BTS 10: Un petit weekend à Pondicherry

For Easter weekend, I had decided to head to Pondicherry: a former French colony. I love France and French things in general, so was intrigued by the idea of finding a little bit of France here in India!

It took me 9 hours and 3 different buses to get there. The first leg of the journey was the 45-minute bus into Madurai. Muthupandi took me into Tirumangalam on his motorbike and dropped me at the bus station. It's such a crazy chaotic place with so much going on - music blaring, people selling wares on the side of the pavement, buses honking as they squeeeeeeeze past each other - but I really love it. 

The bus was pretty packed so I stood in the aisle... until I saw three old ladies in the second row gesturing to me to sit in front of them and telling the people there to budge up and make room! I sat down and turned round to say thank you and their faces broke into these huge big smiles! Again, we couldn't speak a word of the other's language, but smiles go such a long way here. And not just a polite-but-distant smile that you might give a stranger in England, but a full-on beam which lights up their whole face. The people are just so warm and it leaves you with a really nice feeling. When they got off 15-minutes later they tapped me on the shoulder to enthusiastically wave goodbye!

I'd heard mixed things about Pondicherry, and I'm sure if you go there expecting Provence you'll be disappointed. Most of the town is typical India: noisy, dirty and chaotic (but with lots of atmosphere!). However in the old part of the city, near to the ocean, you find painted colonial houses on peaceful, tree-lined streets, and up-market cafés and restaurants serving croissants and espresso, steak and red wine! Heaven!

Am I in France or India?!

Ahh, definitely India!
(Note: these men actually thanked me for taking their photo!)

Peace and quiet in the streets by the ocean...

I was staying in a home-stay, owned by a German lady called Daniela. She is an interior designer and her husband a builder and their home is a converted boarding school. As you'd expect it was beautifully designed and full of character: I would have loved to live there! Daniela was really great to talk to and also knew all the best shops and restaurants so I can't recommend this place enough if anyone is visiting Pondicherry! She even bought me a chocolate bunny on Easter Day!

After so many weeks in a rural area with no tourists, it felt quite strange to be around other white foreigners again! Still, there weren't THAT many and I kept seeing the same faces again and again in each restaurant I went to. Most of the tourists were French and some of the waiters automatically started speaking French to me. I didn't bother to correct them - it was a good excuse for me to practice!

As much as I love Indian food, this made a very welcome change!

I spent most of my first day just wandering around the streets... and shopping! There were lots of lovely boutiques here, selling quality cotton clothing, jewellery, incense etc, but equally many cheap stalls on the side of the road, where you could buy western clothing which had been "made in India" for western shops... but somehow hadn't quite made it there! I found tops and trousers made for Zara, Mango and Monsoon on these rails, selling for the equivalent of just a couple of pounds. Unfortunately most weren't in my size, but I did manage to pick up a few (=5) tops, new sandals and a few other knick-knacks. 

In the first shop I went into, I noticed the girl behind the counter kept smiling at me as I walked around. When I finally went to pay she said "you have such beautiful, pale skin!". I held back the urge to correct her: "No, actually this is a TAN!".

I was also blessed by another elephant, outside the Hindu temple, and managed to get a photo this time! 

WHACK!

One of the things Pondicherry is known for is its famous ashram, founded by the guru Sri Aurobindo and a French woman called The Mother in 1926. This trip does bear a few similarities to "Eat, Pray, Love" (I'm looking forward to Javier Bardem turning up somewhere towards the end) and although I wasn't quite prepared to stay in an ashram, I was intrigued to go and visit, just to see what it was like. I must say it felt like a really special place. It was decorated with the most beautiful colourful flowers and you had to be silent inside, which made it very peaceful. People were just sitting quietly with their thoughts. 

I noticed an extract from one of The Mother's speeches, pinned on the noticeboard:

"The more developed one is, the more intelligent one is and the less need one has to express oneself. It is always at a lower level that one needs to talk. And truly, a being who is
very conscious, who is mentally, intellectually, very developed, talks only when it is necessary. He does not utter useless words."

I knew there was a good reason why I'm so quiet... :) The Mother clearly knew what she was talking about!

Sri Aurobindo Ashram

Along the same lines, the next day I went to visit Auroville: a community created by The Mother, where almost 2000 people of different nationalities live together in settlements, dedicating themselves to the search for a true human unity. (What??!). It was a little bit too new-age for me and I didn't like the way it's become such a big tourist spectacle, with over-priced shops and restaurants and hundreds of people traipsing through snapping photos. It didn't make it feel very spiritual! I was happy to get back to Pondi and have a nice long lunch and read my book in the gardens of the Alliance Française.

The Auroville "Matrimandir": the soul of the city (apparently)

When I returned home that night, women from the houses nearby were sitting on the road outside doing "kolam", a welcome art, drawn with rice powder. Again, there's beauty in so many little things here. 

Working on her "kolam"

Next morning... all finished