Independent Goa Observer

NICOLE AND OTHER WOMEN

GEORGE MENEZES, in his unique satirical style, narrates how he managed to wriggle out of an encounter with Foufou, Mimi, etc., who are ideally found leaning against a lamppost. A short story.

I HAD A DATE with Nicole. Two months ago. July 17 at 7 p.m. to be exact. I should have written about it earlier but I could not find the words. It is not easy to find the right words to describe a date with a volcano that refuses to become extinct. Like the pre-monsoon sky that I watch from my window over the sea at dusk, she had blue eyes and hair of sunlit gold.

That the date was in the tenth row of the Nehru auditorium and that the old girl was sitting right next to me made no difference. For we were listening to the tender, sensual and sometimes slightly malicious voice of Nicole Croisille. Not since the time (a year after our marriage) when we heard Edith Piaf singing Milord at the Olympia in Paris did the old girl and I simultaneously fall in love with another woman.

Un triangle passionant , a triangle of passion like a crime of passion, as the French would say. But then, the French have naughty names for things that are oral, legal and non-fattening. And the French have volcanoes like Nicole Croisille whose eruptions on stage flowed like hot lava into the depths of our being that left us warm, glowing but unscathed. To top everything, from the wings stepped out the Danny Kaye of the French Foreign Service. The Consul General of France, golden trumpet to his lips. What an evening!

That is the quality of French passion which you can experience only if you have lived enough in France. It is a quality tourists can never quite understand... which in fact is misunderstood when the guy at the information desk at the railway station in Paris insists on speaking French when he could have ventured with the English that he knows.

The old girl and I were fortunate to have lived in Paris those four years after our marriage and to have Christophe, our first born, there. I sometimes like to think, not too seriously perhaps, that the French intensity of our relationship during those four years has sustained and kept afire our marriage through the silences, the differences and the doubts of our remaining years.

Of course I don't have the empirical data to prove what I am saying. All I have is a ‘hunch' of titanic proportions and a kingsize nostalgia for things French. One unforgettable memory of Paris is the arrival in our home of another diminutive yet intensely, courageous and successful woman, Mrs Violet Alva. Joaquim and Violet Alva were both Members of Parliament... politicians of a character and calibre that are fast disappearing from the Indian scene. Fortunately for us and the nation, the Alva's left behind a rich legacy in Indian politics. Not in the form of their sons but in their daughter-in-law, Margaret, who has been a politician of unquestionable integrity and a minister of proven capability.

But then this piece is not about Indian politics but a nostalgia about Paris, Violet Alva and Place Pigalle and so I must return to it. Violet Alva was my father's student and a close family friend. My father's students usually became close family friends. Specially the brighter ones because they spent hours discussing Shakespeare, Shelley and Keats at our home while my mother poured out gallons of tea, cake and home-made wine depending on the hour of the day and the availability of supplies.

And so when Mrs. Alva was deputy minister for home affairs and decided to visit Paris, it was inevitable but not quite protocol that she wrote to us that she would prefer to stay with us rather than with the Ambassador, who at the time was Mr Raghavan of Indian National Army fame. She wrote something about Goa curry and rice, about the old girl being a superb cook, about my father being pleased, etc. and that was that. A typical gesture of a woman whose greatness, nobility and simplicity I shall never forget. We were delighted and proud to have her and to show her around to our friends, Indian and French. One day after we had put down some frogs' legs and a half a bottle of some velvety red wine, I said to her, “We haven't shown you one sight we show all our Indian visitors.”

“What's that?” she asked.

“Place Pigalle and its night clubs. I thought you might feel offended if I suggested it to you.”

“Why not?” she said, as if we were going to the movies. “Let's go this evening.”

“Let's take you to the La Tomate,” said the old girl, “we've taken so many visitors there that George knows all the girls by their first names.”

Which, of course, I did. Who wouldn't? Loulou, Fifi, Moumou, Mimi and Fanfan but did not remember their surnames in any case. The other way of telling them, one from the other, was by the shape and size of their navels. A not altogether convenient way of introducing them to friends.

Anyway we went. A depressing evening it turned out to be. A person of exacting moral standards, Mrs. Alva couldn't get over the fact that any woman would want to take off her clothes, in freezing temperatures, just for the cash.

“George,” she said to me the next morning, a confident smile on her face, “I would like to interview those girls as well as some of the girls on the streets. It would make an interesting report for the bureaucrats who want to bring about some order and hygiene into our red light districts.”

“Do you speak French, Mrs. Alva?” I asked. “No,” she said. “I was hoping you would conduct the interviews, familiar as you are with the French language. Mind you, I shall acknowledge your contribution in my report.”

I do not recall now how I got out of the assignment. I shudder with horror to think I could be leaning against a lamppost asking Foufou, Mimi or whoever why she was doing what she was doing, how often she was medically examined, how much money she made and what categories of men were her customers. I do not like high-heeled women with dresses slit up to their waists, smoking a cigarette from long-stemmed cigarette holders and blowing smoke into the interviewer's face. Violet Alva was a compassionate person and must have felt my anguish. She let me off the hook after some discussion.

That is not the only thing I am indebted to her for. When we returned to India and 1 wanted to quit the Indian Air Force after only 12 years of service, I ran against a wall of rules that said “Not possible”. I had to find a way out within the rules, and I did. An officer; it appears, cannot be denied the Constitutional right to run for political office. The Goa elections were due and there were no takers for Congress tickets. Mrs. Violet Alva enrolled me into the Party and persuaded Mr Sanjiviah, the Congress President, to give me a ticket, which he willingly did.

I was “released” from service within 24 hours, but without any benefits of pension or gratuity. Premature release seekers, please note.

From ‘One Step at a Time', Better Yourself Books, Mumbai

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NICOLE AND OTHER WOMEN

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