Having heard of Pondicherry as a quaint French colony, well I imagined up the quaint part. So when the opportunity presented itself I grabbed it, friends both recently back from france too i guess wanted a flash back. Took my brand spanking new car and drove off into the sunrise. Cautious 80kph became a regular 100kph and even 140kph when possible, ah this is going to be fun. As we got of the NH to the state highway we started seeing the first cracks on the highway, the cracks started widening into erosions and soon we were tiptoeing around moon craters in my fancy city car at a mind bending 20kph!! The whole drive to pondi took a back breaking 8 hours for 300 km! Apart from roads tamillians also do not believe in street side food and the drive had nothing to eat or rest at.
I strongly believe that like all humans we too love food, and evey region has smashing good food too, the only question is if we love family cooked food or other family cooked food that drives the existence or the lack of dhabas. The other thing that seems to have come out strongly in my travels is as you head out of the cities taxi/rikshawalls become more loutish, not sure if taxi/rickshas are organised business for the ethically challenged.
As we drove into Pondicherry I keep looking around thinking probably the highway authority also got the signs wrong and we are in some nearby township, the place was like any other small Indian town well it was a small town period. With the typical scene of loutish rikshawalls standing in a huddle discussing inflation and root vegetable prices, chaotic traffic and we seemed to always have to go nere (that's not French that's Tamil for straight). Have you ever noticed why people seem to get lost and yet don't in india? The answer always is go straight except you had to turn when you didn't ask, I am dead sure that this is symptomatic of a bigger sub conscious pattern in human evolution just can't put a finger on it.
After asking around for directions to go straight we reached the French quaint town, it was like we had walked into a village fair, crowds milling around a windy board walk with raging bay of Bengal and hawkers selling local version of bhel and few crumbling French buildings converted to guest houses. The entire stretch was a kilometre wide by half a kilometre deep, of course they had French street names rue de sarcouf (er...) Dumas and gubert ave etc. There as the standard French notre dame inspired church and a crumbling mansion.
Indians have a great assimilation skill .... resistance is futile you shall be assimilated. That's what we do to everything, in misplaced jingoism oops nationalism we put a great big Mahatma Gandhi's statue facing the old French quarter to remind ourselves and the old building who the big daddy was. I agree that he came he woke us up, brought us together and lead us to kick out foreign rulers and get our own but that is no excuse to put up out of place statues. As i said we don't leave anything a cafe (le cafe) in the French sector on the beach with the Riviera architecture selling samosas.
Nature doesn't give a damn about us and irrespective of what we do does it's own thing. In this case it decided to dump one of the most awesome wave beaches in india on this undeserving bunch of ingrates. There in the milling crowds were a lot of foreigners mostly the low budget travelling beach bums but our reverence of the fair skin has them in raptures of us and our seemingly unending friendliness. We are the last bastion for the remaining flower-power followers i guess.
We wanted to stay on the beach front and tried quite a few beachside hostels some run by the aurobindo foundation but what we concluded was that our skin was not fair enough, tree seem to be lot of availability as many rooms looked obviously empty but we were told no vacancy. We went around looking for French food we even risked the car into unnatural roads to reach the famous auroville in search but all we found was an Italian joint which in true Italian style was run by a zesty food lover. The food was brilliant and the tiramisu & chocolate ice cream were some of the best I have ever had! Rest of the time we ate south Indian thalis and iddiappams ... Good stuff but what a let down! Sigh!
The road back was not only tainted by the bad road but also by the let down. We friends rescued each other and had we remembered that a pizza, wine and a french movie would have taken us lot closer to Paris and back!
I strongly believe that like all humans we too love food, and evey region has smashing good food too, the only question is if we love family cooked food or other family cooked food that drives the existence or the lack of dhabas. The other thing that seems to have come out strongly in my travels is as you head out of the cities taxi/rikshawalls become more loutish, not sure if taxi/rickshas are organised business for the ethically challenged.
As we drove into Pondicherry I keep looking around thinking probably the highway authority also got the signs wrong and we are in some nearby township, the place was like any other small Indian town well it was a small town period. With the typical scene of loutish rikshawalls standing in a huddle discussing inflation and root vegetable prices, chaotic traffic and we seemed to always have to go nere (that's not French that's Tamil for straight). Have you ever noticed why people seem to get lost and yet don't in india? The answer always is go straight except you had to turn when you didn't ask, I am dead sure that this is symptomatic of a bigger sub conscious pattern in human evolution just can't put a finger on it.
After asking around for directions to go straight we reached the French quaint town, it was like we had walked into a village fair, crowds milling around a windy board walk with raging bay of Bengal and hawkers selling local version of bhel and few crumbling French buildings converted to guest houses. The entire stretch was a kilometre wide by half a kilometre deep, of course they had French street names rue de sarcouf (er...) Dumas and gubert ave etc. There as the standard French notre dame inspired church and a crumbling mansion.
Indians have a great assimilation skill .... resistance is futile you shall be assimilated. That's what we do to everything, in misplaced jingoism oops nationalism we put a great big Mahatma Gandhi's statue facing the old French quarter to remind ourselves and the old building who the big daddy was. I agree that he came he woke us up, brought us together and lead us to kick out foreign rulers and get our own but that is no excuse to put up out of place statues. As i said we don't leave anything a cafe (le cafe) in the French sector on the beach with the Riviera architecture selling samosas.
Nature doesn't give a damn about us and irrespective of what we do does it's own thing. In this case it decided to dump one of the most awesome wave beaches in india on this undeserving bunch of ingrates. There in the milling crowds were a lot of foreigners mostly the low budget travelling beach bums but our reverence of the fair skin has them in raptures of us and our seemingly unending friendliness. We are the last bastion for the remaining flower-power followers i guess.
We wanted to stay on the beach front and tried quite a few beachside hostels some run by the aurobindo foundation but what we concluded was that our skin was not fair enough, tree seem to be lot of availability as many rooms looked obviously empty but we were told no vacancy. We went around looking for French food we even risked the car into unnatural roads to reach the famous auroville in search but all we found was an Italian joint which in true Italian style was run by a zesty food lover. The food was brilliant and the tiramisu & chocolate ice cream were some of the best I have ever had! Rest of the time we ate south Indian thalis and iddiappams ... Good stuff but what a let down! Sigh!
The road back was not only tainted by the bad road but also by the let down. We friends rescued each other and had we remembered that a pizza, wine and a french movie would have taken us lot closer to Paris and back!
Pondicherry (former French colony) is now called Puducherry.
ReplyDeleteCathy
French Course Angel