Storms in Paris

by Sanjana Conroy-Tripathi

Storms in Paris

My grandfather is dying. More specifically, he no longer wants to live. My mother informs me of this fact with her characteristic bluntness, her own fear and pain hidden carefully out of sight. I am not so controlled. My breathing catches, and a tear drops into the Seine as I stare out, gazing fixedly at the ruins of Notre-Dame. I’ve been in Paris for 3 days. I arrived here, fleeing responsibility on short notice, dragging along a distant friend who happened to be free. The walls were closing in around me, my own desperate need to care for everyone stifling my breathing as I find myself torn between my mother, sitting in New York City and holding her best friend’s hand in the hospital, and my grandfather who can no longer get out of bed in India, who cries out in pain at night but can not tell us what is wrong. I am as far from each of them as I could be, and when I ask my mother if she needs me to come home, she hesitates a moment before insisting she is fine. The reaction is classic for both of us – I’ve always been the caretaker, reaching out well beyond my abilities to try and catch other people. My mother has always been alone. My friend Sam hovers nearby, keeping an eye on me as I pace, agitated and angry, along the length of the bridge. I can’t stop staring at the water, thinking of how it would feel to jump in, float along and be free of everything. I am going to kiss my friend tonight and sleep with him before the next day is over. I don’t know that yet, but foresight has been something I have lacked for a long time.

Paris seems to intensify this. The cloudy skies and rain pull people close to each other, like deluded birds huddling for warmth. The wine does nothing to improve judgement. Sam says he likes the way I laugh in the rain, giggling as the scarf is pulled off my head, a flash of bright red on my black coat. I can’t explain to him, this boy from central Canada, that the rain has always been my friend. I go back to India every May. It is universally acknowledged to be the worst month, but it’s when I am free and I make my pilgrimage. Every year, the heat is stifling, stealing breath and stilling movement, and the promise of rain keeps us standing. Every year, when the first monsoon hits, bringing cool air over the hills from Kerala, the whole family stands outside, barely under the porch roof, breathing. Last year, despite my grandmother’s scolding, I went out to dance in the rain, watching it fill the flowers around me like fairies’ cups. Sam watches me as I talk, and suddenly I am back in Paris, in the cold and damp, the very different rain over a very different landscape. I remind myself that I will go home as I always do this summer, but a voice in my head reminds me that my grandfather may die before I get there, that I may never go back to his house, skipping quickly over hot stones to hang laundry in the sun. I try to shake off the doubt, and I turn back to stare out at the Parisian cityscape, all the shades of grey. Sam sidles up closer so I can slip my arm around his waist, and as the rain gets harder we hurry into the nearest bar. 

The next morning we step into Saint-Chappelle, my breath catches on itself. The unutterable beauty of 15 foot tall glass windows that tower over the onlookers, each one a masterwork of detail and a testament to patience, steals me out of myself. I stand in the centre of the room, spinning in slow circles, trying to hold the moment in my mind perfectly, even though I know that isn’t possible. My camera hangs forgotten off my shoulder, and I don’t come back into myself until Sam taps me lightly, warning me that I am about to step backwards down a flight of stone steps. The churches of Paris confuse me as much as they amaze me. I am a child of open temples, full of noise and light, bells and flowers. I remember rushing over baking stones in the centre of an open pavilion, telling my mother with some ire that if Ganesha wants us to visit him so badly he shouldn’t have allowed his temple to be placed in such a painful, difficult-to-reach spot. My mother laughs and reminds me of the virtues of patience and sacrifice. I’ve never had much patience to offer anyone, but sacrifice is familiar to me. Standing on the cold marble of the chapel, I stare up at the Passion of Christ, intricately rendered in glowing glass, and I wonder if he loved anyone and lost them the way I have. I raised two little girls when I was nothing more than a child, as all my parents wandered away, forgetful. Years later, my grandmother told me that the neglect, which she termed “responsibility”, would be good practice for being a wife and mother. I stare at her, trying to picture the 19 year old girl she was as she walked into the temple for her wedding. 55 years later, she’s still caring for my grandfather, bitter with the work. She doesn’t smile anymore. That night, I hook up with Sam again, the third in what was supposed to be a one night stand.

We spend 5 days in Paris. We drink wine, walk along the river, take photo after photo. Somehow, India still fills my vision every day. I suppose it’s hard not to think of it, when half of my family is there, trying to fix something unfixable. The brain is wonderfully plastic, but even it can not survive the onslaught of surrender my grandfather has committed himself to. I sit under the massive paintings in the Monet gallery, until the blues and greens transform into the temple tank of my grandfather’s childhood village. Sam puts his arm around me and I flinch instinctively, the crashing shame of generations of silenced women coming to rest on my shoulders along with his arms. I let it wash over me, and lean closer to him. I am not my grandmother. Somewhere, far away, under a different rainy sky, my grandfather is slipping away, and my grandmother is trying to hold onto him, so wrapped up in caring for him that she has lost herself. I, however, am drinking wine and kissing a boy in Paris. When my mother calls, I turn my phone over and smile. I let Sam pull me closer. I revel in the fact that for the first time in my life, I am caring for no one but myself.