Pondicherry Journal: 2 — Frenchness in the Air

Originally published on The Creative Cafe.

Read the first part here.

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.

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.

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?

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…