A worldwide following

On the subject of rambling, I finally managed to visit Pondycherry last weekend. It was a gruelling 5 hour journey and I left Vellore at 6am. On arrival, first impressions were those of yet another south indian city, however a walk across a canal that divided the old colonial town into a Hindu Ville Noire and a White Ville Blanche, quickly and dramatically revealed that that ancient boundary had not yet evaporated. The 'Ville blanche' closer to the sea was cleaner, less crowded and had beautiful colonial whitewashed building dotted about the well marked streets carrying famililar names of old french governors and political figures (familiar because the same names took an active part in the story of Mauritius e.g Mahe de Labourdonnais, whose statue is on the waterfront, Dupleix, etc).

The other dominating feature of the town is the omnipresence of the Aurobindo movement. Sri Aurbindo Ghose (b.1872-1950, a King's college, Cambridge graduate) fled Calcutta under British Raj, against which he had actively fought before turning into a philosopher/sage/spiritualist, and settled in Pondy. He seems to have a worldwide following and there is an Ashram set up by him in Pondy which receives visitors and followers from the word over. I stayed at one of the Ashram guesthouses, which had a beautiful location right in from of the sea. The food in some of the French-Indian restaurants was excellent. Overall, Pondy was very atmospheric, but one could sense the tentacles of a certain laissez-allez gradually overtaking the place and leaving some of the colonial architectural relics in dire state. posted by sajir at 10:34 AM Wednesday, October 11, 2006