To some French, love is being struck by a thunderbolt. An element of risk, the unsettling of the heart, a sudden recognition of the familiar in the unfamiliar – it is all these things and more. Not for nothing did the supreme French colourist Henri Matisse, as mentioned in one of his biographies, surround his models with fruits and flowers and then wait for the ‘thunderbolt’ for art to flow on the heels of love.
A similar frisson is what Patricia Loison, Director of the Alliance Francaise-Delhi, seems to seek in the objects she makes part of her life. A digital collage of an interpretation of a goddess painted as a mass of oleander flowers, known to be poisonous to humans, hangs in her living room, its biology, for the moment, forgotten, so singular is its colour. “Rich people buy art pieces. I buy art I can fall in love with,” says Loison.
Her material loves range from the high to the low. Close by on her green couch is her Stinky Dog, the Parisian cartoon dog, who bounces back quickly from his disasters. It is quite a favourite of hers--it reminds her of home, but mostly it brings a smile to her face.
Here and now
Director, Alliance Francaise (AF) since 2024, Loison knows it wouldn’t do to miss her family too much. Her husband and daughters have visited her in Delhi. When she can, she goes back to Paris twice a year.
When she calls her Delhi flat home, she seems to be mentally in two places. She knows it’s not a permanent pad, but when she walks back in after work, she is looking for some familiarity, the ease of home. But when she picks up something pretty and allocates it a specific space in her Delhi home – a white cabinet, for instance, that she bought at an embassy mela, or other bric-a-brac – she isn’t fully sure whether it will travel to Paris when her term is over or whether she will have to pass it on to the next expat who will occupy her flat. Just as some of the former expat residents’ pieces are now being used by her.
" I also want to leave a trace,” she says. "When I finally wrap up my stint in Delhi, I want them to remember me for my crazy touch.” In Loison’s case, the leaving of a trace may matter more than most.
Loison is the first Indian-origin director of AF Delhi. She was adopted by her French parents from the Mother Teresa Foundation, Delhi, when she was a few days old. Delhi has thus known her before she became French. Technically, it will always be her first city, and for that very reason, never her home.
Home and work
But Loison will always have Paris. It’s rather far from Delhi, which is why she pays attention to how she lives in Delhi.
Every little thing she has added to her Delhi home is, in fact, important to her. For the moment. The burgundy curtains, the chairs which she got upholstered after seeking her landlady’s permission, the painting of a dog she put up as it resembles her Jack Russell at home, the rug on the floor, the hat-stand that serves as a carry bag-stand—all point to its resident as someone for whom details are important, someone interested in each corner of a house. “Nothing much comes from France,” she says, “I just moved in with a suitcase because I had this big opportunity”.
The space also reflects her sense of style. “I don’t buy into fashion. In fact, I quite like it when people come into my home here and say, ‘I like your painting’. It shows my taste can be shared,” she says.
The Delhi flat is certainly not inhabited as a hotel; she entertains friends on the rooftop. “Rooftops in Delhi are magical,” she says. “They are like a hidden world in themselves, be it restaurant terraces or private terraces. At night, with a fresh drink, suddenly everything is calm, and you have these precious moments with friends up there between the city and the sky.”
Presences, absences
Still it must be a challenge to walk into an empty home. Loison makes light of the situation. She is used to “geographical bachelorettes”; Delhi isn’t the first city she has stayed in, away from family for work.
If you look around her three-roomed apartment, there are, in fact, many items that are work-related. The black-and-white portrait near the white cabinet is of a monk who gave a talk at AF. Hanging from a wall hook is the Borsalino hat worn by Charles Aznavour, the ‘French Sinatra’, whom she invited on the Ambassador’s suggestion for a performance at AF. The goddess painting, too, an artwork by Mandakini Pande, is from a series on Indian goddesses exhibited at her centre.
What is not about work are a few framed photographs strewn all over the flat. Of Patricia with her husband at a mountain resort; day-to-day notes shared with her daughters stuck onto the fridge door. “It’s about keeping the connection going, like poetry without knowing you are doing poetry, like saying I love you without saying I love you…” The fridge hoard, too, is classic French. It has tomatoes and chocolates and little else.
Loison clearly eats out mostly. And the fridge has no bread. “I’m not a bread person,” she says. “That’s the only non-French part in me.”
As we leave, we take a last look at Loison’s living room with its pockets of pink— the pink painting, the chair covers, the pink curtains – and Loison in the middle of it in her burgundy dress, straightening out some magazines. It looks picture perfect, we say.
“The best thing about living alone is that I have to keep it as neat as I can,” she says. “But I don’t have to be on fire about it”.