“Have you seen the good old oak tree dear?” I clenched my teeth and wanted to hit the person who had asked me the question. But their time it was an old lady with a very funny hat perched as her grey hair, smiling.
“Yes ma’am I have, its right behind me, lovely oak tree.”
She was not the only one who took pride in this old oak. For last four hours I was standing still outride Canterbury waiting for a lift which had not materialized and in these four hours at least four dozen passerby, had asked the same question. By now I was fed up with this ordinary looking tree that I wanted to uproot and manufacture matchsticks out of.
Armed with my newly acquired hike hiking experience in Lake District, now I was on my way to Europe, continent to be exact. I had planned to reach Dover by lunch time, take a ferry across English Channel for Calais and then onwards to gay Paris. But as luck would have it I was stuck up here with an old oak and the panning motorists had been completely ignoring my raised thumb for the last four hours.
To my bad lack a school boy came along glanced at my rugsack lying on the pavement and said “Mister, I wonder if you have seen our oak tree?”
“Buzz off little boy or I will ring your neck.”
The little boy took to his heels immediately.
This spot is unlucky, I thought, now one of us has to move, me or the oak tree. The oak tree had been here for the last two hundred years and would face certain uprooting problems and I had been here for the last four hours. So I decided to move instead, again a matter of common sense.
As soon as I lifted my rugsack to move, a tiny Morris Minor appeared from nowhere and screeched to a halt. It was packed like sardines. The driver sardine was in fact a well groomed gentleman with a goatee.
“Going somewhere mate?”
“Dover” I said, but where would they accommodate me? “Hop in”, he said “We are not going the whole way but hop in till we turn left for Seashell Island”
So I hopped in, a brown sardine amongst three female sardines of various sizes and hairs colour; a red head, a blonde and a brunette. Never in my life had I been packed amongst such lovely sardines. “What you do for living mate?” the goatee sardine inquired.
“I am a student and you?”
“I am the finest hairstylist in London town and these three are my assistants and we are going to Seashell Island for the weekend.
So they are the English NAAIS. This explained their flamboyant hairdos and colour. They were a very friendly bunch of Naais to be sure, typical cockneys whose strange accent at times surpassed my little knowledge of English. Soon we were chatting away like old cronies, however, their departure point also came soon enough and the car stopped.
“Well this is as far as you go, we have to turn left from here. By the way its getting dark and you won’t be able to catch the night ferry to France so why don’t you come along with us? We have a log cabin by the sea, plenty of room there for you to sleep.” The offer was attractive, a log cabin by the sea and pretty sardines in the bargain. But I hesitated “I don’t want to bother you, I am grateful for the offer to be sure and besides you don’t really know me enough.”
“I know you well enough mate, a barber can judge a person in ten minutes, the time he takes in cutting his hair. But suit yourself.” Then the blonde sardine started chirping: “Oh come on be a sport, we are short of boys around here and what would you be doing in a place like France? Oh horrible people, they eat frogs and speak French you know. Oh come on we will have fun.” So I came along and fun we did have. The Seashell Island was, indeed a sea of shells. Instead of sand, its coast was a mass of shells which creaked and were creaked under the tyres of car. It seemed as were crushing thousands of crystal pieces and it left me guilty.
The log cabin was the only structure for miles around.
My hosts, all four of them were dripping with the milk of human kindness, especially the females, naturally. They were the finest human species to be found anywhere.
As night fell the roar of the waves increased many fold and it so happened that there was a full moon. While walking towards the sea for a night swim, the shells cracked under our bare feet, and the moonlight factor was responsible for the rage of the waves. So that was a night of sound of the sea, sea shells, a full moon and three lovely sardines swimming and splashing in the water like mermaids. During the night although cozy and comfortable in my sleeping bag I could not sleep due to the noise of the raging sea and cold winds lashing at our log cabin.
The blonde sardine was so right when she said that they were already short of boys. I stayed on with this bunch of carefree and loving souls for the weekend. Then they were on their way back to London. But before that, they went out of their way and took me to Dover. Bidding farewell, all of them hugged me and kissed me profusely, much to the envy of those watching. The night ferry took me across the English Channel, into the city of Calais from where in a jiffy a huge black limousine picked me up. It was black and huge because it belonged to a funeral company and the driver in a black suit was in fact an undertaker who was carrying a dead body of an English gentleman, who for reasons of his own, wished to be buried in a Paris graveyard.
That still-gentleman was resting in peace right behind me in a black Mahogany coffin. What a way to go, for the gentleman and for me, to Paris. I took comfort in the thought that at last I don’t have to amuse this gentleman by telling dirty jokes to justify my free ride.
These were the times when whole of France was chanting “VIVA DE GAULLE”, begging the reclusive General to take over the Presidency.
While all three of us, me, the undertaker and the dead gentleman, entered Paris my ears were throbbing with the songs, a tunes related to gay Paris...
I love Paris in the springtime,
I love Paris and how of love Paris...
and then the sad and lovely Under the Bridges of Seine.
Although my aesthetic sense, will be considered rather doubtful, but I will take the risk and state that I did not love Paris at all, springtime or so springtime. It was hot, unfriendly and overcrowded with tourists.
I asked a passerby “Sir can you guide me to the Louvre Museum, I am lost.” And he replied with a grin “I am also lost buddy, how about that? I am an American, where are you from?”
“Pakistan”
“Somewhere in Afghanistan or Africa?”
Americans have always been the most ignorant but friendliest people on earth. The food was expensive and I had to fill my teenage belly with French bread and milk. The girls, were petite to be sure but they were not interested in a boy. They prefered older men. I did all the rites like a faithful tourist. Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, Cathedral of the Hunchback Notredame, Flea Market, Napoleon’s Tomb, Moulin Rouge, Eiffel Tower etc. And then abandoned this so called gay Paris, for the green valleys and snow clad mountains of Switzerland.
Although a time came when this drab and unfriendly city became my Piyar Ka Pehla Shahar (the first city of my love). But that was ten years latter when was Paris engulfed with its magical charm and I almost became a Parisian myself. But now I was on a fast train to Switzerland, abandoning hitch hiking because I did not have the stomach to travel with another dead body.
“Have you seen the good old oak tree dear?” I clenched my teeth and wanted to hit the person who had asked me the question. But their time it was an old lady with a very funny hat perched as her grey hair, smiling.
