Van Gogh Trail in Reverse: Auvers-sur-Oise

It was a bright Saturday, the sun in its right measure like the perfect icing on a carrot cake. Suggested by a Francophile and artsy senior,  we embarked on a journey to Auvers-sur-Oise, a sleepy town which translates itself into Auvers on the banks of river Oise. More than just the beauty of the country side, Auvers is also the final resting place of the renowned painter, Vincent Van Gogh. With our RATP Navigo Pass letting us travel the entire length of 50 minutes, without any further expense, we had a comfortable travel along the RER C line going to Pontoise, shifting train at Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône, to change for the Transition H line that took us to Gare Auvers-sur-Oise. 

A petite and beautiful railway station welcomed us and the first thing that struck my eye was the elegant Notre Dame Cathedral de l’Assomption standing tall on a hill beckoning us. Excited we exited the station to see a sleepy town, lazing around in the heritage of the (post)impressionist movement. There was this chart that showed the important landmarks here, and we decided to follow the trail. 

As soon as we started walking, we noticed these tiny metal strips with ‘Vincent’ engraved on it. By following the signage, we first entered the cathedral, which from the station itself was calling out to us. In comparison to the elaborateness of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris and Bordeaux, this one was more elegant owing to its simplicity. Also, wedding bells were to ring in an hour of two, and flower girls dressed uniformly and flowers tied to each bench imparted a life to this church. It seemed like this church is still alive, while the others have become monuments of antiquities. 

As we came out, we noticed the church was undergoing renovation and had metal spears in certain areas. That apart, I could see what Van Gogh saw while painting it, in his typical blue and yellow colours. His memories pushed us to take a small path that took us to open fields on both sides, crossing which, we reached the Commonwealth War Graves, where Van Gogh and his brother Theo rest along with many others. 

Cemeteries, I have come to notice is an important part of French culture. It is more beautiful than a garden, with flowers and tablets raised in honour of the dead all over. I suddenly recounted one of my quick visits to Montparnasse cemetery in Paris to see Simone de Beauvoir who enthralled me with her Second Sex and her lover and renowned philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, only to see the beige tombstones covered with the impressions of kisses with dark red lipsticks. It took us quite sometime to locate Van Gogh’s tomb, so we walked around telling each other that we shouldn’t let the other people feel bad or lonely. We spent seconds with everyone finally locating the brothers’ graves covered with green leaves. Van Gogh is said to have shot himself at his rented house in Auvers-sur-Oise , and died a painful death by his brother, Theo’s side, with an agony that lasted for 2 days. Theo couldn’t come to terms with his dear brother’s death and joined him in a few months’ time. It was Theo’s wife who transferred his body next to Van Gogh’s, as the inseparable brothers could stay together in the timelessness of death. We also got reminded that Van Gogh’s body was not allowed in the church, nor were prayers chanted for him due to his ‘double sins’ of being a protestant and for committing the ‘blasphemous’ act of suicide. After a small grouping at Auberge Ravoux - where Van Gogh stayed, he was directly taken to the cemetery. Suddenly my mind flashed back to the florist near my home, who sells wide eyed sunflowers. We regretted not getting one for this painter who in his yellow house, to welcome his friend Paul Gauguin drew an array of sunflowers, madly, in the most fascinating way. 

From there, we then went to a building, hosting Robert Daubigny and his son Karl Daubigny’s paintings, along with many others. The next destination was Auberge Ravoux, Vangogh’s 38th address in 37 years, his final destination before death, where in seventy days of his stay, he created more than 80 paintings and many more sketches. The room he stayed in, a 75 square feet small cloistered space, once with a strong smell of oil and paints and scattered canvasses all around, now stay as a testament of memory of an early death of a painter whose oeuvre of talent had more canvasses to roll out, more paints to dissolve. A roof tile substituted with glass pour in a column of sunlight with dust lining and filling that column. The rest is wood, brown or burgundy, missing its erstwhile royalty and now smelling of death of a dear dweller gone away in the most unfortunate of ways. There are no furnitures in the room, which were all either stolen or destroyed. The room now is barely a shell, but the air has a lot to say, of creations and death, of colours and blood, of art and religion, of immortality and death. 

The death hanging around the room due to Van Gogh’s mental instability according to many is attributed to absinthe, the most coveted drink among his circles. Baudelaire, Manet and Degas worshipped it and Vangogh has infamously cut one half of his ear under its influence and presented it to a prostitute, named Rachel. So it was fitting to have a strange and curious museum on absinthe in Auvers. Also called as the la fée verte or the green fairy, it is supposed to give a high so high where one can see in circles and swivels like the brushstrokes of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Drinking absinthe was a popular culture in Paris. A 5 PM drink with an elaborate ritual, where absinthe was added to a glass with a spoon holding a sugar cube, which can neutralise the extreme taste of the drink itself. This ritual is believed to give birth to the new and chic ‘happy hour’ (l’heure verte). The museum had posters of the dream like absinthe and the jars and equipments with which it was concocted. We left the museum after  clinking my coffee mug with a glass of absinthe in a portrait. Sante! 

Our last destination was the house of Daubigny, a beautiful place, warm, cosy and full of paintings. Th room that attracted me the most was his daughter’s, that Daubigny has carefully painted with his daughter in mind, with flowers and objects that resembled her. The house opens to a large garden which could easily be around 5 times the size of the house or more, that was therapy itself. We sat for a long time in the grass and got into talking with a French lady who narrated her adventures in India when she travelled to India with her girlfriends in her twenties. 

It was time to catch our train back and we thought it would be fitting to see the waters of the river, Oise, before going to the station five minutes away. The river was majestic, with royal swans and humble ducks floating on its waters, while trees looking at themselves in the crystal clear river. A sight of photographic brilliance and tranquility, we sat there on a bench, for a while, with our tired legs, and content hearts.

Retracing the path, home beckoned to a good night’s sleep, under a starry night. 

Across the sea

Grandmom was born by the sea

and me on her lap

listening to the tales that swayed as the waves broke

the fort of the granite walls

of the ocean of love

that was my grandmother's sea.



I was born in a city by a beach too

Grew up too soon counting its old waves

grey and frothing

like life breathing a mad run for the sea.




The ocean and its gem stones and its treasures wild

its stories, folklores, grandmother's love

my soul mate's warmth.



This city has no sea.

The city of 'dreamers', protests and love,

a perfect Bertolucci reel.



I yearn for the sea, for my grandmother

and you!

Hold me in your waves as you come as an ocean of dreams.

tell me the stories of the bottom of your heart

tell me tales of Latin America's dream

and Arctic's snow


Come here as a sea

for Eiffel to see a non camera eye

,

human, my mother of pearl,

my large blue sea.

Brush strokes

This is a rendition of a few walks and a train journey, some cups of coffee and finding Monet. Like them, the sufis, the wise wo(men) who traversed lands as far as the eyes could survey, talking endlessly about the magic that travelling rubs off on them - the Melquidase(s) in the bliss of solitude or in the company of soulmates. Treading long paths, smelling the air, gazing the land meeting the skyline, witnessing the colours changing as animals nestled themselves into a good night as the mystique lulled into a short but rewarding sleep under that tree in an oasis, only to leave at the crack of dawn. This was exactly how we felt when we embarked on a journey to Giverny from Paris. Every step we took was like turning the leaf of a book, a lot of culture and art in every square yard. 

We booked our train tickets to Giverny from St. Lazare railway station. Incidentally, the story starts right at the railway station itself. As they say, the roads  too bear memories as much as the destination does. It was that same station, modernised now, but same in blood that Monet painted. The silvery smoke glistening as light falls only to unravel the steam engine, in royal black waiting to turn the wheels. 

The city faded away very quickly giving way to pastures, thickets and open lands. How true as history books speak of it that Paris and four or other five cities have almost all of its population and the rest is an unending stretch of open land with not a human let alone settlements in the vicinity. 

The train ran 20 minutes late. As we got down at Vernon, the nearest railway station to Giverny, we were treated to Monet’s paintings as if promising us of a trail that would only surprise with more bounties. Giverny is only around 6 kilometres from Vernon and like every other time, we planned to walk. It is something a 10 euro bus ride to Giverny will never give. Before the walk we decided to fill in our hunger pang tummies with burgers and large mugs of coffee and then we were good to go. We crossed the river Seine, but midway took a minute to admire the clear waters of the river with zero cruises unlike in Paris. The river by Paris is like the city itself, city lights reflecting in its waters, resonating the beauty of Paris and its bridges, but by the countryside, it is darker, with stories to say to only those people who are willing to take that plunge. 

 

As soon as the bridge ended, there was a way for pedestrians which we missed. So we walked on the road taking care of the speeding vehicles and wondering why there is no footpath or pavement. But soon we saw  sunlight sieving through the trees creating lemon yellow pastures, light green canopy with woods of burgundy, and emerald treetops where the sun did not grace, only to half surround by a bright cerulean sky with a whiff of feather like cirrus clouds, floating lazily. May be we looked at it all imagining how Monet would have seen these. We continued walking, in a line, saving ourselves from the road only to see vignettes of Monet’s canvases from our earlier readings of his paintings. Again, was this an error of previous knowledge of him, I cannot say. 

It was a half price Saturday and there was a long queue which moved at a snail like pace. We waited patiently and sometimes irritably measuring its length by taking a quick glance at the number of heads in front of us, and occasionally looking back, where a lot many people waited for their turn, and telling ourselves that we are at least much ahead of them. The occasional trivial rationality one uses to placate ones’s heart!

We finally entered his house premises to actually see an overgrown garden. It was not the neatly trimmed, heavily manicured gardenscape, but a forest of blossoms, as if he had arrested a whole segment of nature and its abundant flower bells within his compound wall. On the other side of the road connected by an underground pass was the real treat we were about to witness.

 The Japanese garden! The real image of the water lily series lying there in a tranquility so profound, the bridges telling a thousand stories of his fine brush strokes, while the water in its reflection of the garden itself resounding his ecstatic colours and the sun in all this bearing witness, now, as it did then, at its magnificence. As solar energy is primal so is its photons to the Impressionists. We sat on a bench in absolute silence only to see a person, his hair silvery white, lost in time. I still have not concluded what was more beautiful, the garden and its noiseless conversations, or the old man himself, giving away how Monet himself would have bathed and soaked in the aura of his two creations: the garden and the paintings.

Speechless, we took shorter steps to a nearby cafe and found us a spot among the shrubs. There was something so enigmatic about the whole village. It seemed like everyone lived on a huge canvas. We walked back, not going to the museum which was on our list, thinking it would be an insult to the painter to go to his shrine when our heads were saturated with absolute beauty. We dared not committing such a blasphemy. 

The walk back was through that path, lonesome except for a few people every fifteen minutes. It was a walk of reminiscence. Paradoxically, we felt a lot lighter carrying the weight of this memory. I remember finding a wooden plank, where we sat and looked to infinity, trying to sink in the beauty of this scale. We reached the Seine, now more welcoming. But we had to say good bye as our train was just an hour away. The train took us back to our home where Muzzu cooked us a warm dinner with a dollop of love, as we watched the BBC documentary on Impressionists. The show was brilliant beyond words, historically accurate and aesthetically appealing. As morning dawned, we made a beeline to the Musee Marmottan Monet, situated at a stone’s throw away from our home. To be in the neighbourhood of Monet itself is a blessing. There, right there was Impression Sunrise, a master craft which Monet did the first thing one morning, when the rays of sunlight hit his sleepy eyes. A round swirl of sun amidst the colours it creates. There was the water lily series too, which took us back to the soul of Giverny. 

In the museum, there were other interesting pieces too like Rodin’s Tete de Saint Jean-Baptiste and Paul Signac’s Castellane. This visit was but eventful when Muzzu chanced upon Georges Seurat’s Le Dineur ou le Bouveur , finding layers to it, that I was drawn into it by his exceptional connect with that work of art. We don't know Seurat, but are definitely going to know him better. There was a pause given, to take in, and pensively reminisce the experience. Let it ripe and bear blossoms. Let autumn pass giving way for winter, and let Shelley sing on a cold wintry night, ‘if winter comes can spring be far behind?’ Let the spring bring its breeze home so that we cherry the cake with Musee d’Orsay, together. Till then, the impressionists wait!