Recently, when I was traveling back from US to India, there was a 4 hour layover in Paris Charles De Gaulle airport. The in-flight meals were not too great. The in-flight entertainment gave me good company. I had watched two back to back movies and was quite tired when we finally landed in CDG. I had managed just over an hour of sleep on the flight from Boston to Paris and was hoping to get some shut-eye in CDG. But hunger pangs voted out my sleep plans. We were down to our last few dollars and didn’t have much money to indulge in fancy food. We went in search of a café in the airport to have a light breakfast. We knew we could not rely on the meals served in the flight and needed some reinforcement for the nine hour flight ahead. We went to this café in CDG. I got myself a Pain Au Chocolat and Cappuccino with some reservations about my choices. But, the minute I bit into the bread, it simply melted in my mouth. It was truly delicious and the coffee was excellent too, worth spending our last dollars on. It also brought back nostalgic memories of my student days in France where my breakfast used to be either a croissant or a pain au chocolat with a café au lait bought at a boulangerie on the way to college. I have not found croissants like the French ones anywhere else in the world. When you are in Paris CDG, you must eat the croissants at this café (Café Ritazza – thanks to my company policy of requiring receipts for reimbursement that I have the name of the café).
Back in my childhood days in the eighties, Television was a luxury only the rich could afford. Good quality TVs were generally imported from Singapore which was the electronics haven in those days. Singapore flight passengers could be seen, surrounded by a minimum of 4-5 huge boxes, standing in long queues to clear customs at the airport. There were also the Desi brands – the Dyanoras and the Solidaires that were owned by people who couldn’t afford a trip to Singapore to get a international brand TV. In my small hometown, there were only two TVs for the entire neighborhood and the Indian government controlled Doordarshan was the emperor of the TV world. TV antennas would literally reach the sky. We would be especially friendly with the kids from these houses in order to wheedle an invitation to watch some TV. Returning home from school, I would dump my school bag on the bed, quickly change out of the school uniform, drink the dreaded milk and gathering all other friends, run to meet my
Comments