  With thoughtful books to read, With soulful music to hear, With beautiful places to stroll, With intellectual art and sculpture to tickle my mind, Paris is a paradise! Sitting at the banks of River Seine, Wear Lucky Ali on your ears, Hold the little finger of Victor Hugo and ask him to walk you through his woods of ideas and now you know how heaven would feel like! Wanting a change from monuments, churches and museums, I started my weekend with Bois de Bologne. Its a huge garden. Its the remains of a forest which was beside Paris which is well tended now. The atmosphere was absolutely serene, far away from the din and bustle of the traffic and noise of any tourists.
Its the best an ultra-cosmopolitan city can do to take its citizens close to nature. There were many people seen around. They had come with their kids and pets and were having their time. You should be an idiot of a bachelor, like me, to go to such a heavenly place, alone without a girlfriend! There were ponds in between with calm water with birds and ducks and pigeons. I roamed around for some time to drink the beauty and then settled in a calm shady place.
I was disturbed by that calmness! To face silence has become difficult for me, for I have to face myself and my stupid questions. Men cant easily live in silence and solitude for they dread to be denuded by that one-word interrogation upon oneself which they have no guts or patience to face. So many prefer to inundate themselves into noise for that reason and die without ever attempting to answer that eternal query. In the park, I could see a couple of young beautiful girls jogging, a married (hopefully! ) couple, an old lady walking with a middle-aged man; maybe her son.
How many roles do women play in a man's life from birth to death, I wondered! And I always wonder about the inherent duality of nature. Why should there be men and women? Why did not human beings choose to be asexual? And why should I allow this duality to screw up my life?! But without this duality, I realise that this world which has progressed from molecules to men, would have remained inert and be impotent of any reaction and procreation.
Conflict is indispensable for creating harmony. But I don’t understand why should there be any progress or procreation in the first place. Why should there be something? Why not nothing? Isn’t that calmer? Isn’t that more peaceful?
Isn’t that beauty? Why should I exist and experience chaos? I dont know. I am clueless. But all I can fathom is Chance and Change are twin directors of life and Love its producer! And I, the actor.
How colourful it is, even though meaningless! There were a lot of children playing around in the garden. I envied them a lot, as I did in Places des Vosges. I felt that this is quite a good environment for children to be brought up. India is not a good place for children to grow up and get educated. Not only that the educational system is hopelessly marred by the mud-headed politicians, but there's a complete dearth of role-models to look up to for kids; dearth of soaring of human spirit, dearth of order, dearth of discipline, dearth of planning and perfection.
Children should definitely not be educated in such a place. Their mind would become crippled with the narrowness of their vision. The fundamental and primary objective of a teacher is to show the ideal and then to teach how to go and attain it. But this happens rarely in Indian schools. No teacher is worth his salt. I have come across only three of the breed of good teachers in my school life, who deserve some respect.
India is against the grain to impart soulful knowledge. All it can achieve is to produce meaningless software engineers like me! The calm of Bois de Bologne disturbed me a lot and I walked back to my room, not wanting to disturb myself further and in the evening I walked along Champs-Elyssees with amar and srinand, looking for a compact flash card for my camera and to enquire about the prices of cellphones for suneetha. Musee Rodin hosts the works of the master sculptor Auguste Rodin. Its placed in one of the 'finest town houses of Paris'. The 'Gates of Hell' welcomed me.
Its a very famous work of Rodin and I wondered how the hell he put all these pieces of bronze together. The house had a marvellous and big garden around it were the masterpieces of Rodin are kept. I couldn’t understand why the other sculptures were regarded as anything wonderful, thanks to my blissful ignorance. Le Penseur (The Thinker) attracted me a lot, if not for any of its scuplting brilliance which I am incognizant of, for its simplicity and profound meaning.At the first sight it reminded me of Rene Descartes's "Cogito ergo sum".He is an exemplary thinker, who set out to build an entire philosophical system from scratch, not believing in any misleading logic, but his own reasoning. I was quite stunned to look at a photograph of him, for he shattered my pet ideas of physiognomy. To put his idea succinctly, denuding the benumbing abstraction of philosophical parlance, he proved that the existence of self is beyond doubt and we exist because we think.
He looked a bit ugly outwards(! ) as opposed to Rodin who looks like a sage. All this came to my mind with that piece of scultpture. Its powerful. And its so fitting that Rodin's tomb is below this statue. Inside the house, there are numerous works of Rodin.
I liked those erotic statues very much, for their expression. There are only a handful of emotions experienced by human beings that are so severe that however refined is the form of art used to express them, it would never be complete. Sex is one of them. Sex is sublime. That exalted state can be experienced, I believe, if I can check my sixth sense. That’s the reason, I guess, that every sculptor, painter and musician tries his hand at it, to gauge his mastery, against the infinite!
When I see the statues nude and get out of the picture to see myself and all others dressed up and standing there, I feel odd. It’s not the statues which look odd but its our dress! Its as if I dress to conceal my weak body with a frail frame. The statues make me feel ashamed. In the afternoon, I had been to Tombeau de Napolean and Musee de l'Armee. The tomb (crypt)of the great emperor Napoleon I is kept inside a dome church.
The church is quite majestic to look at. Did I read somewhere that it took 27 years to build that dome? What were they doing sitting on that rotunda for so long!!? But the gold gilded dome with a cross at its zenith, with sun shining as best as He can through the clouds above Paris, it looks splendidly effulgent. Felt like entering the gates of Heaven after having seen the gates of hell at Musee Rodin! When I entered and beheld that massive dome from inside and the beautiful altar of a crucified guy called Jesus Christ, I felt that its quite a fitting place for that emperor's soul to rest in peace if at all it chooses so!
Its quite amusing to note that he rose from obscurity to become a glorious emperor. He was extremely brilliant and is considered one of the greatest military commanders in history. He is also one of the father's of Paris's beauty. If not for anything else I would remember him for being a part in sculpting such a beautiful city. Its a myth that he was short. He was 5'6.5" tall, average height, but half an inch short of mine!
This character inspired me to proceed further into Musee de l'Armee where there are exhibits of things used by the Napoleon dynasty and is quite comprehensive. It’s considered one of the best and wide collection in the world of the materials used in a war. When I entered the museum I was still revelling in that erotic mood which Rodin has managed to create! But suddenly to switch the context from Love to War was difficult! It was quite a complete switch nevertheless, I should say. The museum educated me of the complexities involved in a war with all its exhibits of swords, daggers, pistols, guns, plaques, flags, epaulettes, uniforms, water-cans(!
), heavy metal suits, iron masks, ornaments, bonnets, keys and various symbols used by the infantries and regiments. I was stunned by the administrative genius of Napoleon I.I was awe-struck when I came out of the floor. Sheer power. I felt very very puny before that emperor. He is what I call a Man. I felt sad that he was caught as a prisoner of war by England and was sent in exile to St.Helena on southern atlantic and died there.
His remains were brought back here by King Louis XIV and was deposited in the Dome church. It was a bit ironic and saddening to see the set up of the prison room in which his soul departed with the bed and chairs originally used by him. He lived only for 52 years on this earth and see the legend he has left behind for us! It was good to see that the seal of Napoleon I was N which is the first letter of Narayan, the King, too. There was another floor dedicated to Napoleon III where I saw a rifle. The moment I saw it, I thought there should be something wrong with its design and it should have been very awkward to handle it.
If I had been a soldier I would not have used such a rifle for anything. Its not good enough to kill in a swift way. Amazingly my suspicion was proved right by the plaque that read that it was an ill-designed lounge-rifle, with long bayonet (which was the root cause of my doubt! ) at the end of the barrel, which was approved by the king and could not be used extensively and hence failed! So I observed that Napoleon III was not as good as his predecessors. Such is the incompetence that dynasty-rule produces.
After this I got a bit pensive about the efficiency of the rulers in the systems of democracy and aristocracy. Terrorists do not jump from the skies onto the earth. They are the illustrious sons of democracy whose major achievement is producing incompetent and dumb-headed leaders who only know how to manipulate the sentiment of the majority to their whims. Democracy, in short is the mother of incompetence and corruption. Decisions at any level, from the individual to the government should not be taken by the majority. Majority of the decisions taken by the majority are hopelessly ignorant.
Decisions and power should only reside with intellectuals and philosophers. All others, for the sake of good, should submit. In the evening I didn’t go anywhere. Amar and Srinand taught me how to roller-skate in an open space in La Defense. I had a good time! After 1 hour of practice, I know how to stand up on my own with the roller-skates on!
I had a lot of times deliberately avoided many things for the fear of success. I don’t fear failure that much for I am the personification of it! Then when I returned to my room I got a bit moody about success and failure. Nobody succeeds unless and until he is aware of his success. And nobody fails unless and until he is aware of his failure. And if he is not aware of his failure, he loses the capacity to transmogrify a failure into a success.
I bet that every man who had succeeded, in whatever way you define success, has failed marvelously. If he loves success, there has been umpteen moments when he has faced failure with love, for neither success nor failure is what he exactly loves, but the endeavour towards it. Its the journey that matters and bring true ecstasy, not the destination. Here again I cant stop repining about my state. Even though I realize all the above, my problem is that I am not able to define my journey and make my sleeping spirit wake up and walk through it. Where there's no definite and conscious journey, all the so-called successes and failures fail to impress the soul.
It starves. Journey is the soul of life. Destination is only as good as the body to the soul. As if I am standing uncontrollably on a roller-skates, which for the first time I wear on my feet and find it extremely difficult to get up and balance myself and almost impossible to thrust myself forward in a chosen direction, I am being pushed by the strong wind of chances which has any influence only upon those who have no sense of direction and is absolutely harmless for those who know where they are going, into the gates of hell. I feel that I am very near to those gates. But I can see that heaven is not far away but the next door!.
Still I cant change my direction for I am stuck with the roller-skates on my foot which I had been wearing all along in my life, which is commonly called Ignorance. I feel like screaming to my throats capacity, for it would give me a ray of hope that somebody in heaven would heed me and take me under their wings. Hope! Unreasonably hope! "You bastard, hope! ", I tell to myself.
The next day I've been to a place where I long wanted to go after coming to Paris. Its Espace Montmartre which hosts the museum of the great surrealist Salvador Dali. Dali is considered as a genius in the art of surrealism. His strange mustache will itself tell you his character! The first work which welcomed me was a famous Dalinian symbol of a fluid watch, which consists of a watch draped over a branch of tree. This flowing fluid image of a clock is the masterpiece of Dali which he exploits to the maximum extent.
Its seen repeated in many more works of his. Dali's time is not precise, not rigid and it dances to our thoughts. Its subjective and an extension of human perception. He preaches, through his works, that man must learn to strike a balance between time and life, to maximize the gift of life. There was a sculpture which depicted the nobility of time, with a woman symbolizing desire, reality and this material world and with an angel which is a simile for the deeply religious nature of a human being. In between these 2 there stands the Dali clock to preach that inspite of the other two feelings which drive man in his daily life, time reigns, with a crown on its head.
There were many more sculptures like 'Space Elephant' which were amusing. He uses egg to symbolize the intra-uterine life and re-birth. That’s a good idea! I was able to appreciate even some of his paintings, thanks to the placards that were in English beside each sculpture and painting. He paints and tells stories in his own surrealistic way. He has painted Bible, Alice in Wonderland to name a few.
When I was climbing up to reach the entrance, after I was done, I saw many poses of him with some questions and answers which were interesting. I could remember these: What is ugliness? Disorder. What is beauty? Harmony. Why do you wear (such a strange!
) mustache? In order to pass unobserved! What is surrealism? Surrealism is myself. Do you think that a painter of your style belongs in our atomic era? Certainly.
I personally indulge in atomic explosions. After this I roamed around the beautiful Montmartre area in the streets back to the Sacre-Couer church. Then returned to my room and wonder about this subject of surrealism, which has always been with me, so beautifully portrayed by Dali. I thought that if his works are called and celebrated as works of a genius, I could produce thousands of ideas like those. After all I am a surrealist of myself! N. (Inspired by Emperor Napoleon I and the '.
' signifies that King Narayan is an end in himself! ) 
