Photo Essay – Stealing a Letter and Doing Pushups at Marcel Proust’s Tomb, Père-Lachaise Cemetery, Paris
After Proust.
[Photos by a Friend of Marcel Proust; text by Mayank Austen Soofi]
Suddenly, MARCEL PROUST. His tomb.
The Delhi Walla is at Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris. I have come to see Proust, the author of In Search of Lost Time. I have brought a pale white rose for him from a florist outside the cemetery.
Just before stepping into the graveyard, I had stopped at a café for a cup of allongé where I wondered if I would be able to find Marcel Proust amid hundreds of graves.
It is a very cold grey day at Père-Lachaise. I walk along a sequence of cobbled passageways lined with tombs of varying sizes and designs. Sometimes I stop to read the inscriptions on the graves.
Marcel’s grave is black. A piece of folded paper is lying on the top. It turns out to be a handwritten note (see picture 13 below). I look around, and finding no one, start to read the note.
Marcel
I fell in love at
your grave,
I cried and he com-
forted me.
Did you have a
hand in this?
You have changed
my life.
because of you, I
am not afraid to love, to feel. And I
love you, even though
you are gone.
I love you.
My heart swells
with love for you. It
is your mind I feel I know better
than any other.
That is your gift to
me, and to us all.
I hope you are not
cold. I had no cattleyas
or lilacs, but I bought
you daisies (more fitting for
me). I will love you for ever.
Mia
It is growing very cold. A plane is noiselessly crossing the cloudy sky. I do twenty pushups to warm up myself.
While leaving, I leave behind my handwritten note on Proust’s tomb:
Dear Marcel,
I just read a letter from one of your lovers. It mirrored my feelings, so I’m stealing it from you. It’s now in my wallet. Please forgive me.
Your mayank
Marcel’s way
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Mayank, you’re a great writer. So many people now love you the way you love Proust and the best part is that it hasn’t gone to your head. The day it does, you will stop being what you are…
On the razor’s edge… Emotiona,l but the stealing could not be necessary. For the push ups, sure, they were not.
kal maiN gham o andoh meiN baa khaatir-e mahzooN
thaa turbat-e ustaad pey baithaa huaa gham naak
dekhaa jo mujhey fikr mein taariikh kii Majrooh
haatif ney kahaa ganj-e m’aani hai tah-e khaak
Twenty push ups? You must be the fittest photojournalists in the whole of NCR. Many of us were like you when we started – physically fit and unafraid to love. But then covering the same crooks in crumpled Khadi day after day, their appearance unchanged and cliches they mouthed filled us with cynicism. Subsidised beer and pakoras did the rest.