A Bit of India in Paris: Heavy Rains, Devanagari and Power Cuts!

India is never far, especially these days. It’s been raining for two weeks in Paris. It’s raining! It’s raining! I’ve got plenty of suede shoes but I can’t wear them because of this never-ending cold monsoon! The gutters overflow, colourful giant mushrooms come and go on the pavements and people cross the streets in an anarchic and reckless way in order to avoid one or two rain drops. When I turn the heater on in my car, listening to Phir Milenge Chalte Chalte in the trafic jams, my windscreen wipers twisting along with the music, I feel like I’m in Mumbai…

One hour ago, we even experienced a power cut in my neighbourhood. The first power cut I’ve lived since I settled in Paris…7 years ago. Everybody was on the balconies with candles, lighters and mobile phones! Someone couldn’t enter the block of flats because the gate was electric. I realised I didn’t have any torches , that most of my lighters were empty and that my only source of light was my computer on battery and a small vanilla candle I had bought from a charity to help little girls in Afghanistan. I was afraid for my frozen food I had just bought. And the worst: no facebook, no emails, no TV!!!

10 minutes of total nightmare! Yes, it lasted for 10 minutes… And when the light came back everybody returned inside, relieved and a bit groggy…  So tell me, do you really think I’m ready for India?

 Ready or not, I wanted to show you these three lovely Hindi books. Real Indian children’s Hindi books that my blog-mate from Indomaniaque has sent me. I’m going to use them with great pleasure since they correspond to my humble level! (Click to make the photos larger)

  

By the way, I wanted to say to Hindi speakers or rather to Hindi writers: can you stop writing Hindi phonetically??? Pleeeeeeeeeeze! It’s very difficult to read «  aap kaise hain? » when you’ve spent weeks learning Devanagari. I guess phonetic writing must be easier to read for Urdu speakers for example, but आप कैसे हैं? is so much more beautiful, so much more authentic and so much more mysterious! It’s a bit like being among the only ones who know the secret code to enter a Divine City! (By the way, the origins of the word Devanagari are: देव  = God and  नागर = Town) A bit like Champollion who had penetrated the mystery of the Egyptian History through his discovery of hieroglific writing!

So, let me feel like Champollion and make Devanagari live even on the Web!

So, फिर मिलेंगे चलते चलते ! Or why not: नाचते नाचते !