A Little Taste of Tamil Nadu and French India
Pondicherry was the capital of French India until 1952 when it became part of the new free Indian Republic. The city seems to have had two strong influences, first the French and second Sri Aurobindo who along with “the Mother”founded an ashram where people sought “divine consciousnes.” Our arrival in Pondicherry was like most, after a long and tiring bus ride. The few guesthouses we called before arriving were full so we were a bit worried about a finding a place. We spent about 1 1/2 hours searching the town for a free room, getting either a “we’re full” response or finding that the prices were far out of our budget. Finally we found a small guesthouse off a side street run by a sweet old Indian woman, 150 rupees she told us, with basic ammenities. She eyed us a bit suspiciously and asked if we were “friends”- that meant, we weren’t married. Oh yes, but we will get married soon which usually makes the Indians feel better. Our room was tiny with a bed and a small desk literally on its last leg. All that decorated the walls was a black and white photograph of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. For some reason I liked it.
There wasn’t as much to see in Pondicherry as we expected. It has the feel of real Indian town (as opposed to the resorts in Goa) with a spash of French influence. For example, the local bakeries make real croissants and tasty pastries. Occassionally, the young children will great you with “bonjour” as opposed to “hello.” There is a lycee francaise (French high school.) We visitd a paper factory (operated by the ashram) where they make fine handmade papers, photo albums, stationary, scrapbooks, etc. It was fascinating to watch the men carefully measuring, cutting and stacking the paper or the women hanging the freshly dyed sheets on clotheslines to dry. We’ve had a few opportunities in India to see things behind handmade, the blockprinted fabrics in Jodhpur, the miniature paintings in Udaipur, tailors across the country…it’s a nice feeling to know that our souvenirs we’re made by someone and not something. After the paper factory, we visited the ashram. We don’t really know much about the workings of the ashram, but we saw the tomb of Sri Aurobindo and a mix of westerners and Indians who came to meditate there. As we are about to leave India, I had a few last minute things I wanted to do. One was to buy a sari. It’s not really practical clothing for the streets of Paris, but I wanted to actually try one on and see what it’s like to wear. As it is just a 20 feet piece of cloth, I’m sure that I will find some decorative use for it later. So, we chose one of the many sari shops. I was sure that I wanted a blue one, and we found one in a dark royal blue with gold brocade, “first class” the man said. When I asked him to show me how to tie it, I was pretty sure he had never tied one himself, but we managed a good approximation. Then I had to go to the tailor to have a blouse made to wear under it. I still have to get good at tying it, but hopefully I’ll get to show it off at a few dinner parties (when we experiment with Indian cooking.) Our second day in Pondicherry, we rented bikes to ride out to the beach. Going for a bike ride in India is like going to the dentist, I swore (heavily) that I will never do it again. For some reason, Fabien finds negotiating over a few rupees with a rickshaw driver more stressful than riding a bike in India, for me, all I can imagine is being run off the road by a bus and spending the rest of my trip in traction. In India, the big guy wins, there are no traffic laws (at least no one follows them), pedestrians cross anywhere at anytime, buses will push everyone else off the road to pass. Once we got out of the city, my blood pressure dropped to near normal and we reached the beach. We actually reached the Auroville beach. Auroville is an international community. It’s a project that was conceived by the Mother where people from all of the countries of the world can live equally. They have specialized projects within the community, dealing with substainable agriculture, solar energy and water conservation; they also sell handicrafts and work with local villages. From our perspective it is a very interesting idea, but as they are not self-substaining (they depend on tourism for a portion of the income and many grants from international organizations) they aren’t really successful yet. We read a lot of literature at their welcome center, and it seems they were very active with the tsunami relief efforts in Tamil Nadu. The beach was nice, but it had a very sharp drop off and a strong rip current, so we didn’t spend a lot of time swimming. After hanging out at the beach and visiting Auroville, we road 9km back Pondicherry, right into rush hour traffic. “Do as they do,” I told myself, and when I returned the bike safely I was pleased to have survived yet another day in India.
From Pondicherry, we caught a bus to Mamallapuram, a small village south of Chennai famous for it’s ancient rock carvings and dance festival. The main trade there is fishing. We wandered down to the beach to see the fishing boats. Apparently, this village lost a lot of boats in the tsunami, and many of the new boats bore the names of their donators. It was interesting to watch the guys unloading their nets in the morning, will all of the fresh seafood for the day. We visited the shore temple, constructed in the 7th century right on the shore’s edge, which was old and weathered, but impressive for it’s age. We also saw a lot of secular carvings, scattered all throughout the town, as well as more miniature stone temples. We caught a performance of traditional dance at the the Mamallapuram Dance Festival. We saw two performances traditional to south India; the first was a group of musicians with a singer and mother-daughter dancing pair. They were dressed in a sari specially suited for dancing (the bottom was sewed into pants legs) with ankle bells. The dance was a Hindu spiritual dance peformed to an ancient Sanskrit poem. The second performance was similar but with a single dancer. Part of the performance was interpretation of the poem, and part pure dance. It was amazing to watch the range of emotions expressed from ecstatic joy to terrible sadness and the endurance of the performers who continued for an hour without a break.
From Mamallapuram we caught a short bus to our last stop in India, Chennai (formerly known as Madras.) We were warned that Chennai is not the most interesting of India cities. It’s true, but we there are a few things worth seeing. Yesterday we visited the high courts, said to be the largest courts in the world after London. The architecture was beautiful and it was funny to see all of the judges and lawyers running around, especially the women who wore their funny black robes over their beautiful saris. Then we went to visit a couple of churches. The first was the Luz Church, a small, but charming church built by the Portugese. The second was the Santhome Cathedral which holds the remains of Saint Thomas, one of the apostles. The cathedral is spectacular, it is freshly painted white, right in front of the beach. It definitely looked a bit odd in the middle of India. From the cathedral we walked up the beach a bit to the lighthouse. This area houses the local fishing community. The beach is littered with fishing boats and women work hard to lay the fish out to dry. Today we are going to visit the Theosophical society, a society founded by two Americans in the late 19th century to study philosophy and religions. It’s hard to believe that this is our last day in India. Tomorrow we will travel to a new country, a new time zone, a new world. We will never forget our time here and we will look forward to the next visit.
Tags: BIG TRIP 2005-2006, In English 2005-2006, India
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