never see it by accident on social media. What if Aasha posted a photo of her in it? No, she wouldn’t buy it.
They began to stroll back down the hill to Les Abbesses Metro.
“So tell me,” Aasha, said, “what’s your first impression of the French?”
“They seem reserved. And they wear so much black.” It had been a shock after riotously colorful India. “How about you?”
“I think these are crazy people,” Aasha said. “They are only thinking about themselves, all into themselves, thinking of nobody else. I don’t know how they ever had an empire.”
“Aasha!”
“I’m glad to have three months here, but I’ll be glad to get back and get married.” Aasha was engaged, and the wedding was scheduled. “And what about you?” she teased.
“I want the full year in Paris that my parents and Ravi’s parents agreed to.”
“They must be proud of their future daughter-in-law spending a year in Paris. It makes them look so progressive.”
“Yes, but they’re also worried that I’ll get ideas and won’t end up a good wife and mother.”
“Whatever you do in Paris, don’t lose your ‘marriageability’!” Aasha teased.
“Don’t go out drinking!”
“Don’t go out with strange men, Anjali!”
“Stay out of clubs!”
Just then Anjali caught sight of a wonderful Montmartre staircase, lined with a black wrought-iron handrail punctuated by tall wrought-iron gas lamps, just like in the movies.
Pleased with her new home, Anjali spread her arms wide, relishing the ambience of Paris.
“I love this place!”
