Saturday, August 04, 2012

Paris diaries - day 1 (Part deux)

I reached the place at around 11.00 and rested for a while. Freshend up and headed to see the city. I kept th advise given to me by that attendant in mind, " Go local transport to experience.." . I got back to the station, looked around for information and found a young lady behind the counter.

I asked her for directions to Eiffiel tower. She could speak only halting English but she made it up with her enthusiasm. He took out an English printed map of Paris and marked the station I was supposed to get down. Luckily for me eiffiel tower is also on line 9 thus no change of trains for me.

In the train I was subjected to some good music by two young boys who were raising money to visit 'aangla' for Olympics. There was chatter in japaneese as few college girls were on visit. During all this while, there was no sign of any policemen. In Britain you come face to face with police every 100 meters. I was impressed, even ough quality of the coaches need to be looked at. Money for which will be hard to come by in today's time and Holland will have to cut down.

One more interesting thing about Gauls is that they keep a book handy and read a lot during train travel. Coloured people were busy in Chit chat ( Africans, Chinese, Arabs) and whites busy reading . Cme to think of it, immigrants are more open & full of life. Some young punks walked. in but they were still far better behaved than their English or American counterpart.

I got down at Tracoder and came out of the station, turned left and I was staring at Eiffiel tower. There were lot of people, kids playing around , elders busy clicking pictures. I have noticed that Chinese by nature don't stop to admire the beauty of architectural wonder, they simply pull out camera and continue to shoot. Looks as if they want to build one Eiffeil tower in Shanghai.
Tower is one black thing that strides the pathways like a colossus and we petty men crawl under its legs in our cars.

I kept on looking at it and saw lot of French people coming from outside Paris to see the tower. Even more interesting for nme was to see a statue of general Fausch just outside the station and bang opposite the tower. One more thing to notice is the presence of X'tian imagery everywhere. There are statues of angels & kings dressed or represented as God kings.

What does it mean to Indian secularism? My understanding of this is that Individuals cannot be secular , State can beans must be. It does not mean that they simply bury the feelings of majority, it simply means they promote none.

Again the question that remains to be answered is , what it means to be a Frenchmen ? How much of  being French is French enough. Paris has the most mixed population of any European metro. It is here that question of immigration & Islamic radicalism will be answered.

No comments: