Of Madelines and Madras - Sammy Loren

The street before me, that only a few hours before drummed with thousands of flip-flops clicking the asphalt, now looks like a dungeon: dank and deserted of life, awaiting the thrashings of a jailer, or in tonight’s case, a torrential storm. Traffic has vanished, the circus of neon signs gone blank, and even a herd of goats cower beneath an awning, hiding from the blackness until dawn breaks. Chennai, a harbor megalopolis on the southern cone of India, is an unusually moist city, and even if it’s not raining, it’s about to start. Huck Finning my jeans, I hop over the stream of water flowing between the banks of the gutter and street. The clouds will soon begin pissing like an elephant, flooding the streets into canals of garbage, sewage, and sludge. The only sign of life is the trailer park of auto rickshaws against the sidewalk, each with its driver snoozing soundly inside. Rousing anyone late at night is an awkward experience. By plucking them away from their dreams, you give them the opportunity to render those dreams true. But in places as fractured and stratified as India, wishes rarely tip-toe into reality.

The autowallah is cuddled up like a fetus. I call out softly for a few seconds before getting down to the business of shaking the man to life. I’m expecting that moment of utter terror to envelope his being, but he just lifts up his head and squints.

“What the fuck you want?”

The destination is a French bakery hidden in a swish enclave across town. By daylight it’s a headache of traffic jams from the halal butchers and lousy motels that define Triplicane, a swirling Muslim neighborhood where I’m staying. But it’s late and not a soul is out, shortening the journey considerably. Still, a bakery like La Boulangerie might as well be a dream to the average auto driver, a notion as distant from their world of central Chennai as France itself.

“Anna Nagar West,” I say.

The driver groans and gets up like he’s struggling out from a mattress smeared with a blanket of warm peanut butter. After fixing a price as high as a night in my hostel, we zip through the emptied, shuttered streets of the foggy Tamil capital.

It starts storming as the autowallah and I splash down the same street for the fifth time. We’re lost. I blame him, pointing out it’s his job to know the city. He blames me arguing I should know where I’m going. It’s a conversation not uncommon on the nameless streets and bewildering blocks gluing together Indian cities. He kills the engine. We sulk for a moment, listening to the rain patter atop the auto’s roof until a heady scent wafts in. Indians must utilize their sense of smell more than any other nationality, where on any given meter the aroma can switch from curry to diarrhea, incense to urine. But instead of a stench it’s a perfume of vanilla, crème, and cinnamon: we’re right in front of La Boulangerie. I pay and dash through the downpour. It’s four o’clock in the morning and while the sub-continent slumbers, the employees are already midway through their first shift.

The kitchen hums as Sasi Kumar, a 27-year-old master chief, gives me a tour. Like most Indian businesses, 10-15 excess employees flummox about: a squad of six set a single tray of baguettes onto a cooling rack, a platoon of four fetches butter from the freezer, and a regiment of three squeezes out éclair batter onto a tray. Squat and wry, Sasi strolls about La Boulangerie like a middle school teacher cum drill sergeant, examining and correcting, whipping out wet-noodle admonishments.

Upon reaching the three fumbling with the éclairs, Sasi sizes up their efforts, grabs a dough scraper and wipes away their archipelago of eggnog-colored batter as if it’s an incorrect equation on a chalk board.

“Novices,” Sasi explains. “They still have much to learn.”

Founded in 2006 by then 23-year-old Frenchman Alexis de Ducla, La Boulangerie is now a not-for-profit that along with selling baguettes and croissants kneads dreams and ambitions into young men destined to live without them. Every six months, La Boulangerie, with the help of various partners, selects a new batch of ‘trainees’ from Chennai’s poverty-stricken slums and villages to learn the art of French pastries. The requirements: be a male between 18-24, destitute, and willing to learn.
“For two years, La Boulangerie houses, feeds, teaches, and pays the trainees a small stipend, 20% of which is automatically saved in a bank account,” explains Alexis de Ducla, the hip and hirsute founder in his office above the kitchen. The shrubs of hair on his eyebrows, arms, and knuckles are downright biblical, while his dress is decidedly polytheistic: a pressed collared shirt, ratty jeans, and tennis shoes. “The main idea is to give the trainees self respect, confidence, and skills to escape poverty.”
Imbuing young men with a strong sense of worth is enormously difficult in a country where the major faiths – Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism – all in some form or another relegate about 16% of the population to a life of ‘untouchability.’ The lowest of the ancient castes, ‘untouchables,’ or Dalits as they are now called in India, have been shoved to the margins of society since almond-skinned Aryn tribes invaded 3,000 years ago from Central Asia. Dalits were made to live separate from the community, to pray in different temples, and to survive by sweeping streets, collecting trash, and disposing of human excrement. Today, the Indian constitution officially bans discrimination based on caste and has a progressive system of ‘reservations’ (similar to affirmative action) to help Dalits overcome centuries of segregation. While India’s globalized economy has rendered caste less important in urban centers, it still dictates much of life. Most are still cobblers, inter-caste marriage is nearly unknown, the traditionally inclined won’t eat food ‘polluted’ by a Dalit. Especially in rural areas little has actually changed, leaving the community at the bottom of the Indian pecking pole.
La Boulangerie is trying to change that through a holistic mix of life and vocational skills. In addition to learning the art of baking, trainees daily study subjects ranging from reading to pastry theory, English to math.
“Their stipend is less than what they could make as laborers in the slums,” explains de Ducla. “This teaches them to invest in their future: by studying now, they will eventually earn more.”
Knowing all this, I’m surprised to hear that La Boulangerie downplays its social aspect.
“People should buy the pastries because they are delicious, not because they are made by Dalits,” de Ducla says pointedly. “The trainees should see there is value in what they produce. We have strict quality control for that reason,” he adds, nodding to a tray of glossy apple cakes and chocolate croissants on the table.
Unlike the West, where consumers support the environmentally and socially conscious, in the Indian context, that strategy could backfire. La Boulangerie’s high-heeled patrons may not like the idea of their expensive, European breads being cooked by Dalits. Social change, unfortunately, progresses like an inch worm, which could leave the trainees, psychologically speaking, in the same social nightmare as those before them.

I scan the cooling racks of buttery croissants, just dreaming of filching a few ‘unfit’ for retail when the springy master chef, Sasi, swings in from nowhere. For a moment I fear I’ve been caught, but he’s blinded by the glowing trophy he has come to show off. Standing beside him is a stubby, button-faced trainee, who it turns out, in a matter of months, will be one of La Boulangerie’s first graduates.
Twenty four-year-old S. Anbarasu appears sculpted from a chocolate cupcake: he has a rich facial complexion and is topped by a white-icing baker’s beret. His story is typical. Raised in one Chennai’s biggest slums by a single mother, he dropped out of school at twelve, and then worked as a laborer until he was recommended to La Boulangerie.
“Before, I didn’t know anything existed outside the slums,” he says. “If I hadn’t left, at best I could have been a furniture maker or a tailor.”
S. Anbarasu whispers more than speaks and like a pudgy teen, his face is all cheeks and chin. After nearly two years, Anbarasu can complete all the tasks around the bakery: he knows all the recipes, ingredients, and baking temperatures. But this morning, the rain whirling outside La Boulangerie’s cozy confines, Anbarasu’s just casually removing crusty baguettes from the ovens. It’s obvious he’s confident around friends, the familiar. But I wonder how he’ll manage on the outside?
Though La Boulangerie provides a surrogate family and a steady space in an unsteady India, Anbarasu, along with all the trainees, have centuries of exclusion tattooed into their beings. The past two years – from the classes to the camaraderie, the structure to the stipend – have tried to erase or at least reconcile that tattoo. Yet, I sense Anbarasu’s imminent graduation is as much a source of anxiety as excitement. He is currently prepping to interview at Chennai’s five star hotels and resorts, to work – he, Sasi Kumar, Alexis de Ducla, and all the other trainees hope – in the ferocious hospitality industry. If all goes as planned, he will be one of the select few – barring those minorities of the middle and upper classes – to benefit from the economic boom. I’d imagine that all the trainees both long for and loath the inevitable day of graduation: when they’ll be thrust into the once unimaginable dreamscape of job searches and interviews, into the full reality of life outside the slums and La Boulangerie.
“It will be difficult,” Anbarasu figures. “Here I have a house, food, and friends. But I’ll find a job eventually.”
All of La Boulangerie’s trainees will face similar issues, and an alumni association (even if there aren’t any alumni just yet) has already been opened to help graduates network and support one another once they leave.

Still, anyone addressing poverty faces recidivism. Some make it, others don’t. What’s unique about the trainees at La Boulangerie is that, unlike the vast majority of those from similar backgrounds, they will have acquired skills not just to bake in a posh hotel, but to reimagine themselves beyond rusty social limitations.