Pourquoi Paris?

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I.

Steve McCurry’s photographs were a like a balm to my tired and bored eyes. The intense and saturated portraits of mainly South Asian faces formed a wonderful contrast to the grey and gloomy Parisian streets outside the gallery. He has this amazing ability to capture the wondrous beauty of the eyes of the people in his portraits. Bright blue eyes big enough to fit the world, intense green eyes that arrest you in mid stride and deep dark eyes that you can disappear into on a journey into their souls. There were perhaps twenty portraits there but ah what a pleasure it was to stare at each one of them to my heart’s content! From the very famous ‘Afghan Girl’ to the lesser known but equally captivating photo of a flower seller on the way to the market in a boat on the weed covered waters of Dal Lake, I stared transfixed at slices of human emotion hung up in front of my eyes.

I was therefore grateful that I saw the price list before I embarrassed myself by going ahead with my original intention to enquire about buying one of the prints. The ‘cheapest’ price for a print on sale was 4000 Euros! With a sigh and a last wistful glance around I wandered back out into the now raining streets of the art gallery neighborhood of Paris.

II.

I was lost among graves of people unknown to me. The cemetery was divided into divisions but without a map I was hopelessly lost. I could have asked someone. But even those with maps seemed lost. More than that though, I wanted to find his grave on my own. Call it my own little musical pilgrimage if you are being generous or a foolishly romantic notion if you are just being charitable. So I walked on past grand graves over which angels in stone kept watch, past graves neglected and now conquered by kingdoms of moss, past newer graves that were adorned with small photographs of the dead, past graves that were enclosed within small Gothic chambers that seemed to be designed to keep the dead away from the reach of the living.

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Heartbreaker

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By the side of a fallen branch I found my little heart,
covered by a coat of newly fallen leaves. So surprised
was I that for a second I forgot to breathe. But when he
started to labor in his patient beating I knew I was wrong
in holding my breath. So I let the summer air into my
lungs and offered him some succor.

I asked him, “My dear heart, what are you doing under
these leaves in these woods? Why are you not behind my
heaving ribs?”

He glowed as red as a virgin’s cheek. Was it the shame of
suffering or the anger of abandonment?

But he replied in the voice of a strutting Jagger, “I’ve divested
myself from you. You heartbreaker! Always, you punished me
for your inadequacies. Every time you stared at a woman, it
was I who suffered. It was I who burnt words onto your stubbornly
silent tongue. It was I who was filled with feelings most profound.
But you, with your asymmetrical ass and crooked jaw, you never
noticed the difference between rhythm and beat. You never ever
grasped the yawning gap between lust and love.”

I hung my head with shame upon hearing words so true and precise
but could not help asking, “But dear heart, how will I live without
you? Nay, how will I ever love without you?”

Upon hearing my words filled with a sadness most real my heart stopped for
a moment, formed a council with the leaves and pondered for a minute. They
twittered. They murmured. They even burped. And finally my heart squealed
with joy and offered this unique compromise, “ Fall in love within a month with
a woman who wears red and has CC cups; I’ll return to your chest
forever.”

So here I’m, dear ladies, in search of my very own woman in red with CC cup
size. If you know someone with such dimensions will you ask her to get in
touch with my hopeless heart and save me from a lifetime of heartless love?

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