A relator in Paris

"I was trained and toughened here in the baugs,” says Roxanne Godiwalla, the one member of the celebrated family of caterers who chose otherwise. Her sense of independence led her to become a management consultant instead. Now married to Francis Ledru she lives with him and their son Cyrus in the Palais Royal area of Paris and manages their apartment rental business – via cell phone and laptop when she is traveling as she loves to do.

Acquiring her MBA in a trilingual course in three countries from the school belonging to the Paris Chamber of Commerce where the first year is conducted at Oxford, England, the second in Madrid and the third in Paris, Roxanne notes matter-of-factly that she can write a balance sheet in three languages. A specialist in telecommunications, she spent five years based in New York and Paris. "I had energy and I was career minded and very aggressive, career wise!” she recalls, admitting, "I was also husband hunting.” But while she worked for Alcatel as business development manager she says she enjoyed the frequent first class travel to such Latin American countries as Chile, Costa Rica, Brazil, Panama and Ecuador and also came "oh so often” to India to liaise with Reliance Telecom and most other telecom majors, the Tatas excepted.

The daughter of Freni and Rohintan Godiwalla says after graduating from Bombay’s St Xavier’s College with literature and psychology, French at Alliance Francaise and evenings helping her parents catering in the baugs she opted for a year’s sabbatical abroad. "Just to be anonymous and free!” she tells Parsiana at an interview on the Allbless Baug otla while Bombay’s most popular Parsi caterer Tanaz Godiwalla holds a conference with a client on an adjoining table and Cyrus runs back and forth. "It was a fantasy sparked by (the movie) Roman Holiday,” she laughs. From there it seems her life took its own spin.

Roxanne eventually met her husband, a highly skilled engineer from Stanford, through an advertisement. Holding "X-mines,” a French title which she says recognizes the top brains in the country, Ledru got a scholarship to Stanford. He is fluent in Spanish and Russian and between them they speak 10 languages, notes Roxanne. Theirs was a Parsi wedding in Paris, complete with patra nu bhonu, which her sister and brother, Tanaz and the late Neville, attended. Both her parents had passed away by then.

With a happy marriage and a high-flying career, Roxanne found she was unable to conceive. A specialized form of in vitro fertilization where a single sperm is picked and injected – a technology she says that did not exist 10 years ago – was employed but she aborted in her fourth month while working in Brazil. She says she had to give up her career and make two more attempts before Cyrus was conceived and carried to term. While aided conception is an expensive affair in India, Roxanne says she didn’t have to spend as it is a service provided by the state in France.

We wonder at her discussing these personal details with a journalist but Roxanne tells us frankly, "The reason I’m telling you is because it is very emotionally trying (not to be able to conceive when you want to). If you have to be ashamed, it is even more trying,” she adds, wanting to share her experience with other readers who may have suffered similarly. Her only regret then was that Neville died while she was pregnant.

Retiring from her high profile management job she took over her husband’s property rentals business which she could manage from home. They buy up old dilapidated buildings and refurbish them. Starting with the few unfinished apartments that were awaiting completion, they have built up the business to include 50 vacant and 50 furnished apartments in prime locations in Paris. The furnished flats, of three star level that provide internet and cable TV, linen, microwave, toaster, coffee-maker and other amenities, are rented to ex-pats, the unfurnished to local people. In either case, she only accepts clients through rental agencies and has her own website www.centralparisrentals.com. There are generally a lot of changes during summer, she says. Having their own team of electricians, repairmen, maids, etc Roxanne laughs, "The whole of Paris is like a museum; there are always leakages!”

Ledru, who now works with a company of venture capitalists, has been wanting her to take on a part-time job to find entrepreneurs in India looking for capital but she says, "I have had my fill of corporate life and career. I am happy to take it easy and enjoy Cyrus.”

She speaks of the "wealthy Zoroastrian community in Paris, all migrants from Iran whose navjotes were performed in adulthood.” She singles out the Sasanfar family: Professor and lawyer Abbas Sasanfar, who has translated the Avesta into English, "is the most ardent Zoroastrian I have ever met!” His wife’s family is linked to India, she notes.

Indians in France are enterprising and have thrived, Roxanne tells us. There are a lot of people from Africa in the country, but they don’t help themselves. Islam as practiced in France is orthodox according to Rox-anne, its practitioners socially disadvantaged. The country is afraid of Muslim fundamentalists and is enacting more and more laws restraining them, she notes.

Roxanne’s only regret was the feeling of being "rejected by the Parsi community…I am always happy to meet a Parsi – the community is part of the familiar, like an amalgam of the family…If I could do Cyrus’ navjote, I would (her husband has no objection). But it doesn’t make sense to do it beebee né (in fear). Then what am I giving him?”