“Yes, yes…I will just get to other side and eat!” I added casually as I chatted with my mother on our daily call walking from my university to the metro station. Same path. Same time. Almost the same conversation. The 7-8 minutes’ walk daily is when I am transported from the boulevards of Paris to the streets of Delhi. My mother, with the day’s fatigue in her voice, is usually in the car traveling home from work with the hustle bustle of my beloved city in the background. I can tell you what hoardings adorn the traffic light near my house, the extent of nip in the spring air as well as what my parents are going to have for dinner every night. Yes, that is the extent of teleportation. With the air pods canceling all ambient noise of Paris, I might as well be walking from home to Khan Market! 

• 

• 

I walked with my usual ‘never-ending sense of urgency’ towards the station. I checked my phone for time, slid it in my pocket and descended the stairs of the metro station. From then on, things are a little blurry. I don’t remember what we were talking about, but I remember yelling “it’s gone, my phone is gone…Ma…Ma…MA…IT’S GONE” at the turnstile. I remember running through the exit towards those who had just crossed me. 3 women and 1 man. I stopped them and stared. In English I said “someone has stolen my phone”. They looked at me blankly. I even managed to blurt a French version of the same. Suddenly, more than ever before, I realized that I was a foreigner all alone in a strange land. They all crossed me once again and left. Only one of them with My Phone. My beloved iPhone. 

• 

• 

After the initial denial, the sheer shock hit me. “OMG, it’s gone!” I remember tears rolling down my cheeks. I looked around helplessly. And constantly kept checking my pockets almost as if it would reappear miraculously. What do I do? I have to get it back somehow! But the rational part, barely functional at this stage, fought back. And that’s how acceptance made its way.

A passerby, probably gauging the harrowed look on my face stopped and asked “Are you ok?” “Can I help you?” At a loss of words, even more so in French, I blurted “Police”. “You want to go to the Police? They won’t be able to help you,” she said matter-of-factly. “It happens here all the time.” I don’t remember how much of what she said I processed, for I insisted on going first to the metro station functionary and then the police. She escorted me and explained what had transpired to the ticket vendor. “C’est normal!” (It’s normal) he retorted, almost offended that his time was being wasted for something this trivial. I asked “you have CCTVs, am sure it was caught on camera, for I had my phone till was on the street!” “Bah, oui! Mais…..” And his rant went on for a long time. The gist of it being that police have murders to solve and won’t bother with this kind of video footage. 

• 

• 

And slowly, I sensed my faculties coming back. I remembered that I was talking to my mother, who all the way in India must have heard her daughter screech before the call got disconnected. “May I please borrow your phone and make a call?” Without hesitation that good Samaritan lent me her phone. I called my mother, who seemed to have held her breath for the 10 odd minutes since I cut the call. A mother’s voice, even miles apart, is comforting and consoling. Her protective shield seemed to have made its way all the way to Paris and descended on her distressed child at Sevres-Babylon station. 

• 

• 

As I tramped back to the metro, clutching onto my walled and useless air pods for my dear life, I realized I must get to the part of town where I am less of a stranger. Even in an alien city, we find a corner that we start believing is home, to which we belong and where “avoir nos repères” (have our bearings). It can be our residence, place of work or simply someone. 

I made a mental list of things to do – block my bank applications, change my passwords, pick up the phone box for the IMEI number and report to the Commissariat Central (police station). Once in the metro, I found myself doing two things. One, possessing a gaze of distrust. Maybe they are part of some gang. Maybe they stalk their targets first. Two, succumbing to a strange sense of envy. Maybe if I held on to the phone like him, it would still be with me. I should have kept it in my purse like her.

• 

• 

A theft is a strange violation – it is physical, emotional and psychological. It not so much the financial loss of the entire episode but the sense of helplessness that is truly exhausting. Whether we like it or not, our phones have become an extension of ourselves. Or maybe we are mere extensions of them. Either ways, a part of us lives in them. From list of things to do to menstrual maps, we give too much away to our phones. Phones reciprocate too – from suggestions, to news feed to throwing up images, they engage us even more when we live alone far away from home and loved ones. It was not until I had restored my data did I feel confident of being on my own again.

From the sense of loss, brush with local authorities (two hours spent at the police station, endless calls to banks/network providers), and the struggle to get a temporary number and handset to recognizing my comfort zone and regaining confidence to go back to life – in one day my life in Paris came a full circle. In that one day, Paris became ‘familiar’ for the first time – away from the touristy, rosy, picture-perfect city image. In a strange way, it became home. The good, the bad and the ugly, I would have to embrace it all.