Read the first part here.
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| Heritage building at Goubert Avenue (taken by me on Sep 9, 2013) |
Oct 14, 2017 Sat 11:00 PM approx, in a hotel room in Pondy.
Whenever I announce a trip to Pondicherry to
my friends and colleagues, there is this one inevitable question that escapes
at least one unruly mouth – “What is there in Pondy to see!”
Come to think of it, the chief tourist
attractions of the city - the Aurobindo
Ashram and the Auroville - are not
enough to attract repeat visitors unless the latter take genuine interest in
the spiritual heart of the place, i.e. the vision and ideals of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. What is
it then that keeps drawing this impatient skeptic to Pondy again and again - the
enduring remnants of a bygone era that refuse to be lost in the mists of time,
or the triumph of sobriety over flamboyance that her streets perpetually
celebrate?
To understand the temperament of the city,
dear journal, you need to have a brief background of not only her history but
also her ‘physical’ character -
Pondicherry, the capital city of the
union territory of Puducherry, was the chief French settlement in
India during the period of European colonialism.
“The plan of the city of Pondicherry is based
on the French grid pattern and features perpendicular streets. The town is
divided into two sections: the French Quarter (Ville Blanche or 'White Town') and the Indian quarter (Ville Noire or 'Black Town').
Many streets retain French names, and villas in French architectural styles are a
common sight. In the French quarter, the buildings are typically in French
colonial style, with long compounds and stately walls. The Indian quarter
consists of houses lined with verandas and with large doors and grilles. These
French- and Indian-style houses are preserved from destruction by an
organisation named INTACH. The French language can be
seen on signs and menus, and heard in Puducherry. Puducherry has residents
with French passports...” (Source:
Wikipedia)
Am I particularly in love with France as a
nation? No Sir. Au contraire, I’ve no
clue on what truly differentiates the identity of a Frenchman from that of an
Italian, a Belgian or a Swede. But to stumble across a little island of France
in your own country – standing solemnly amid a thriving Tamil culture – is
another thing altogether.
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Pics: The French colonial style buildings lining the boulevards in the White Town (taken by me on Sep 8, 2013)
Let’s take our dinner venue of the day – Hotel
Palais de Mahe, a distinguished
presence in the street of Rue Bussy in the old French Quarters. As we walked
back this evening from the beautiful beachfront known as the Seaside Promenade,
I let my impulse walk us to this hotel’s breezy rooftop restaurant and was literally
enchanted by the experience.
Now, I’ve been a resident of Bangalore for the
last 7 years, and Bangalore is a synonym to chic dining options offering authentic
Italian to Japanese to Thai to Continental to coastal Mangalorean and what not.
What new experience could this restaurant have sold me that I’m waxing eloquent
about it?
Well, hotels in Pondy like Palais de Mahe, Le Dupleix (dined here during our last visit to the
city in 2013) or The
Richmond (stayed here in 2013) are based out of restored heritage
properties. The very experience of walking through the corridors of these
French colonial style buildings with splendid architecture patterns and antique
furnishings carries you to a different world. The dishes we ordered today (fennel-crusted fish, cinnamon-crusted
chicken, ‘lasooni’ fish and coffee) took their own sweet time to arrive and
tasted a little too bland; yet the stories whispered to us by the palatial
lamps and the heavy wooden doors rendered the relationship between culinary
skills and satiated heart almost inconsequential.
Piku, visibly happy with the lovely bamboo
highchair offered to him, showed great interest in the food served. While usually
we don’t share restaurant food with this barely twenty-two month old human, I made
an exception today on account of the classiness of the place and let him have
his fill.
Is it right to associate the show of refinement
with hygiene, dear journal? Is the poor guy headed towards trouble? The night
will tell. As of now, he sleeps soundly beside his Kindle-reading father, and
that little tummy of his looks round and cheerful.
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| The Seaside Promenade (taken by me on Sep 9, 2013) |
I wonder
if my parents have dozed off in their room too, or if Ma is busy applying warm
compress to her knee to ease the pain. She had to overstretch herself to walk
to the Seaside Promenade this evening, while also supporting Bu who keeps
faltering in his steps of late. The barely half a kilometer walk left both of
them so distressed that I realized once again that the two hard working,
able-bodied individuals I grew up with were gone for good. Sometimes I so wish
I had a sibling to share my sense of loss with.
Note, my
journal, that Piku had his first-ever glance of the sea this evening, and was
more excited about the white herons flying overhead than the frothing waves
that lay below! And tell me - is a journal supposed to record its events
chronologically? Am I messing with your rules?
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| The Seaside Promenade (taken by me on Oct 14, 2017) |
Before it gets messier, let me then quickly
record that we reached Hotel
Treebo Grace Inn at 2 this afternoon. I had pre-booked the rooms through Expedia (a partner of the travel fare
aggregator website TripAdvisor) at a
discounted rate, which qualifies it as one of the economic stay options within the
White Town. Our rooms here are spacious and well-lit with tasteful décor, and
the staff promised us access to their kitchen so that we could get fresh food
prepared for Gungun and Piku. The only other thing we could have asked for is
in-house dining facilities, but then this location offers a plethora of great eateries
within 10 minutes walk, and there’s also this just-okay-ish café-restaurant called ‘La Café Chaplin’ in the adjacent building.
This is where we had a very late lunch today.
I’m
getting a little groggy now, so bear with me if I tend to ramble, but I
wonder if this trip will allow me many hours to stroll along the Promenade and
the shaded boulevards of the White Town, just as we did back in 2013. I should
probably rein in my hopes early, ‘coz now we have our little fellow with us
who’ll have to be fed and cleaned up after several times a day. It’s okay
though – part of life.
Talking of ‘hope’,
I find the devil occupying my idle mind working surprisingly hard on so many threads
of hope even as I write this entry. For
example -
1.
I hope to visit France someday. How will it feel
like to set foot in a country whose supposed microcosm evokes such fascination
in me?
2.
I hope Pondy continues to preserve her uniqueness
for many more decades. Today I came across this article
which talks about the lack of sensitivity of authorities towards preserving the
age-old mansions of Pondy, as well as the many imminent threats to her slow
life. It was only then that I understood the vague discomfort I had felt seeing
her streets teeming with people and vehicles while on our way to the beach
earlier today. These parts of the city were way quieter when we visited in
2013.
3.
I hope Piku continues to show curiosity towards
new food, and grows up to be a person rich in taste and unrestricted in range.
I hope he becomes my foodie-mate as we together explore new restaurants (so
that I can leave Sourav in peace on his bed along with his Kindle and laptop). But
what if Piku takes on his father? Well, Mama will just have to reach back to
her solitary walker/eater hat that has been gaining dust for some time. On some
days, I can probably join the father-son duo to binge watch ‘Stranger Things
Season 13’ or the Miyazaki animations he is surely going to love… Will these
guys turn play station addicts as well?
4.
I hope the cyclonic rains that have ravaged
Bangalore today continue to spare Pondy.
5.
I hope the world turns fairer and people
overcome the need to see religion as something unquestionable.
6.
I hope…
Did you say it’s my moral duty to retire for the day? Honestly?
Hmmph… Okay then, dear journal, see you soon.
Zzzzzzzz…
