| |
In spite of the late hour, and having to get up to go to work the next morning, Anjali decided to stroll just a bit in Le Marais before crossing the Seine to go home to bed. She crossed Rue de Rivoli and turned left on Rue Vieille du Temple. Not to be confused with nearby Rue du Temple, as she had been her first time in this neighborhood.
She was excited about the writers’ group. They seemed like talented critiquers. And maybe she actually could critique John there, even though he was her boss, the same way she’d read that Japanese businessmen go out with their boss, they all get drunk, the workers say what they want to say, and all is forgiven the next day. She hoped John had read the same article.
She tried to calm herself and not worry. She just wanted to wander and soak up the atmosphere.
A man went by on a bicycle he’d converted into a one-man band. The bicycle had a bass drum mounted above the rear wheel, and a small electric keyboard forward of the handlebars. An amplifier for the piano stood in the front wire basket.
The man had a harmonica and a trumpet mounted on a homemade bracket. Both instruments were within easy reach of his mouth. He wore a frizzy blue wig, white harem pants, red curly-toed slippers edged with gold sequins, and no shirt. He was quite a show.
Anjali loved shows. She remembered years ago, when she was just eight or so, and she had the idea to put on a show for her parents. At that time, they lived in an apartment building in Pondicherry, a very traditional Indian city, meaning no freedom for women and girls, among other things. Next to their apartment was an empty lot. Parents in the building had chipped in and bought a small swingset. It had two swings, a trapeze, and a slide. As Anjali moved from one bit of equipment to another, she felt inspired to develop a routine, something like the dancing interludes in Bollywood movies, which her mother adored.
Anjali developed a little routine using all the pieces of equipment. When she felt ready, she rounded up her friends and their parents to come to her show. She begged and cajoled her parents to bring their small boombox to the playground with a tape of the score of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, one of her mother’s favorite movies, already loaded.
When everyone was standing, watching, and the music playing, Anjali performed the routine she’d created. It took all of three minutes. Everyone clapped politely, and her friends jumped on the swings. The parents stood around talking.
“Appa, did you see me?” Anjali asked.
“You’re quite the showman,” her father said. “You have a lot of talent for that.”
“She’s a girl. She’ll grow up to get married,” her mother retorted.
Anjali felt as if she’d been slapped. Hard. “She’s a girl” had sounded like a condemnation. Marriage sounded like a box, the end of her dreams, the end of living.
Now, walking on the narrow sidewalks of Le Marais, she wondered if she could break away from her parents’ expectation that she marry, instilled and reinforced for more than two decades, and instead write a great movie, maybe shoot one, even a short one, while she was living in Paris for just one brief year.
The bicyclist disappeared around the corner of Rue des Rosiers. That man certainly defies people’s expectations, Anjali thought. I’m not sure I want to go quite that far.
