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Where racial identities get blurred

If New Orleans did not have the French Quarter, it would be just another southern American city. It would still have its jazz bars, its lip-smacking sea food, its Mardi Gras carnival, its plantations and the swamps close by. It is this 11-by-seven grid of streets, Vieux Carre in French, and the habitation within the rectangle that make it something special.

Where racial identities get blurred

One can find street musicians on the Bourbon Street cross, the most happening road in New Orleans



Lalit Mohan

If New Orleans did not have the French Quarter, it would be just another southern American city. It would still have its jazz bars, its lip-smacking sea food, its Mardi Gras carnival, its plantations and the swamps close by. It is this 11-by-seven grid of streets, Vieux Carre in French, and the habitation within the rectangle that make it something special.

The city was founded in 1718 by French settlers in America and was so named after the Duke of Orleans. Forty years later, it was transferred to Spain. The Spaniards made houses with wrought-iron balconies and courtyards and these exist to this day. But in 1800, they returned it to Napoleon Bonaparte, who, in turn, sold it to the United States for $15 million in 1803.

Each ruler added his own flavour to the cultural mix of New Orleans. And, if this was not enough, ethnic groups like the Cajuns (descendents of French-speaking people from Canada’s maritime provinces) and Creoles (mixed race of European settlers, Africans and Latinos) too made it their home in large numbers, adding more spice to the ethnic mix of this city.

The French Quarter was the core around which the town grew over the years. This area still has low-rise town houses in the old Spanish style, but the Bourbon Street that cuts across is the most happening road in New Orleans. It sleeps during the day, but at night, with dozens of neon signs aglow, it springs to life in a raucous, rhythmic, hedonistic swirl of soul-gripping music. 

Because, this is the street of the jazz bars, night clubs and restaurants that New Orleans is famous for. Every kind of jazz can be heard here — Dixie, Swing, Blues and Brass Bands. The bars are dimly lit with psychedelic neon lights, and musicians play while people dance with gay abandon. And Bourbon Street has its street players as well. If not groups of performers, you can even listen to a kid playing ‘drums’ on an inverted plastic bucket, with another one the right side up to collect whatever the passers-by toss in.

At the south-eastern end of the French Quarter lie Jackson Square and the equestrian statue of Joan of Arc, the ‘Maid of Orleans’. Next, the French Market sprawls under four long sheds where farmers sell their produce. This is one place where one can hear, apart from English, a cacophony of French, Spanish, German, Portuguese and some very unfamiliar dialects. A signboard across the road calls itself ‘Jazz Funeral’ with the sub-text ‘Where people are dying to come in.’

Because the city is such an ethnic potpourri, racial identities can get blurred. Standing in the queue at one restaurant counter, a local guy asked my wife, “Are you from Europe?” No, she replied. Not even from Italy? No. From Israel? No. Then, hesitatingly, “Are you from Pakistan?” “No,” she answered, “I am from India.”

“Oh, thank God,” he sighed.

Beyond the French Market flows the mighty Mississippi river. The road on the embankment is known as Moonwalk, after Moon Landrieu, a former mayor.

Parallel to Bourbon is Royal Street, which is known for its art galleries. Apart from old etchings and lithographs, as well as new art, one can find limited edition copies of masterpieces by the likes of Picasso, Dali and Tolouse-Lautrec here. One of them even sells original works by Picasso’s fourth wife, Francoise Gilot, the only one who left him (the others he ditched). 


FACT FILE

What to eat: New Orleans has some great sea food, including lobsters, crawfish, shrimp and succulent oysters. Cajun food, Creole cuisine and beignets (square croissants of French origin) are its other specialties. One of the best-known eating places here is Antoine’s, the oldest restaurant in town. It was set up in 1840. Presidents and a Pope have dined here. It boasts of 25,000 bottles of wine in its ‘cellar’, which is actually a long corridor above the ground because the down below the sub-soil moisture is too high. 

Other attractions: A must on any visit to New Orleans is the National Museum of World War II, which showcases the conflict from the beginning to the end, in all its theatres, and the men and weapons that made history. Other attractions include visits to an alligator farm, an old plantation, a haunted house and an airboat ride over a swamp in the Mississippi backwaters. 

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