Years back, while still in school, I sat through An Evening in Paris in a downtown Trivandrum theatre watching Shammi Kapoor serenade Sharmila Tagore. My adolescent mind was so besotted by the sights of the French capital that on leaving the theatre, I decided that if I ever travelled abroad it would be to the city of the Eiffel Tower first. The colours and sights of Paris remained imprinted in my young mind.

When I went to college I was introduced to the writings of Jean- Paul Sartre and made my second promise to visit the café where the father of existentialism and his partner Simone de Beauvoir often met – Café les Deux Magots.

Later came Mona Lisa, Rodin's The Kiss, the Louvre, Picasso, Truffaut… images of people and places which represented and were quintessentially Parisienne. Much later I said to myself: Paris mon amour.

On a cool July evening I was at last in Paris, nearly 25 years after An Evening in Paris, with my friend, confidant and muse, a struggling painter, presently an abstractionist, but initially influenced by Amrita Shergill.

There is something magical and mythical about Paris. The bohemian feel, thanks to artists, writers and pamphleteers, emanates from its parks and gardens, boulevards and backstreets, passages and arcades, bistros and nightclubs. Paris is maddening, sprawling
and chaotic, but by evening when most have left by the TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse, French for ‘high-speed train’) for their homes, some 100 kms away, it wears a different look. Having already done the big sights – the Louvre, Notre Dame, Arc de Triomphe, Montmartre in the day – we wandered around, halting to sit on a park bench in the Tuileries and reflected on the wonders of it all and ultimately stopped at an outdoor café to hear the
inner beats of the city. As night stealthily arrived, Paris became stunningly beautiful, more so as the city's favourite iconic structure, the illuminated Eiffel Tower, gradually pierced the dark velvet sky like a glowing dagger.