These Feet Can Take Us Anywhere

The history of Pondicherry, a local city only 3km away from us, is an interesting and somewhat confusing one. We refer to the city as Pondicherry but that’s a bit of a misnomer. Historically, “Pondicherry” consisted of four unconnected districts: Pondicherry, Karaikal, and Yanam on the Bay of Bengal and Mahe on the Arabian Sea. Puducherry (Pondicherry) and Karaikal are by far the larger ones, and are both enclaves of Tamil Nadu.  Yanam and Mahé are enclaves of Andhra Pradesh and Kerala, respectively.  In the early 16th century the Portuguese established their supremacy in Pondicherry. They ruled for a while until the Dutch and the French entered for trade reasons and became interested. In 1673 the French started ruling the territory. During the rule of the French in Pondicherry there were several minor conflicts and battles fought between the French and the Britishers to capture Pondicherry. After several conflicts both countries were able to sign an agreement wherein Pondicherry was given back to the French by the Britishers. The territory was under the French rule for nearly 281 years until 1954 when Pondicherry was given back to India by the French.  In September 2006, the city changed its official name from Pondicherry to the vernacular original, Puducherry, which means “New village”. It is also known as The French Riviera of the East.  Though it has officially changed to Puducherry no maps really reflect this for certain and most revert to the parenthesis method of mentioning both names.   Pondicherry is a well planned and well built town and the influence of the French is everywhere.  The ruling French had an eye on the wealth and the fertility of India, thus the French dream of Indian empire began by establishing their mark in Pondicherry. The French planned out an oval shaped ‘boulevard town’, complete with beach side promenade.  The French quarter is chock with classic French-style architecture and wide, tree lined streets unlike any you’ll see elsewhere in India.  The streets are laid out in a proper geometric grid pattern with straight roads intersecting at right angles. A boulevard encircles the town and a grand canal divides it into two sections: one on the Tamil side called Ville Noire (or the black town) and the other on the European side which was known as Ville Blanche (or the white town). You can guess at the difference in architecture between the two sides.  The impressive Ville Blanche resembles a typical Medieval French township clotted with fine built monuments, government buildings, majestic mansions, elegant churches and lush green parks. It was the beautiful Botanical Gardens that Jon and I were out to spend his birthday.      Having a botanical garden is a completely unique feature of Pondicherry and it is the only one of its kind in the entire south of India.  Again, the French had everything to do with that.  In the year 1826, C.S. Perrotet planned and laid out the beautiful botanical garden and it retains an amazingly diverse collection of plant and tree species from India as well as abroad. It also boasts an aquarium and a little toy train  - the “Joy Train” which, for 2 rupees, will chug you around the gardens.   We bought our tickets for the Joy Train, we’re just waiting for the excitement to start!  Whhhheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! The Joy Train ride (which took about 4 minutes round trip) was popular with the local kids. We think it is probably the only mechanized ride for hundreds of miles and, with that in mind, could be loosely thought of as a “thrill ride”.  Especially if you make it one!  We left the Botanical Gardens and took a walk around Pondicherry.  We stopped in to look at one of the churches left over from the colonial days.  It’s a Catholic church all right, but with all the Indian flair they could muster. We’re not sure what the large red electronic counter is that’s mounted over the door.  We theorized that they’ve perhaps saved 194 souls this year already? We kept watching for the counter to change as people entered and exited but the number stayed firm so I guess we’ll never know the secret. Once inside the church one can be a bit overwhelmed by the quantity of statues of all sizes and shapes, neon lights, neon paint, stained glass in thousands of colors and the general mayhem of colors and sounds.    The Indian version of the Catholic church was really beautiful in its own way, and a heck of a lot more festive than every Catholic church we’d ever been in put together.  After the church we went for a walk in the dimming light along the lovely beach promenade.  One wonderful thing about being in Tamil Nadu is that the people are genuinely nice and very interested in simply greeting you and briefly talking to you.  They’re benevolently curious, because while there are tourists here it’s not in the huge quantity that we’ll surely be encountering in bigger cities.       We had a wonderful day in Pondy and ended it with a group dinner celebrating Jon’s birthday! One more thought to leave you with, a sign at the Botanical Gardens reminds you that extinction is PERMAMENT.   Permament?  Oh well, as usual with Indians and the English language the specifics may not be there but the sentiment is clear… 

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 at 6:41 am and is filed under January 2009, What's New. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.