There you go, you have to go home. You have to pack your bag one last time. Everything becomes blurred, unstable
Mumbai is really all grey this morning. It’s very early. On the bus that takes us back to the city centre, I see the sky slowly but surely turning pink, orange, then pale blue.
We are coming back from the Bombay film studios. I was recruited to be an extra in a second-Zone film. It’s very common here. Today is my last day of travel. I have 13 months behind me, the news from the family not being very good, I have decided to return. I had to finish in beauty, one last adventure.
We are shaken like goods in this old, old bus, the door doesn’t close and I am cold
A night without sleep is never good. I pinch my bare arms in my backpack to protect them from the fresh air rushing in. My mobile phone has run out of battery and it’s always like that when it would be really nice to be able to film what I see from the bus. For sure, when I leave I’ll have a mobile phone that holds up!
“When i’lI leave“, I haven’t even come back yet, I’m already thinking about the next departure.
I’ll have great earphones that don’t twist all the time and fit snugly into my tiny ear holes.
I’ll have a more powerful photographic lens and a wide angle too.
I’ll have video equipment, I’ll have pencils, I’ll bring my watercolour box.
I will have a lighter laptop, I will have, I will.
I will go.
The group of extras breaks up and gets lost in the city without saying goodbye
No one cares about anyone. Travellers are sometimes like that. Other adventures await them.
I see the stairs that lead to the hotel, 4 levels higher, where I took a room, I greet the nightwatcher.
I ask for the laundry that I entrusted to the laundry on my arrival, it’s there.
The watchman, as a good Indian, asks me for the money for the washing without any polite formula and with aggressiveness.
Well, a sleepless night doesn’t help me to be inclined to be lenient, I get angry, he feels silly, dips his nose in his papers… I have flattened greasy hair on my head, the Kohl has run down my eyelids and I’m always cold. And then I’m hungry too.
Come to think of it, a good hot shower first, a breakfast afterwards, in a chic, French-style café. It’s very expensive but the coffee is good, the bread is crunchy and there’s a wifi connection
The shower is cold.
In the café, the connection keeps being interrupted.
The waiter is surly, I don’t understand what he’s saying.
The coffee makes me sick to my stomach.
I have to change places several times, because it’s crowded, because I’m alone at a table of four, because …
The “tartine” formula consists of three small slices of baguette, which is very expensive. We are in India. A country of food for five cents.
The intermittent connection gives me just enough time to check my e-mails and send the message announcing my return to my sons. My sons.
Until then, nobody new.
I was waiting for something to keep me here. An idea. A job. A man. A miracle.
I hesitate for a few minutes. I resist. I am still waiting for a last-second miracle. Quite possible, nobody is really waiting for me.
But here I am, I press “enter” to send the message. That’s it, it’s over.
I have to come back now.
And it still doesn’t pass, I scream to death inside and I have a real furious desire to cry. It will be OK.
Distraught. I don’t know what to do. But I have to do something.
I’m going to find them all and I’m not happy about it.
That’s probably the truth. I don’t miss anyone. In fact, I don’t.
Sometimes we lose our way together. I found myself alone, on a journey
I dreamed so much of my return, flamboyant, my children waiting for me at the airport, their arms, my joy, the excitement, heartbeats.
Fairy tales, American films, the return of the prodigal mother.
I come back sad and downcast. I didn’t make it to the end of my journey. I am coming back because I can no longer bear the idea that my daughter isn’t well, not being there to comfort and support her.
I couldn’t resist the siren song telling me to come back. Because they need me. In fact, it will be different. They won’t need me when I’m there, because I’ll be there. I’ll take my place and I’ll get the job again. Then they can leave, go well, go somewhere else, far away from me.
This morning I am tired, a sleepless night, tonight I am leaving. Fifteen hours of flight, five hours at the airport, two hours on the metro, two hours on the train. Another sleepless night. I will sleep later
I have to get out of my room, I have to go and sniff Mumbai’s air again, the sleeping children on the pavements, the incessant harassment of the vendors, the deafening horns. Before it’s too late. I have to get out of my room, once again. But I’m too tired now. I need to get some sleep. Just a little and then I’ll go and drown in the bay, the dirty sea that doesn’t even smell like the ocean. I will drown in my dark thoughts. As the Indians purify themselves in the polluted Ganges, perhaps I will come out of it washed of my sorrow.
I listen attentively to the infernal noise of Mumbai, like a poem that you have to learn by heart
The chic district is crowded. Everybody goes to the gates of India. This Arc de Triomphe building overlooking the sea.
It’s holiday time for the Indians. They are crowded around the monument.
The Mercedes, the Impeators, hardly make their way between the taxis, motorbikes, cyclists and countless pedestrians.
The women in richly decorated saris and the dirty beggars reaching out their hands.
The little girls in the bins, the skinny shoulders, the shaggy hair and the other children, fat and clean.
The streets with uneven cobblestones, the oversized train station, the imposing buildings, the gothic bell towers, the churches, the temples, the luxury hotels, the slums. Families make their beds on the pavement, cricketers train in the green parks, the seaside. Rats, dogs sleeping in the middle of the pavement, men eating together in the street on the gound, disabled people crawling on the pavement.
A little more from here, a little more from there, a little more time. Since it’s over now
Go out again to cross the city on foot in the heat of this Indian winter.
A last Sunday in Mumbai and Basta. Three little tours and then off we go.
Tonight, the meter stops.
Another sleepless night ahead, the plane takes off at 3am.
In the night, the watchman tries to get my favours. He comes back knocking at my bedroom door. I answer through the door that I am sleeping. He insists, I shout. “No, you see Raju there, now I’m sleeping! »
But I don’t sleep, I read, I think. At one o’clock in the morning I am ready, the taxi is waiting for me downstairs.
The airport is crowded.
I learn that France is at war with Mali.
I go through customs, fill in the departure card, I exchange my last rupees for dollars as it is forbidden to go abroad with Indian currency.
Passport, stamped visa. Transit zone.
I am hungry, I try to buy breakfast but if I pay in dollars he will give me change in rupees. Front of my dismay, the boy offers me the coffee.
It’s time to leave. I take my seat. I wrap myself in the blankets I bought at the market in Udaïpur and fall into a comatose sleep. I don’t even hear the plane taking off.
Correspondence in Dubai. Another take-off.
Seven hours later, Paris under our feet. At Roissy Charles de Gaulle, the temperature is 5 degrees.
Customs. Armed forces all over the airport. I wait for my backpack on the luggage belt.
I look like terrible. I feel dirty, faded. RER B to Gare de Lyon. TGV to Lyon Perrache.
The day declines once again and I have to take the train, to finally find my sons who are waiting for me
The train slows down. For a fraction of a second, I catch a glimpse of the imposing silhouette of my elder son.
The train stops.
Seven thousand five hundred kilometres.
Thirteen months.
Beaches, jungles, desert, Himalayas.
Here we are, on this station platform, in the night, in the cold of January.
I don’t know which of us is happy, moved, embarrassed.
I don’t know what we feel.
They are just in my arms.
I find them again, before I lose them again in the scenery, the noise, the road.
Just a few seconds before everything returns to normal, routine.
Their voices, their faces. I say to myself “how beautiful they are, how beautiful they are…“.
The purr of the car, the smell of the house, the sweetness of the cat.
Nothing has changed but everything is different.
Traveling is life-changing. It really does.
