Prasad Sangameshwaran: Laissez les bons temps rouler!

My Week

Getting ready for a test is never easy. And this was going to be tougher than the weekly edit meeting. The stern-looking interviewer at the French embassy could easily pass off as the headmistress from school. She had to ensure that people like us had the credentials and enough reason to return back to India.

The travel agent did everything possible to mess up the test. He mixed my flight tickets and travel insurance papers with that of a lady journalist from a rival paper. As for the biometric test, I had slashed my fingers just two days back. I scraped through the test with the luck that has stood by me since schooldays. But I had to pass the bigger test of Mumbai traffic. The reporting time for the flight was a couple of hours away and I had just enough time to pick my bags from home to take the flight to fancy, or France, as it were.

Tuesday
France is where the action is. The Paris Air Show makes traffic worse than our very own Mumbai. And I am not talking about air traffic, but the queue of cars waiting to head towards the venue. The advertising fest at Cannes is another added attraction. But even as I clasp an invite to a party at Cannes, there are other duties to attend.

Wednesday
I have barely recovered from what the world calls a jetlag when it's time to attend a meeting that will talk about the Rs 77,200 crore Danone Group's strategy for India. As I rush to file what I think is a great story, the laptop given to me decides to play truant. The MS Word is in French and the keys are all mixed up. Imagine Q in place of A! Forget typing, I cannot even check the word count using command keys. I am visualising the page deadline back in India saying au revoir. I cannot seek help either because one cannot share the story with the world before it goes to print. I curse myself for refusing to pay attention at foreign languages in school.

A few hours later we head to Centre Pompidou, the ugliest structure of iron and steel according to some. The Centre Pompidou caused a public outcry when it was built in 1977 as the purists felt that a building with oversized exposed pipes was at odds with an otherwise white stone, sculpted-to-perfection Paris. Inside the monumentally ugly building is something beautiful "" the French national modern art museum and a chic rooftop restaurant, Georges, named after former French president Georges Pompidou, under whose tenure the building was conceived.

Friday
We are at Evian-les-Bains, near the source of the mineral water brand that flows from the French Alps. But for me the golf resort that hosts the famous Evian Masters tourney beckons. As luck would have it, again, we are off for a training session under a professional at the Evian Training Academy. A few swings later, I gain the confidence to take on Tiger Woods on his own turf.

Also...
At Evian, we visit the source from where snow from the Alps melts into mineral-rich water. I conjure dreams of bathing in a pool of Evian. Unfortunately, I cannot achieve Madonna's feat ""yes, she's reportedly bathed in a tub of Evian "" as the area is protected and bottled water is carried by steel pipes into factories without being touched by human hands. But Frenchmen arrive in cabs with bagfuls of PET bottles and even feeding bottles to take back their weekly quota of Evian.