Antibes and M.Greene

More on Antibes

I cannot see the yacht harbor at Port Vauban from my window. It lies to the East of Old Town. I’ve walked on the ramparts along the edge of the water towards Fort Carre where Napoleon spent time, possibly in captivity. The last time we went to Fort Carre, it was “exceptionally closed.” It’s a long walk from home, just past the limit of my endurance. I came home in pain and slept for many hours the last time I walked. Parking in that area in a problem unless you own a yacht, in which case you’d get a parking spot with a mooring berth. I don’t want to buy a yacht just to get a parking space. The yachts rarely leave the harbor over the fall and winter. In April, Antibes will proudly host its Annual Yacht show which brings in visitors from all over the world. They start at 10 million Euros and go up from there. I will save a lot of money by not buying any boats: they depreciate in value just like cars do.

Old Town is charming with narrow streets, surprising doorways, arches, paved with brick and limestone. I’ve taken some photos. The town was Greek and then Roman, so we have an open public bath where I’ve seen people wash clothes. At the heart of Old Town, beside the Mairie, is the Picasso Museum. Picasso's atelier was on the third floor, and he could see what I see from my terrace. Close to the museum is the open market where I buy olives and spreads, and cheese. Much of the produce is brought in, only some of it is regional. I expect in the spring it will feel more abundant.

The town is crowded with cafes, bars and restaurants. I haven’t visited the Absinthe bar and museum at the market, but I have been to Heidi’s English bookstore. I’m still buying books. It’s a need, and I get withdrawal symptoms when I’m far from a bookstore but it’s not an addiction because I can give it up anytime I want to. Around the corner from Heidi’s is the Harbor and a street lined with more cafes. The most famous of these is Chez Felix where Graham Greene ate lunch everyday with his mistress.

I asked a waiter if this was the same Cafe Felix, confused as I was by the Chez. The waiter, a good-looking 30 year old Frenchman, assured me that it is the very same cafe. I asked if he had seen Greene. “Je suis trop jeune,” he told me. He is too young to have seen M. Greene, M. Greene has been dead for 20 years, and left Antibes 25 years ago. I’ve just read the Power and the Glory and I am still swimming with the Mexican priest in the rain across the river, escaping the police and listening to confessions in stealth, and now I am told that Greene is dead, I don’t believe the news.

A mile from Cafe Felix is 26, Rue Pasteur, Residence des Fleurs, a modern apartment building. A sign states that the writer, M. Graham Greene lived here, with the dates below. Two apartments are for sale in the building. I wonder which apartment was Greene’s, did he have a view of Port Vauban? I hope he did. Everyone needs to be able to see the water.
“Who hath desired the sea, the sight of salt water unbounded?” Yes, Kipling.

Would it help me write better if I lived in M. Greene’s apartment where he wrote The Quiet American, The Heart of the Matter, The End of the Affair? Would I also have to drink as much alcohol as he did, smoke opium, spy for a government and have a series of affairs? I can’t handle any of that, and I wouldn’t make a good spy. I’d share the information with friends who read the blog. Nobody said that it's easy to be a writer.

I worship briefly at the shrine of Greene, lower my head and fold my hands, ask for a blessing. No coconut to break, no marigold garland to hang on the gate. I return to my own apartment, make myself yet another pot of tea and wish that Greene would ghost-write my novel.

The Antibes Apartment

We’ve been in Antibes for nearly four months, and I haven’t written anything for my blog. We are lucky to have a penthouse apartment in this town; the rent is not high and here again we are fortunate. We overlook the water from the terrace, on the right is Cap d’Antibes where the rich billionaires live. The poor millionaires live where we do, along the water in modern buildings on Albert Premier or in Old Town. I can see Old Antibes from my kitchen window, and also the snow on the mountains beyond Nice which is across the water. I see before the Cap, on my right, the sands of Salis beach, and the two sailing clubs for dinghies and wind-surfers. On windy days, para-sailors take off, rising as high as thirty feet into the air.

For the last three days, we had cold winds of the Mistral that blows from Eastern Europe, picking up water on its way. The rain is heavy, it hails rarely, but thunder and lightning are frequent. The glass doors on the apartment shake. They are single pane, and the gaps between the windows and the walls allow eerie whistling to fill the home. The heating, chauffage, is included in the rent, and I cannot say we get good value. I can hear the water trickle through the radiator at low pressure. The pump was replaced recently with marginal improvement. These penthouse apartments are not all they are cracked up to be.

It is sunny today, so I won’t complain. I dare not say it is too sunny or warm, but I am glad to draw out frayed yellow awnings which now work after Moumou, the Algerian-born handyman, fixed them. Moumou has been on vacation in Algeria for the last month and won’t be back till the end of March. He reminds me of the Indian Everyman who goes to his native place for a month or longer, forfeiting salary to be with his family; he is in a way, freer and possibly richer than some millionaires.

Lest you think I have surrounded myself with the Moneyed, let me tell you that I am close to Power. Our neighbour downstairs is the President. Not Chirac, not Sarkozy, not Hollande, but M. Claude. He is the President of the Co-Property, and is the driving force behind the recent repairs to the building. The outside was repainted over November and December, when metal scaffolding obscured much of the view from the kitchen window. The lobby downstairs has had new mirrors, and  best of all, we have shiny new mailboxes. The elevator breaks down once every month, and we climb seven flights of stairs. When it works, it opens inside the apartment in the hall, and a voice says, “Septieme etage.” I say “a vous aussi,”  I wish for you also the seventh floor. It sounds gracious, the right thing to say.

Dr. Sairam

Dr. Sairam and Chennai International Airport

In the last 6 weeks I’ve spent a lot of time in airports. I was at Chennai International after dropping my mother off at her sister’s place where I faced several relatives and a plate of sweets and deep-fried crunchies: jehangiri/ jangri unabashedly orange and sugary, appam, subtle in its beauty and filled with jiggery and cardamom, murukkus salted with black pepper, none good for the thickening wasteland. I was  smart enough to eat whatever was in front of me, cutting to a single word, thankyou, any discussion of fat grams and calories. 

On my way out, I must have brushed against some blooming plant, the only explanation I have for the creepy crawly caterpillars that attached themselves to my clothes. In the car while on my way to the airport, I discovered and pulled off the first caterpillar and gently dropped it to the floor. The second creature I pulled off my right arm and dropped less gently and stamped out, killing the possibility of a future butterfly or moth. At the airport, as I unloaded my stuff, my cousin found a few more to release into the afterlife. 

My hands were itchy: I knew that an itchy hand means that money is either to come or go, but I can’t ever remember whether it’s the right hand that itches when you’re going to run into money, or would it be the left? Is it different for girls? If both hands itch perhaps we are budget neutral, like a Black Jack player. My hands became redder after I checked in. They began to blister when I entered the bookstore. Would there be a pharmacy where I could buy an anti-histamine?

The bookstore manager sent me around the corner to the Apollo clinic. There was only one other patient there. The doctor in charge, Dr. Sairam made his diagnosis in under 30 seconds. When I told him my name, he laughed: his wife and mother have the same name. I lay on a bed, and Christina, a nurse, put a butterfly needle into a vein and injected hydrocortisone and an antihistamine. 

Apollo set up this clinic a year and a half ago. Dr. Sairam, burnt out from 17 years in the ICU, trained in emergency medicine and found himself practicing urgent care. He has attended to 21 patients who had heart attacks while at the airport, saved 21 lives. 

Earlier that day, he sutured a patient who fell in the waiting area. The suturing tray lacked toothed-forceps, and he talked to someone on the phone in the periphery of my hearing, stating in no uncertain words that suturing trays would have to be complete and meet his standards. He did not say or else, it would be unseemly. 

Twenty minutes later I was discharged back into the world of bookstores and airplanes. Then it hit me: Everyone had spoken to me in Tamil, something that couldn’t happen anywhere else. It makes all the difference, being spoken to in your own language, something I’ve always known to be important yet never had experienced.

 I am so grateful. Two days later as I rub hydrocortisone cream into my blotchy rash, I feel again a rush of gratitude. Thank you for the care, I want to say again. I don’t know that you saved my life, but I know you touched my life. Thank you.