PARIS

I reached Paris on Saturday, 31^st May , morning. The plan was to meet in front of Notre Dame at noon. May be the European punctuality has rubbed on, but still it was heartening to see around 15 IIT boys gather there within 15 minutes of the decided time. We then proceded to watch the Palais of Justice, Pantheon, ... , Place de la Concorde, Champs Elysee, Arc de Triumph, ..., The Eiffel and quite a few other architechural splendours that line the Parisian Boulevards and were left completely exhausted by the end of the day.

Sunday was reserved for museums. Not that any of us is a connoissuer of paintings and sculptures, but being obedient tourists, we thought we should pay a visit. The French government's policy of allowing free entry to most of them on the first sunday of a month did play a huge role, I must accept. We reached Louvre early and were one of the first few to enter. No wonder people say one needs days to explore Louvre exhaustively. It is so huge that a mere glance at each exhibit might add up to a day. With 3 wings and 4 floors connected by its many passages and staircases it would be a felicitous venue for the 'Crystal Maze' finale. We finally left the museum at about 1pm and proceeded to have lunch comprising of crepe, a typical Parisian dish and a panino.

Then after a short nap in one of the many gardens, we left for our second instalment of artistic fodder, Centre de Pompidou. If ever doubts arise in anyone's mind regarding the position of Paris as the cultural capital of the world, he should visit the Louvre and follow it up with Pompidou. The two museums are markedly different in both their external appearances as well as their exhibits. While one is a majestic building with 18^th century architecture, housing works from centuries ago, the other is state-of-art structure having external escalators and some of the most unconventional drawings and sculptures. As you enter Pompidou, you are greeted with M.F. Hussain style abstract paintings. But if you manage to get past them, you are exposed to a completely novel branch of art. Many of the ingeniously designed products that we encounter in market everyday are slight modifications and simplifications of the out-of-the-box imagination of these ‘modern artists’. All through-out, there was a great emphasis on modular objects – diverse and complex structures built from smaller simpler ones. One of my favourites was the dinning table fabricated from 2 thin sheets of metal. Then, there were some mind-blowing paintings from a chap named Philip-Lorca diCoria. His attention to detail like drawing cigarette stubs strewn on the footpath – such a characteristic feature of any European alley, or a scrap of paper rumbling in the wind, was admirable. We were completely mesmerised by the photograph-like genuineness of his work.

I will always be grateful to this place for helping me overcome my aversion for ‘modern art’. But the icing on the cake was finding an exhibit from one IIT Bombay alumnus. The 1992 Industrial Design Centre pass out had developed a funky chair-cum-sofa-cum bed. It was a proud moment indeed.

The Centre de Pompidou most certainly doesn’t figure in must-watch places in Paris but we had gone there without high expectations and thoroughly enjoyed it.

(visit -http://picasaweb.google.com/anchit56/PARIS to see pics from Pompidou)

P.S. – All said and done, the most notable feature of European museums are their free washrooms. To save on lodging expenses, we had spent the night below Eiffel tower. Thankfully the Louvre men’s room came to our rescue :P