Next stop on our south Indian peregrination was the former French colony of Pondicherry (Puducherry since 2006), about 100kms down the Coromandel Coast.
Leaving Malalapuram, we passed through semi-suburbia, light industrial zones, and hot, dusty countryside, occasionally catching a glimpse of the Bay of Bengal to the east.
Along the roadside Tamil locals went about their age-old cottage industries and trades. The odd street dweller tapped on the car window for alms, but there’s far less soliciting on streets in today’s more prosperous India.
Navigating through the buzzing tuk-tuks, weaving trucks, wayward cars and loafing cows, our driver, Captain Murugan made impressive progress south.
He suggested we pull over at a roadside temple for a break, so we alighted at a small multi-coloured edifice just north of Pondy. It was big on haughty, garish, and horse-borne demigods (they all had moustaches like Murugan).
A raggedy holy man resembling Methuselah shimmered into view with his hand out, so we slipped him a tickle of cabbage and took the tour, complemented by his soft, oft unintelligible mumblings.
Explaining the temple statues, he spun a few Hindu parables, chiefly yarns about disgruntled deities and hellfire earthly comeuppance. These sagas can be rambling and fuddling to the heathen ear; more reason to scarper to the chariot and zoom into town for a croissant.
Puducherry is as Gallic as it is Indian, which makes sense since it was a French colony for 138 years, albeit begrudgingly. The Frogs finally hopped it in the 50s, but you’d hardly know it. Even the constabulary dress like Parisienne gendarmes and the patisseries are ooh la la.
But it wasn’t just the French who wanted a stake. Like many long-suffering Indian regions, Pondy has endured centuries of European invaders, including Romans, Portuguese, Dutch, Danes, and British. All established transient strongholds. They claimed to have come to ‘trade’, but this was generally cynical code for ‘plunder and pillage’.
Predictably, all the Euros were driven out, or beat an ignominious retreat, and the Tricolour finally fluttered to the floor in 1954. Au revoir, les Français.
Hence the city is an intriguing amalgam of Tamil metropolis and Marseilles. The tree-lined boulevards of the French Quarter are preserved very much as the colonials left them, featuring mustard-coloured and cream mansions, chic boutiques, ornate hotels, cafes, stately admin buildings, churches, and monuments.
Joan of Arc Park and the French War Memorial are typical local reminders of the glory that was France on these shores.
Murugan navigated through the west side of the city and crossed the central canal from the bustling traditional Indian sector into the old French Quarter and arrived at our digs, the charming Villa Shanti Boutique Hotel.
Situated on Rue Suffren in White Town (a non-PC moniker from Gaulois days), Villa Shanti is an elegant, converted 19th-century manor house with a discreet grey-and-white façade.
It has 15 spacious, well-lit rooms, all creatively styled with Tamil and French furniture, fabrics, and fittings. There is a good restaurant and funky café bar, all situated around an inner open courtyard with vertical garden.
Our large room was on the top floor, and was quiet and secluded, well away from the street noise or busy foyer and restaurant below. Shanti was indeed a stylish and comfy base from which to set out each day.
Keen to stretch the pins, we took a stroll over to Promenade Beach (Plage de la Promenade), about five minutes away. We could just as easily have been arriving at the Promenade des Anglais, Nice, except for the towering Gandhi Memorial that greets beachy boulevardiers.
The Promenade is the place to see and be seen and stretches 1.2 kms along Rock Beach. It is lined with elegant shops, cafes, stalls, hawkers, and we had an enjoyable walk among the locals and tourists in the warm sea breeze.
The beach itself was once an expanse of sand, but the construction of a harbour in the ‘80s disrupted the natural flow, causing serious erosion and the need for a rock sea wall. This hasn’t been helped by climate change-induced rising sea levels, and the locals are still miffed about it.
That evening we decided to dine in, tucking into two excellent regional curries. The Shanti chefs pride themselves on quality, freshness, and seasonal ingredients, sourcing most from small local producers and suppliers.
Brekkie in India is always a treat. You could choose between a French or a south Indian à la carte breakfast with selections of teas or arabica coffee, fresh fruit juice, fruit platter, and selections of eggs.
During the morning we zigzagged across town east to west, visiting the bustling Goubert Markets, Bharathi Park, Sri Varadaraja Perumal Temple and other local attractions.
In the afternoon we arranged to take an architectural walking tour with retired former town planner Ashok Panda.
A co-convenor of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) he has a passion for preserving and showing off Pondy’s historic buildings, and there are plenty of them!
Ashok also assists in restoration projects and is a tireless advocate of clean streets and instilling civic pride. He says the nation’s terrible rubbish problem remains an issue.
“It just isn’t good enough and there is no excuse for it,” he said vehemently. “We need to clean up our cities.”
No arguments there. The fact that India can put a lander on the moon but can’t put out a few rubbish bins (and use them), leaves one slightly puzzled.
Ashok conducts a variety of tours around the city, but we chose the one exploring the structures and civic spaces of the French Quarter.
It was a fascinating architectural ramble. We weaved our way through the streets visiting former mansions, municipal buildings, hotels, churches, and other notable places.
We popped into the beautiful Our Lady of Angels Catholic Church, which, like many distinctive to India, features delightful pastel-coloured interior walls and ceilings.
Ashok also showed us through several elegant cafes and hotels, some of which have been in operation since colonial days.
His extensive knowledge of the history of each location we visited was inspiring and left us with a far better understanding of the city. A highly recommended tour for the Pondy-bound.
The area is renowned for its Ashrams, spiritual havens, and alternative lifestyle retreats. The best known of these is Auroville, or the City of Dawn, about 12 kms north of the city in the Viluppuram district.
Founded in 1968 by Mirra Alfassa and designed by architect Roger Anger, the experimental township is recognised as an internationally endorsed ongoing experiment in human unity and transformation consciousness.
Many an earnest hippie and seeker of universal awakening has journeyed from around the world to this extraordinary place, and many have made it their home.
The mission statement says: “Auroville wants to be a universal town where men and women of all countries can live in peace and progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics, and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realise human unity.”
While it has sometimes been a bumpy road achieving such lofty objectives, the experiment is going strong.
Unfortunately, it was pouring with rain when we rocked up and took a walk around the grounds; but it was nothing if not impressive, particularly the central giant golden dome called the Matrimandir, or The Mother. It symbolises the birth of new consciousness.
Pretty far out, freaky stuff for many, but the movement certainly has its true believers. As of 2022 the population was 3,282 people from 59 countries.
We found some areas of Auroville, such as the souvenir shop, a tad commercial, but hey, what’s human unity without a few trinkets and bling, and even the perfect society needs a bit of turnover.
The following day the weather cleared so we set off on another out-of-town excursion to Ossudu Lake, about 20 minutes east of town, a picturesque spot, and apparently an important bird sanctuary.
The French created the lake for a permanent water supply for the colony, and it is now shared between the Pondicherry Union Territory and the state of Tamil Nadu.
It is about 800 square hectares in size, but Murugan couldn’t find it, because we turned down a crude bush track, convinced it lay somewhere to the north. The shore of the lake ran parallel only metres away but was hidden by trees. We bushwhacked about five kilometres down the trail to no avail.
Frustrated, Murugan finally asked a rather bemused farmer where to find the lake and he said, it was a stone’s throw away behind the trees, and had been since we left the road. Murugan fanged it back over rock and corrugation to the main road.
We finally found the viewing area, which offers pleasant vistas of the wetlands, but the much-mooted avian population was nowhere to be seen. Nary a feathered friend or downy nest. They must have been migrating. It wasn’t long before we too were migrating, back to town, somewhat disenchanted.
Not deterred, the next day we headed several kilometres south to Kakkayanthope in search of cultural illumination at the legendary Roman trading post of Arikamedu.
Who knew that Roman influence had reached as far as east India?
This was proved once and for all by archaeologists Sir Mortimer Wheeler and Jean-Marie Casal in 1945. Excavations at the site since that time have revealed that Romans, and later the Byzantines, came here to trade between the 2nd Century BCE to the 8th Century CE.
Ancient Roman scripts mention one of the trade centres along the Indian coast as Poduca or Poduke, which historians believe to be present day Puducherry.
Arched ruins in the distinctive Roman brick style can still be seen in the area, further proof of a thriving outpost.
The trade included dyed textiles, pottery, ceramics, beads, glass, coins, semi-precious stone, and lamps. Many of these artifacts can now be seen in the Puducherry Museum.
But once more we were thwarted by bad timing.
When Murugan eventually located the site of the ruins, following a maddening drive through the labyrinthine streets and alleys of Ariyankuppam Commune, the locked front gate bore the sign: ‘Closed for Works.’
Studying Google Maps and channelling Indiana Jones, we decided to tackle the ancient ruins by trekking through the mangrove swamps and canoeing across the filthy Thengaithittu Estuary and up the equally fouled Ariyankuppam River to the site.
We rented a canoe from a wary local vendor and started paddling rapidly towards the historic locale. One leak or turn turtle and we would be tragic victims of the fetid waters, but it didn’t stop us.
“Number three, come back immediately, you are going too far!” came an urgent megaphone message from the jetty.
“Your time is up, Number Three, come back in…Number Three!” came another entreaty and we noted a man paddling furiously after us. Clearly clients had ‘rented’ canoes here in the past and just kept paddling.
Reluctantly we acquiesced and set a course back to the jetty and the annoyed and annoying boat folk.
Ah, Arikemadu: so close, yet so far. We will walk through your crumbling Roman arches on our next sojourn.
The following morning it was time to move on to the spectacular temples of the Kumbakonam region.
We stopped in for a squiz at the old French Christian cemetery on the way out of town.
A bit overgrown but carefully preserved, it seemed a fitting place to say farewell; its brightly coloured crosses and tombs a sentimental aide-memoire of a once vibrant colony lost to the march of time.
Adieu, Pondy!
Hey Pete, Thanks for the tour of India. Would your recommend a place in Kerala?
Hi Marie: Sure can. Kochi is a great, vibrant city. House boating on the backwaters. The high country in the Western Ghats – centred in Kumily. Great beaches all along the coast. It is probably me favourite region in India. So much to see and do, culturally and natural environment. We will write about our travels there in an upcoming edition of the Starfish.