There are some lines that are larger than the films they spring from. Floating off, in an afterlife of sorts, they enter the collective consciousness: they become our lines, no matter how trite. Take ‘We’ll always have Paris’ from the iconic film, Casablanca: it’s the line the Humphrey Bogart character says to Ingrid Bergman just as she is about to fly off with her husband. What he is actually telling her is that though they have to part, the memory of their love affair in Paris would stay with them forever. Life and circumstances can’t take that away from the two lovers.

Paris has long been a metaphor: a destination where the romantic imagination can safely land. It’s a place where you can slip out of your skin into another one, shed constraining conventions and take on another persona — temporarily at least. No wonder one of Oscar Wilde’s characters famously said: “When good Americans die they go to Paris”. For American writers and artists like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Man Ray, Paris between the two great wars signified heady freedom: it was also a wellspring of creativity to sip from.

I, too, have this thing about Paris. Other cities can be a matter of geography. You know, about physical things like longitude, latitude, climate, food, topography, language, landscape and culture — the quantifiable. But for me this city of light has to do with history — my own. Paris can be a labyrinth: you never know where a turn will take you. And at an impressionable age, when you do find an exit, you can’t be sure that it is the same you who is exiting. It’s a city in which you can lose yourself, only to find another, transformed self.

I went there at the right time: 1968 was a magical year because everything seemed to be changing, going topsy-turvy. There was a little French revolution going on and everything was being questioned. My literary paths, or pretensions, soon gave way to the world of art and addabazi. I spent long hours attending lectures at the Ecole du Louvre and cruising through the museums and art galleries of Paris. And, even longer hours in smoke-filled cafes discussing art, the state of the world and, of course love, over cheap red wine. Artists, writers, cineastes and musicians from most corners of the world were a dime a dozen, all of them with big dreams. As students we soaked in the atmosphere of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and Montparnasse. Once, we even saw the two reigning deities of the Left Bank, Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir hobble by outside La Dome in Montparnasse.?For us they were no less of a phenomenon than the Beatles. I returned to Paris fairly regularly ever since. Many of the places were still there but the old spirit was missing. The habitués of the city cynically began to call Paris a ville-musee. The French capital (once a proud capital of the art world) had itself become a museum — gloriously elegant and beautified, nip-and-tucked, retro-chic and a perfect tourist trap. High rents gradually drove the true Parisians to the suburbs or elsewhere. Artists and writers were also part of the grand exodus driven into self-exile because of the high cost of living in Paris.

However, when I went to Paris recently I was in for a pleasant surprise. That certain something about Paris (you could even call it ‘soul’ at the risk of being considered hyperbolic) that had fled, appeared to be making a comeback. But, to a new address — make that plural. Two artist friends, Viswanadhan and Nadine took me on a tour to parts of Paris and its suburbs where something was indeed happening.

The first stop was Ivry-sur-Seine, a suburb that is about a 20-minute bicycle ride from their apartment in Paris. Have to confess we took a bus there since I’ve long lost my bicycle legs. Both Viswanadhan and Nadine recently bought two huge studios in this area that was once an industrial hub. An abandoned railway yard now hosts scores of artists, many of whom live in these atelier-apartments.

An enterprising Frenchman first found a studio for a couple of homeless Latin American painters. It wasn’t long before he left his own little manufacturing business to go into real estate development for others, including artists, architects and designers. Soon, a community of sorts emerged and with it a little of the old spirit of Paris returned. There’s even a little new theatre that stages plays and performances by international artistes in the midst of all this. Many of the artists living here are actively involved with it. Next to it is a charming, reasonably-priced restaurant with an eclectic menu where local artists and their friends come to break bread, drink wine and discuss their work. Hardly a week goes by without an open house from an ‘Ivry-sur-Seine’ artist.

There’s a similar gathering of artists in other Parisian suburbs and far-flung parts of the city. Montreuil, for example, was traditionally a stronghold of the communist party — forlorn and rather drab. Today, it has been gentrified beyond recognition. Flickers, however, of the old Parisian elan can be found in the warehouses and old buildings that have been transformed into ateliers, many of them avant-garde. There’s a buzz about the place.

But for me the pièce de résistance of this mini-renaissance of sorts is Centre 104 that opened last October. Perhaps, rebirth is a more apt word for this strange cluster of 19 huge state of the art ateliers located in the far from fashionable 20th arrondisement (ward) of Paris predominantly inhabited by immigrants from Africa. This cavernous building was once Paris’ main factory to manufacture everything needed for funeral ceremonies — from coffins (apparently a 100 a day), to urns and the materials that lined the coffins. Today it is on its way to becoming the new stomping ground for the arterati and those looking on the trail for the Next Best Thing.

I guess I can safely say: we will always have Paris.

Subscribe to Verve Magazine or buy the Verve issue on stands now!