THEcar radio playing Tamil-techno film songs remindedme of AR Rahman’s music.

It was some phone-in show on the radio and aswith all private FM radio stations, the RJ wasspeaking in this irritatingly breathless manner. Wewere driving from Chennai airport to Pondicherryfor a short holiday.

Sooraj, our cab driver, was a taciturn person and I quickly realised that he did notunderstand English or Hindi and so allcommunication was in sign language. The drivealong the OMR (Old Mahabalipuram Road) wasthrough a verdant landscape of paddy fieldsinterspersed with tree plantations. The trees didn’t seem to belong — eucalyptus and some tree which looked like a conifer! A conifer on atropical coast? Sooraj was not too helpful when

he said that the tree was called syok. Even Google had not heard of any tree by that name. Itwas only later that I figured out that the tree is theShe oak, a nitrogen-fixing native of Australia,which looks like a conifer but is actually aflowering plant.

The other thing one noticed was the number ofshrimp hatcheries. Aqua-farming was obviouslybig in this part. But more than the shrimp farms, itwas the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) labswhich caught my attention. It turns out thatcommercially bred shrimps are particularly proneto a viral disease which can be prevented by earlydetection using PCR kits. The presence oflaboratories with such cutting edge technology inremote hamlets was a bit disorienting. Thetremendous reach of markets and capital cannever be overestimated!

T R A V E L B U G

There are spaces betweendominant memories that have a

texture and character of theirown and often point to an

intricacy of detail and thought.SHOBHIT MAHAJAN

discovers many secrets during adrive from Chennai to

Pondicherry that get lost in thegush of must-dos. A reverie

IMPROMPTUVIGNETTES

The beach promenade at Pondicherry is a happening place

TN AT A GLANCE

THEdrive to Mahabalipuram isinteresting because it seems like a

window to this part of Tamil Nadu. As soon as oneis out of Chennai, one sees massive hoardings forapartments and villas with evocative names.Obviously the NRIs and the middle classes here,just like their comrades in Gurgaon andBengaluru, want to live in gated communities withnames like Santorini Sands promising Greek stylevillas. But what is even more striking is theproliferation of advertisements for senior livingcommunities — there seems to be a huge demandfor it. Maybe it is due to a growing number ofparents left behind by local professionalsmigrating to the Promised Land of Silicon Valley.

Our entry to Mahabalipuram was dotted withshops and kiosks hawking the usual touristy wares.Soft drink and snacks, handicrafts, Stetson hatsand for some reason soapstone sculptures. Oneparticular kiosk selling packaged snacks had a

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board offering mobile phone charging at `20.Clearly some enterprising vendor had figured outthat there is a market for this service.

The shore temple and the Pancha Rathas templewere magnificent. The shore temple had taken a lotof beating from the salt-laden air and the carvingsand the sculptures were heavily eroded. Beingslightly further from the sea, the Pancha Rathaswere in a better shape. The workmanship on thisset of monolithic structures made a millenniumand a half ago was breath-taking. The complex wascrowded with schoolchildren on an excursion whoseemed least interested in the structure but werecrowding around the ice cream vendor. The othertourists were also busy — either taking a selfie orlooking for good vantage points to take one.

On the way from Mahabalipuram toPondicherry, one crosses several backwaters and

(Clockwise from top right): The Shore Temple; the Rathas; Old Mahabalipuram Road and Santorini Sands, the Greek style villas

small rivers. As one drives into Pondicherry, onecan’t help notice the absence of multitudes ofpeople. Unlike in the North, where one would findcrowds everywhere, from shops to bus stops toroadside vendors, the roadsides are relativelyempty. We reached the French quarter or WhiteTown as it is known locally and located our hotel.

The hotel was on Rue Casserne. The streets hadFrench names and the houses appeared to be fromthe time the French were here. The hotel used to bethe residence of Joseph Dupleix, the GovernorGeneral of French territories in India. It has beenextensively restored and now is a small hotel.

The French quarter, despite many of the houses

now being hotels or guest houses or cafes, stillretained some of the old world charm. Theatmosphere was laid back and quaint. Right fromthe street signs painted blue to the architecture,everything seemed to evoke another space-timepoint. I noticed two colourfully painted opentrucks, like the floats used in the Republic Dayparade, parked near the hotel. I guessed that theywere vehicles used by companies to have livedemonstrations of their products at malls andmarkets. My guess was so wrong. It turned outthat those were actually funeral vans which seemto be popular in these parts. Apparently death doesnot have to be a solemn occasion.

The beachfront or promenade is the happeningplace. Waves crash into the breakers all along thekilometre or so long stretch. Overlooking the Bayof Bengal are huge French mansions convertedinto hotels and guest houses or governmentbuildings. A tall statue of Gandhiji overlooks aplaza which has a much smaller statue of Nehru.And that is not all — there is a statue of Dupleix atone end of the promenade and a Memorial toAmbedkar too.

The place was teeming with tourists of all kinds— women wearing the hijab, middle class familieswith young children and aged parents, upwardlymobile young couples wearing designer shorts andshoes and a lot of youngsters. Apparently, loads ofyoung techies from Bengaluru drive down toPondicherry for the weekend. What was striking wasthe absence of the two sets of inveterate travellerswho are ubiquitous in every other tourist spot in the

country — groups of Bengalis and Gujaratis. Itwas not clear to me why this place is notpopular with them.

At such a place, one would expect plenty ofvendors selling food and drink. That was not

the case here. The vendors had all been givenspace on a nearby side street. The other thing tonotice was the level of cleanliness — there werefew empty packets of chips or gutkha that one sawlying around. Relative to other tourist attractionsaround the country that one has been to, the levelof cleanliness was noticeable. This is somethingwhich is remarkable about the whole city, more soin the White Town than in the “Indian” part orBlack town. And all this despite the absence ofscreaming hoardings asking citizens to be swachh.

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(Above) Backwaters between Mahabalipuram and Pondicherry and (below) a street in the French Quarters (Above) A statue of Mahatma Gandhi overlooks a plaza and (below) colourfully-painted open trucks

Aurobindo and his spiritual partner, the Mother.Every few steps, there was an elderly ashramitetelling you what not to do — don’t speak, don’tstop, don’t sit down, don’t offer flowers and so on. The regimentation and the officiousnesswere annoying.

The Aurobindo Ashram is, of course, the mostwell-known location in the city. The Ashram ownsmany buildings in the French quarter where it runsschools, guest houses, kitchens, printing pressesetc. I was told that the Mother, who belonged to arich family, bought up many of the buildings whenthe French left in the 40s and 50s.

The relationship between the Ashram and thecity is an interesting one as I was told by a friend.Since the Ashram is mostly self-sufficient and runby volunteers, it does not contribute much to thecity’s economic life. And this is the cause of muchheartburn for the locals who feel that the Ashramhas taken over their city.

Auroville, the City of Dawn, is a townshipestablished by the Mother about 10 km fromPondicherry. Spread over several kilometres, it wasintended as a place where people from all countriescould live in peace, above religion and politics. Itnow has about 2,500 residents of manynationalities. These are people who want to explorean alternative style of living — organic, spiritual,

ecologically sensitive and self-sufficient. Thus, therestaurant in the visitor centre complex advertisesfood with organic ingredients grown on theorganic farms at Auroville.

The main attraction in Auroville is the MatriMandir. Surrounded by manicured lawns, thisgolden structure is awe-inspiring. Conceived as thesoul of the city, a place for contemplation andmeditation, it took about four decades to build. Togo inside the edifice, one has to register a dayearlier and is granted permission in case one isfound suitable to visit what is undoubtedly theholiest place in the city. Lesser mortals can,however, walk through a wooded area for akilometre from the visitor centre to the viewingpoint. For this too, one has to first register andwatch a short video film, then get a pass and only then allowed to go. Once again, it struck methat an institution founded as a reaction againstthe rigidities and orthodoxies of organised religion, seems to have adopted all the trappings of one. It is surprising that, though the residentsand the followers here are mostly well-educatedand well-off people (both from India and overseas), they don’t seem to be bothered by thisapparent contradiction between the philosophy and the reality.

After seeing the Matri Mandir from the viewing

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ESSENCE IN THE DETAILS

WEdid the usual touristy things the next day — theBasilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, The

Church of Our Lady of Angels and the Cathedral ofImmaculate Conception. The Basilica is a neo-Gothicstructure with some splendid stained glass windows as wellas garishly painted terracotta figures on its walls. Despitebeing situated opposite the Railway station, it had a sereneand quiet atmosphere. In fact, this was something I noticedin all the three churches — the soothing and contemplativesilence in the air, the absence of people or of signs tellingyou what to do and what not to do.

A complete contrast was the Samadhi of Sri Aurobindoat the Ashram. Here, one had to leave one’s shoes across the road at a stall and then line up for the darshan of themarble-topped platform holding the mortal remains of

Matri Mandir(Above) Mother and Sri Aurobindo

(below) Cathedral of Immaculate Conception

toddler wearing oversized sunglasses — it was hisfirst birthday it seems!

However, what was interesting were thehoardings of Ambedkar. It was soon after his deathanniversary and while most of them had largephotographs of Ambedkar with the RepublicanParty leader Ramdas Athawale, there were somewith images of Prabhakaran. Obviously hecontinued to be a hero almost a decade after hisdeath. It was also the 25th anniversary of thedemolition of the Babri Masjid and there wereother Ambedkar Jayanti hoardings with images ofthe demolition of the Masjid. I had no idea whatthe hoardings said but the iconography certainlydid communicate something about the politicalatmosphere in these remote hamlets and villages.

Our first stop on the trip was the temple townof Chidambaram, about 60km from Pondicherry. TheNataraja temple here isone of the oldest ofSouth India. It is

huge, about 40 acres, with gates in all four cardinaldirections. The gopurams are in the usualarchitectural style that one identifies with templesin South India and are elaborately and colourfullydecorated with scenes from various scriptures. Asthe name suggests, the main shrine is to Natarajaor Shiva though there is also a shrine to Vishnuinside the sanctum. Clearly there must have beensome tension and subsequent compromisebetween the Shaivites and the Vaishnavites duringthe early days of the temple.

The small lane leading to the temple from theroad was overflowing with sewage and was linedwith the usual shops and stalls catering to the

devout. As with all the templetowns I have been to, thisone, too, was fairly filthy.However, the one thing

which was differenthere was the clean

toilet facility. Justlike at other

point and eating at the overpriced though goodorganic restaurant, we headed back to Pondicherryand walked to the museum from our hotel. In thebylanes, on the pavement were several fortunetellers sitting with caged parrots. The fortune-telling parrot was obviously popular with the localssince each seemed to be surrounded by severalsupplicants waiting for the wise bird to tell themtheir future.

The museum, though small, was veryinformative. Spread over two floors of a smallbuilding, it had thematic exhibits in each room.There were only about five visitors in the museumwhile there were 10 people stationed there to keepwatch over the visitors. As I walked into the bronzessection, I noticed an old gentleman having tea andtalking loudly on his phone. I took out my mobile tocheck the time and was immediately admonishedby the old man to switch it off! Despite its smallsize, the museum had some interesting exhibitsincluding coins, bronzes, furniture and rocks.

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Pondicherry museum

Nataraja templeTHE GREAT DANES

THEnext day we decided to take a tripsouth of Pondicherry to Tranquebar

or Tharangambadi as it is called in Tamil. This is asmall coastal town situated near the mouth of oneof the distributaries of Cauvery. It is about 120 kmfrom Pondicherry and is the site of the first Danishsettlement in India. The drive is once again veryscenic and the landscape pretty similar to the onewe saw north of Pondicherry.

As one passed small villages and towns on theway, one couldn’t help noticing the colourfulhoardings and posters everywhere. Most of themwere, of course, AIADMK posters with hugepictures of a young as well as mature Amma withsmaller pictures of MGR and Annadorai. Thenumber of DMK posters was much smaller and allof them had Stalin rather than Karunanidhi. Butapart from these political posters, there were hugehoardings celebrating some wedding, weddinganniversary and even one with a photograph of a

Tranquebar mission soon thereafter. He wasobviously very gifted and motivated since he quicklypicked up Tamil and set up a Tamil seminary in1707. More importantly, he translated the OldTestament into Tamil and set up a printing press toprint the Tamil Bible. Since all the earlier printing inIndia had been in Portuguese or Latin, Tamilbecame the first Indian language to be printed.

The museum does not have the originalprinting press but has a slightly later version of the press which amazingly is still functional!There are also boxes of wooden and metallic type

kept there from that time. Ziegenbalgdied at a young age in 1719 and wasburied at Tranquebar.

On the way back from Tranquebar,

about 20 km off the highway, is Picharwam. This isone of the largest mangrove forests in the worldand is situated between two estuaries. One cantake a motor boat trip to the mangroves which arefascinating. Riding on a boat, through a smallchannel, surrounded by dense marine vegetationbrought to mind the iconic scene of Colonel Kurtz,aka Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now riding on aboat through the dense forests of Cambodia!

We were passing through the Cauvery deltaregion on the way back and it was clear that theland here was amazingly fecund. There seemed tobe paddy growing in every square inch of land,even next to the roadside. No wonder, this regionis called the Rice Bowl of Tamil Nadu. The carradio was, as usual, playing some Tamil songswhich I didn’t understand. The songs wereinterrupted by a commercial for Basmati rice. Iwas amused at how this North Indian variety ofrice was being sold to people who had beencultivating some of the finest varieties of rice forseveral millennia. But then, this was just one of themany intriguing things I came across during thiswonderful trip.

— The author is Professor of Physics & Astrophysics,University of Delhi

places on this trip, there are Pay-And-Use toiletswhere one pays `3-5 to relieve oneself. However,what was remarkable about these toilets was thatthough very basic in nature, they were very clean. Idon’t remember coming across even one publicfacility anywhere in the North of the countrywhich has been clean. How these public toilets,used by hundreds of people, continue to be cleanand functional is still a mystery to me.

Tranquebar is a two-hour drive fromChidambaram. The village and its adjoining landswere given to the Danes in the 17th century by theRaja of Thanjavur to set up a trading post. TheDanes built a fort here which we found closedsince it was a Friday. And here I thought that allmonuments are closed on Mondays except thosewhere prayers are offered on Fridays!

Even from outside, the fort, though small,looked impressive. Situated right on the seashore,it somehow escaped destruction by the tsunami of2004 which destroyed the surrounding villages. Iwas told that about 700 people (mostly fisher folk)lost their lives on that fateful day in Tranquebar.

Across from the fort are the Governor’smansion and the Bungalow on the Beach. TheGovernor’s mansion is now a cultural centre, builtwith Danish support, which showcases the history

of the Danish presence in this small village. Nextto it is the Maritime Museum, a two-room buildingwith some interesting relics from shipwrecks aswell as some documents. The Bungalow on theBeach is a large colonial house which belonged tothe Governor of the Danish settlement. It is now aheritage hotel run by a well-known chain.

After lunch at the Bungalow, we made our waythrough the bylanes of this smallsettlement to find the Ziegenbalgprinting museum located in theprecincts of a missionary school.Ziegenbalg was a German Lutheranwho was one of the first Protestantmissionaries in India. He came toTranquebar in 1705 and set up the

(Clockwise from top left): Pichavaram; Tranquebar MaritimeMuseum and Tharangambadi