CROSSING THE ALPS TO A PARISIAN SOJOURN

Ha ha.. Achan has pasted this postcard bought from Geneva upside down in the album. So the caption says “Looking back on Geneva !” Could be that from the plane he was looking back over his shoulder at the receding Geneva. He would have been terribly excited too ! In his private universe, he was familiar with H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, Dr. Johnson and a host of English literary figures and especially P. G.Wodehouse ! He often quoted from  Dr.Johnson but in his heart of hearts, he must have nourished the hope of cirumventing the Globe like Phileas Fogg and Passepartout.

My sister Chandrika’s narrative continues with a few additions and editing by me..

 

............Passent les jours et passent les semaines

           Ni temps passé

     Ni les amours reviennent

Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine

           Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure

           Les jours s'en vont je demeure

(……….The days go by and the weeks go by

Neither times gone  

nor lovers return

Under the Mirabeau bridge flows the Seine

Nights come the hour strikes 

The days go by, I remain…..)

- The Mirabeau bridge 

by Apollinaire

Leaving Geneva Achan and his team distanced themselves in space and time from the vestiges of their tangy Indian flavours. Geneva could have given them a whiff of the French perfumes but arrival in Paris, the city of love and romance probably landed them in a whirl of fragrance and colours that made them all dizzy. May & June 1968 - the summer of discontent where the economy came to a standstill following students’ unrest, had given way to the winter of buried distresses and hopeful peace.  

Student protesters, Latin Quarter, Paris, May 1968. Artist: Unknown 

Achan’s and Amma’s arrival at Paris, the city of love and bridges in the company of two staid gentlemen in the wintry cold days of December 1968 stamped the crossing of the bridge from the conservative Indian culture of the East to the laissez faire Western world. Like the lovers of Guillaume Apollinaire’s “Le Pont Mirabeau’’ (The Mirabeau Bridge) it is easy to picture Achan and Amma, arms intertwined, as they discovered the River Seine flowing under the picturesque bridges, carrying their gaze across time.

Their contact in Paris, Mr. Géhin, whom Achan often referred to in his conversations with us, seemed to have been in some way connected with dam building. He had come to India and even visited Idukki. We were shown videos, in those days probably better known as moving images, of M. Géhin projected on a screen which could be rolled up. The last clip of M. Géhin walking away from the camera, looking  back and waving his hand seemed to be sort of preordained as he passed away soon after, a visual image that remained with us on receiving the sad news.

It might have been in the company of Mr.Géhin that Amma and the team of Engineers made their next pitstop, Grenoble, the capital of the Isère department/province in France. This region surrounded by the scenic mountains is an extraordinary place where human intelligence and environment act together to produce sustainable energy from a plethora of hydroelectric projects. It was easy to see the reason for Achan’s choice of a visit to the region. Grenoble, a city in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of southeastern France, sits at the foot of mountains between the Drac and Isère rivers. It is considered to be the cradle of hydroelectricity as the region boasts of ten major hydroelectric projects spread all over and now boasts of even a museum dedicated to hydroelectricity, an idea born in the late seventies early eighties when the central hydroelectric projects on the region were being modernised and the question of dismantling the equipments cropped up.  

Each project with its own scenic locations and constructions are now on any trip advisers’ USP-S. They are all located mainly in the tributaries of the River Isère within the eponymous Isère province. The basin of the river springing from near Val d’Isère, the well known ski resort, has shaped its impetuous journey to later join the River Rhône. In ancient times the Celts adapted the word Isère similar to the Indo-European languages and Sanskrit:  isiráḥ इसिरः อิสิระ with the same definition.

I now wonder about Achan’s incredible span of interest to see and learn about these dams to the extent of even changing their international flight itinerary. The group arrived in Paris on the first of December 1968.  According to a former postcard they were to leave for Montreal within three days. 

 However, during the first week of December the group seemed to have continued to spend valuable time in the Rhône Alps. When they finally left La Girotte hydroelectric project for Paris, their reservoir of first-hand information would have needed a barrage to stem the tide of information overload!!! 

We have a memory lapse about their plans related to the arch barrages of the Sautet and the Tignes dams. While the Tignes Arch dam was the highest in Europe on its completion, the curved gravity dam of Le Sautet has its own technical curiosities.

Mural fresco on the Tignes Arch dam by HULA From the Rider Post

France discovered the famous « white oil » or hydroelectric power generation produced from the energy of strong and fast moving stream of water towards the end of the nineteenth century. However it was only in 1935 that the Sautet, one of the first huge dam reservoir projects, a pioneering and audacious project, situated on the Drac between the Isere and Haut-Alps(High Alps) came up.Le Barrage du Sautet by Jean-Paul Zuanon). Today its 350 hectares reservoir is a water-based activity paradise!!!  

The St Pierre Cognet Dam and Hydroelectric Project located in Saint-Pierre-de-Méaroz, Isère (38), Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France. This is dam one which seemed to have interested Achan very much as there are detailed photos of its left bank and right bank with intake and its Pierre Cognet reservoir. He had shot several photos of this dam giving the idea that Idukki Arch Dam was more like this one. Within my limited knowledge, I think by this they gained more knowledge that was later used during the construction of  Moolamattom powerhouse too. 

Another dam that they visited as can be seen from Achan’s photo is the Montenyard-Avignonet dam and plant. The deep gorges around this valley had constricted the Drac tributary of Isère river- probably the reason for integrating the Powerhouse inside the Dam itself.

The barrage is an extraordinarily amazing scene and Amma would have blurted out   “Shiva – Shiva” exclaiming in her characteristic style as she caught her first glimpse ! 

The travel interest is multiplied now by the possibility of biking and hiking and crossing the river through two seemingly simple hanging bridges now known as Himalayan footbridges – refering probably to the Lakshman Jhula, an iconic landmark connecting two villages located near Rishikesh at the foothill of the Himalayas. In contrast to the one in the Himalayas which would have been a Herculean feat of construction, they are quite innovative in Montenyard, as they were built with the help of helicopters and still retain this small link to India in its name.

The most captivating is La Girotte on the Dorinet river, a tributary of Doron de Beaufort in the Savoie Province of South Eastern France. It is an old dam built in 1946 which has not only an honourable history but also is an amazing creation in concrete without any steel armature. Because the supporting rocks were not too strong, the technique of multiple convex arches as opposed to the concave Idukki dam, assure the strength to resist the waterflow of the natural lake. 

The colour of its lake water is a breath-taking green as it receives the melted water from the Tré, the glacier head, next to the prominent Mont Blanc. As the dam was in the mountains, workers had to be brought in by two cableways, here visible with Amma standing in front of one of them. Later two villages sprung up around the damsite. Achan recorded the most important piece of historical document in the vestige of this cableway. And Amma got photographed in an extraordinary space once more!

A miraculous and exceptional slow event during the dam construction was the corner stone of the Resistance movement during the Second World War against the Hitler’s Occupation of France. It is thrilling to know that to liberate Albertville and the region of Savoie, the “Maquis”, the French Resistance movement during the Occupation, made use of the “Company of the Lake” a special steel construction unit on the shore of La Girotte reservoir. It was also a farsighted move for the Liberation. During the Occupation’s unimaginable restrictions only the people working on the damsite and for the company had free movement. The construction of the dam was labour intensive with 400-700 workers at various times and 1000 cubic metres of concrete being poured, especially during the final stages of its construction. Undoubtedly special steel was of prime importance for the Germans. The company served as a camouflage for the “Dormant silos” - Resistance workers teams, as they were known, in waiting. Cableways and the transport of rationed food during the War served for equipping around three thousand workers by parachuting arms and material in Ugine on the lake shore and voilà Albert ville and the Savoie were liberated!

Around La Girotte, Achan seems to have been excited to see the snow. Well, he has captioned the photo as the first snow… is it the first snow of the season or their premier rendez-vous with snowfall? And there they bid au revoir to their Alpine adventure.

Returning from Grenoble, the team did not forget to visit Lafrey, where a memorial to Napoleon stands.