THE sky was dark in Lyon that winter day in 1964. As the first drop of rain fell on his face, Jean-Claude Decaux cursed himself for leaving behind his umbrella. By the time the bus arrived, the young man immaculately dressed in a blue suit with shining black shoes was thoroughly drenched. Worse, he got to his job interview late.

That night he couldn’t sleep, but the fact that he never got the employment was not his preoccupation. The next morning he took out his rickety old bicycle and spent the whole day, and following days, visiting bus stops, drawing sketches and taking notes in a diary.

Then he went to the mayor’s office and asked to see him. “You need an appointment,” he was told and was informed that the mayor was busy the entire month.

When he made it a routine to be obstinately present at the municipality every morning, he got the news one day the mayor would see him, but only briefly.

Once inside, he was not asked to sit down and the mayor told him to hurry up as he had a very important meeting.

The young man cleared his throat: “Sir, there are 3,000 bus stops in and around Lyon but no shelters. When it rains, people get wet.”

The mayor looked at his watch.

“We need rain shelters at bus stops, sir.”

Impatient but also a bit amused, the mayor said: “I agree, but there are two little problems. Erecting 3,000 cabins on sidewalks will make our city look ugly; then, where will we get the money for all this?”

Decaux answered seriously: “I have thought about that, sir. The shelters will be made of colourless glass panels: two sidewalls no wider than a metre each and two-and-half metres tall, plus one back wall about two metres wide and a transparent glass roof. These shelters will be practically invisible.”

“What about the cost?”

“I have thought about that, too, sir. One of the side walls will display an advertising poster. The municipality will not only be not spending anything on the project, it’ll earn money.”

Now the mayor stood up and extended his arm for a handshake: “Good! Get all these details on paper and leave them with my secretary. We’ll see about that.”

“I have all the statistics and sketches ready, sir.” The young man placed his briefcase on the table and pulled out a thick file.

The mayor heaved a desperate sigh of resignation and asked the determined intruder to take a seat. He sat down himself and told his secretary on phone to cancel his appointments and not to disturb him for at least one hour.

After making a success of his ‘Abribus’ project in Lyon, Decaux moved on to Paris, then to other major and minor French cities. He travelled to many foreign countries and keenly watched bus riders getting wet under the rain. He repeated his Lyon project and got contracts to build bus-stop shelters in Luxemburg, London, New York, Moscow, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Beijing, Hong Kong, Tel Aviv, Pretoria and in a number of other European, American, Asian and African towns.

From 1964 until today the JCD empire has extended with half a million advertising posters covering not only shelters at bus stops but also walls at metro and train stations as well as at airports in 3,700 cities all over the world.

His three sons now take care of the business and the family’s personal fortune is evaluated by Forbes magazine at four billion euros.

Though he went on retirement three years ago, the sidewalk visionary kept coming to office every day. “I feel very tired when I am not working,” he explained.

JCD died of heart attack at the age of 78 on May 27 this year.

The writer is a journalist based in Paris.

ZafMasud@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, June 26th, 2016