Commissioner Dattaray Padsalgikar and wife Aditee's Parisian love affair

Aditee and Dattatray Padsalgikar PicPradeepacircAcircAcircu00c2u0080AcircAcircu00c2u0088DhivarIt is nearly sunset when we meet IPS officer Dattatray Padsalgikar and his wife Aditee at their Malabar Hill residence We are late by halfanhour after having cursed the traffic snarl at Bandra Kurla Complex BKC an inevitable outcome of the Coldplay gig But the commissioner of the Mumbai Police is empathetic If you blame it on the traffic I understand he smiles explaining how he has just returned from BKC himself His two mobile phones buzz nonstop and between patiently attending to them he offers us une demitasse de cafeacute mdashFrench for a small cup of coffeeThe commissioners love for all things French was revisited when earlier this month he was invited to address the 36th convention of the Indian Association of Teachers of French At the convention he evoked one of his favourite 19th century poets Charles Baudelaire who composed the memorable verses of Les Fleur du Mal The Flowers of Evil I first visited Baudelaires tomb in the cemetery of Montparnasse Paris on August 31 1992 Turned out that he had died on that very day 125 years ago I thought it was a great coincidence says PadsalgikarThe 40th commissioner of the force Padsalgikar is a postgraduate in French from Fergusson College Pune It is where he met Aditee his classmate who also graduated in MA French Both admit that between the sciences and the humanities the latter won Maths and chemistry were definitely not something I was interested in Besides my introduction to French happened very early because of my mother says Aditee Lata Nadgauda her mother had done a parttime course in French over the course of four years and was a foundermember of the Alliance Franccedilaise in Pune Padsalgikar calls their decision courageous as both hailed from families where the studious went on to become doctors and engineersTheir college days were spent with French cinema screened at their department the National Film Archive of India and at Film and Television Institute of India Moreover my mother was a member of an organisation that arranged French visitors to India Families in Pune such as ours hosted these visitors and my family made friends with them ever since I was in the eighth standard or so says Aditee At college a visiting professor from France had records of the latest French songs Aditee Padsalgikar and their classmates would then borrow these to listen to the latest that was popular in FranceThe commissioner feels that times have changed when it comes to learning French or any foreign language He plays BFM TV mdash a French news and weather channel mdash on his smartphone and says We didnt have access to all this technology back thenLearning French is different from speaking French Our first opportunity to speak the language the way the natives did came in 1992 says Aditee That was the year when Padsalgikar on deputation with the Home Ministry in New Delhi was offered a chance to study at the International Institute of Public Administration which came under the French Prime Ministers office Having played a vital role in his civil services exam his flair for French helped him understand public administration and the technological advances of that time It also served as an introduction in to some of their most senior officials and the French police system which is welldivided and spread out Policing in the rural areas was done by the Gendarmerie earlier under their Ministry of Defence although today it is a bit different he saysAditee also managed to join him for the latter part of his term in Paris and enrolled herself for two courses at the Sorbonne It meant living agrave la franccedilaise mdash the way the French do it Then in their early 30s they visited cafeacutes that feminist Simone de Beauvoir and her partner the philosopher Jean Paul Sartre had frequented mdash Les Deux Magots and Cafeacute de Flore Visits to museums and absorbing art right from the 19th century to the moderns was part of their time there At the Museacutee de lOrangerie you must sit and gaze at Monets Water Lilies which are arranged on a parabolic wall the police chief recommends seated below a range of Gond art sourced from Maharashtra that hangs on a wall at the homeWe remembered every lesson chapter wise from Mauger Bleu the textbook we had studied back in Pune There was one about visitors from Canada coming to Paris for the first time and walking around the Champs de Elysees Our Paris visit was straight out of Mauger Bleu says Aditee While the cultural immersion came alive well beyond the limitations of the textbook the two things Aditee refrained from trying out escargot and grenouille mdash snails and frog legs the staple diets commonly described in French textbooks We lived like students again in a hostel in those days free from the baggage and designations from back home she saysOnce back in India Aditee turned to teaching French at the Alliance Franccedilaise in Pune and Mumbai and then at Mumbai university The couples interest in French has passed on to their children Ashwin and Shruti My grandson has been taught the Alouette song and is able to point to his head and nose as the lyrics tell you to in French says Aditee She jokes that French comes handy for the family when they want to keep things confidentialAs we wind up for the evening we ask what the commissioner and his wife now in their late 50s thought of the Eiffel Tower on their first visit to the City of Love Aditee smiles shyly We were an old married couple by then but Padsalgikar says Do you know the best use the tower was put to Aditee remarks Superman alluding to the film And then an enthusiastic Padsalgikar draws our attention to the military past of the monument of romance In World War I it was a tower to transmit important messages