A Gambol in a Paris Tram

Paris, 2018

In Paris, a Chinese woman lost her way. Looking at a French woman in a Paris tram, who sat cross-legged beside her in a white blouse and beige skirt, she laughed.

                                          Thee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee
                                          Thee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee

Just like that. Then she held up before her a Paris map.

It took a while for the French woman to get the joke. The wall between two strangers now suddenly broken — her indifference, too, which a city dweller saves for a tourist, was quietly gone. For she imagined if she resisted the laugh, the joke would be on her.

She said,

                                         Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha
                                         Hick, hick, he, he

Like an unfettered girl who finds levity everywhere. Taking the map from the Chinese woman, placing it on her lap, she smoothed it with an impatient hand and pointed at some place distant. In an extravagant show of mirth, she blew her nose, laughed, and laughed. The Chinese woman, too, with impunity, poked her new friend’s arm.

Thus, without exchanging a word, these two had made such a gambol that the RATP called the day, the Day of Paris’s Babelesque Blur.

(The poem was first published in Outlook India: https://www.outlookindia.com/culture-society/five-poems-about-people-across-the-world-weekender_story-328626)