First person: Nice, you lovely town

I heard about the attack in the morning. Thousands, who had gathered along the famous Promenade des Anglais to watch a fireworks display over the Mediterranean on Bastille Day, were forced to watch the kind of horror they had only read about in the few papers that reach Nice’s tiny alleys. I myself could not believe what had happened. This was not the Nice I intimately knew.

Watching the videos took me back to the very same day in 2013 and incidentally, to the exact spot where the truck attack had happened. It’s Bastille Day — the French National Day. A few friends and I lay by the beach on the Promenade and watched the fireworks light up the sea. People were cheering — entire families had turned. People see that display every year but that’s the thing about Nice — no one’s ever bored of those fireworks.

And then came analysis from those armchair terror experts. Almost all of them threw in those keywords that are shaping governments now — terror, migrants, radicalisation, Islamic State, refugees etc.

The Promenade des Anglais is a stunning stretch of seafront along the Mediterranean. Here, you’ll find people from all over the world and from all walks of life. Some jogging, some skating, some walking pets and some just lying on the pebbly beach and soaking up the Sun. You could read the book of your choice, talk the language you like, hang with the people of your choice and love the ones you want to. Nice would never trouble you. It’s the kind of place worth saving — from the politicians, from exclusive ownership.

In Nice, I was a student travelling all the way down to the French Riviera where I reported for my internship with a company at Sophia Antipolis. It wasn’t easy to find a residence and of course, the fact that my French wasn’t magnifique didn’t help either. It wasn’t as bad as Joey’s from Friends but I managed. A lovely Arab woman sold me vegetables every day, I rode the bus seated next to a Muslim man who read the Quran aloud on his way to work and I had fun speaking to this lot in my broken French.

I found help everywhere I went. It was amazing how patient and encouraging people were, especially when I spoke their language — albeit broken. A few days on the street had made up for those terrible marks back in school.

I found a student residence close to the Promenade and as the days went by, I grew from being “accustomed to” being “fond of” the place.  Acquaintances became part of my everyday life. There were no cultural walls either. Almost all the businesses were run by Tunisians, Algerians and others... but they were all on a level of friendly our Indian cities are yet to master. I have been out late at nights too. The only troublemakers were drunk teenagers. But hey, that’s the case everywhere! That  is something we can fix inside classrooms, not in parliaments or war rooms.

Nice is the kind of place our planet might lose to all this fear-mongering. One man drove a truck into a happy crowd  killing dozens but I’m sure many more will turn up for those fireworks next year — that’s how the free world fights back.