Nicole

The day I landed in Nice and took the long winding road uphill to locate our Villa Mimosa - was far from Wow! Its been a year now and the feeling is yet to sink in. Twas the first night that brought in my homesick tears and the churning of the stomach as the taxi sped its wheels along the dark bends. In the days that followed, I simply wished I had stayed on...with some of my favorite people, of course!

Tanneron (pronounced Ta-neh-hon) is a sleepy Enid Blyton village with kids on bikes, cars parked in the village townsquare that has a landmark clock tower in the center and the 2 shops, 1 post office and 3 cafes located on either side of it. Going to Cannes was the idea with my previous bosses and a movie in tow. Thankfully since twas also a holiday of sorts, one of my best friends decided she will come too. We had 4 days to spend before the Film Festival took over our time, hence the stopover at the villa. (The villa houses some of the best moments of tourist delight, but that is for entry in this blog, on another sunny day.)

Nicole' was her name. God bless her! Hers was the only departmental store in the village, that housed veggies and yes, yogurt (yumm!). Nicole' in her french and us Indians in our English, somehow became friends enough for her to set aside fresh Croissants for our breakfast every morning. We had to walk down 'our' Villa Mimosa, upto the townsquare and collect our breads, after which was a quick round to the church. Yes, dogs were aplenty and well groomed ones that got me walking like I was on ice most of the time! Apart from us 5 people, we must have spotted 5 others in that town, and the word population had some meaning only when we neared Cannes.(Experiences in Croissette Bay, Cannes - the film watching, sometime even dozing off in one of the plush theatres is again reserved for another day, hopefully a rainy one!)

Somewhere in travel, places like Tanneron teach you that this world is as large as it is small. As deep as it is wide. I mean, we are from one of the most populated countries in the world, and there we were in a town with less than 50people in it (they even have a big community building for themselves with notices of events and issues posted on its boards!) and of course not a beggar in sight! So much of real peace, quiet and as my director friend commented, "Even a robber will stay away from this village as the houses are always closed with little or no human presence - there is no challenge in the steal!"

In that stillness, we could smell the aroma of freshly baked bread and the new bloom of Mimosa - a tender yellow flower that indicates the onset of spring and natural beauty! Something that will always remind me of Nicole'. Yes, Nicole' wore similar dresses of separate colors each day, with an apron to match. The one in this pic denotes that it is a thursday.