The Paris Indian Quarter Experience

We visited the Indian Quarter in Paris last week in order to experience its ambience and taste authentic Indian food too. The moment we landed at The La Chapelle Metro station, we were surrounded by familiar-looking faces and smells. To my pleasant surprise, most of the pedestrians looked and spoke Tamil. The boards of shops bore tamil signs. We even saw a complete tamil family in traditional wear, crossing the street. One could, however see that some looked unmistakably Sri Lankan and spoke their distinctive tamil dialect. A few shops prominently exhibited pictures of the slain LTTE Supremo, Prabhakaran. We had a sumptuous meal consisting of Idly, Vada, Doas and Sambar at Cafe Bharat. The food wasn't great to write home about but, hey, the whole experience of eating tamil food in Paris was a novel experience. The filter coffee was excellent, though. The whole ambience made me feel nostalgic as I merrily chatted with the shop-keepers, to the amused bewilderment of my two Hindi-speaking students. We visited a Ganesh temple and even an Amman temple. I believe, the residents celebrate Ganesh Chaturti with great fan-fare. The Indian Tamils in the Quarter primarily hail from Pondicherry, the erst-while French colony in India, and have been living for generations. The kids there seem to speak Tamil with a 'French accent'. Sounded strange to my ears.They should call it 'Fremil' (my coinage, and a poor one, I know). The streets bore a strong Tamil mark. Some streets had tough-looking men huddled together and giving suspicious looks. I realised that the neighbourhood wasn't too safe, even for a 'Tamil'. Some people even dub it 'Little Jaffna'. Uncomfortable associations...