Soup

Music in my head: Sigur Ros- Von
Today's weather: Sunny

It is not very entertaining to listen to a conversation in Chinese, contrary to what everyone might think. All I can hear is a nasal drone and the occasional really loud syllable. It's disturbing me from my work, which is all set to break a lot of ground. It's sad, really, considering that this is about as far away from China as it possibly gets (I'm in France. In your face.).

Now, lamenting gently about the dearth of Frenchmen in a small French town on the Atlantic Coast, my thoughts meander to a little trip I made to its even more Mongoloid dense centre, the pride of France, Paris. But this is not about the Mongoloids, not even about the Frenchmen. My thoughts go back to a quaint little bistro on a busy corner in the north of Paris. Cafe Foresta, they called it. It served Italian food and drink. And it was run by, wait for it, a thambi anna, forgive the oxymoron.

We did realise a strange familiarity about the waiter's face as soon as we entered. There was the weird French hairdo with lots of gel on, and the puffy French shirt and the pointy French shoes. But there was also the tropical complexion and an expression of what we thought was slight joy at seeing us that led us to believe that he was Indian. Of course, his perfect French belied our inferences, so we had to wait for a sign.

Oh yes, he did give us a sign. He wrote down our order, walked calmly over to the counter and shouted- " Anney, Oru Isabella, Oru Reims, Oru Vegitarienne, sighram!" We could just look at each other and smile. It's a small world.

The old tamil songs started playing and we were transported to a much warmer, more polluted place densely packed with sweaty people, although only the music was a common factor here. In that little instant, we went from Cafe Foresta to Motel Bamboos, and were back with a resounding crash when they brought our pizzas, and were slapped even harder right across the face with a sixteen euro per person cheque.

Sometimes home is the best place on earth.