Life took a pretty detour last week and I found myself in the quaint city of Pondicherry.
This trip took on life out of nowhere. One minute, a dear ex-colleague (let us refer to her as E) was calling to catch up; the next minute we were musing about the potential of us exploring the places around Bengaluru, and by the third minute, there was a complete itinerary to visit Pondicherry ready to be acted upon. (Dropping it here, just in case.)
The Gods of Spontaneity did not just stop there. Within 24 hours, our duo had turned into a trio — another colleague (we are going to call her C) that I had absolutely no personal connection with had been invited. Oh, and by the 25th-hour mark, we had a semi-professionally designed step-by-step PPT acting as our Bible, all prepped and shared.
I am a pathological introvert. This was too much too fast. Moments like these reduce me — an independently living, hard-spined woman — into a blubbering child, and hence, I called up my mom. My mom is NOT an introvert. Saying that she pushed me into grabbing this travelling opportunity is an understatement.
And that was how, with a mushy mind and brave heart, I was going to Pondicherry with E and C. In the span of just three weeks, I found myself on an aeroplane for the second time in my life.
Funny how experience works, because this time I walked around that building like I have been doing this for years. I did get a tiny bit panicky about taking a flight on my own when I reached the airport terminal — a cliched introvert move — but a quick chat with a soothing voice helped me straighten my ruffled feathers and I was ready to fly!
The airport is where I finally met C. I learnt that meeting her on time was a rarity, loud and bubbly was the norm and unfiltered was going to be our religion. She did let me have the window seat, however, when she saw how excited I was about flying — and just like that, she had broken the ice in me that she didn’t even know existed.
We met E on the final leg of the journey — on the train from Bengaluru to Pondicherry. The first thing that struck me was the number of young people on that train. As a general rule, in Indian trains, you will never — and I mean NEVER — come across cute people in these dingy blue compartments. To suddenly be surrounded by hundreds of young travelling groups was a pleasant shock. We got talking to one of the groups after we bonded over common animosity against an irritated aunty who wanted all the lights off by 9.00 pm. C wanted to fight. E wanted to comply. I wanted to work (don’t ask). This other group, for whatever reason, also wanted the lights on. You don't come out of certain things without ending up as friends.
There At Last!
Come morning, the train spewed out a bunch of travel-hungry teenagers into this coastal town to explore and frolic over the course of the weekend.
The town outside stood waiting to swoop in and profit off of them. In India, there is no place like the South to gain a newfound appreciation for the communicative wonder that a spoken language is. However, in spite of the linguistic limitations, hawkers made their sales and rickshaws caught their prime customers of the day. But most strikingly, my girls and I were surrounded by touters trying to offer us scooters for hire.
Before, we had dedicated countless video calls to figuring out how one goes about looking for places that offer scooters for hire, and here was the answer: by just showing up.
Everyone that I spoke to about Pondicherry, had a set of similar descriptions to help me visualise what to expect. A coastal town that might remind me of Goa. A French pocket of paradise. A cafe lover’s haven. I had been bestowed with a list of cafes that weren’t to be missed, a bunch of monuments that as an architect, would be a crime for me to skip and explicit instructions to not forget to eat all the croissants that I can. (Check footnotes below.)
Naturally, nothing went as planned.
City of Spontaneity
The thing about touristy-Pondicherry is that it takes the phrase coastal town to its heart — almost everything you might put onto your list is right by the promenade. Everything is precisely within five to seven minutes of each other. And it is a small town, so if you pick a fight with a random tourist or smile flirtatiously at a girl passing by, expect to run into them several times throughout the day. Don’t ask me why I know that.
It is easy to see why the White Town in Pondicherry is the ultimate tourist attraction. The streets lined with quaint homes bathed in pastels have held on to their past like grandparents hold on to their favourite totems. The geometric streets, the lush trees flanking them, the colonial homes with their pretty balconies and pilasters and windows. And the doors! How can doors have so much personality?
I think places are like sponges — they soak up a little bit of all the people that have ever stepped foot in them. Maybe that is why it feels like we leave a little bit of ourselves behind at each place we go. Pondicherry is soaked in French architecture and scrumptious seafood, in beachside chill attitude and spirituality, and in art and culture. Tiny quirky doorways will open up into humongous cafes, unassuming stone paths will draw you into art galleries hiding away inside the strangest of nooks, and one accidental turn will throw you onto a whole new street with such a bustle that it is a surprise to have not seen or heard it coming.
Scooter-ing around the town was another experience I will never forget. Not because I nearly died too many times trying to learn how to drive through city streets (I come from a village where vehicles leave more than three meters of buffer space in between), but because of the unnecessary interactions I had to participate in after I survived each time. In these interactions, I discovered that the people of Pondicherry are widely patient and soft-spoken.
Or maybe they were just pitying me because I was being the girl that all the driving stereotypes talk about. But let us believe the former?
Final Thoughts
For a city that is supposed to be brimming with baked goods, I didn’t get a single croissant to taste because there is a limited bracket to catch them fresh. Almost like fishing. Lesson for me: if you see something you know you like, just get it. You don’t schedule good things and happiness for later — you stop whatever you are doing when you come across happiness-inducing things and let it wash over you.
Travelling is scary. I was scared of not getting along with my rag-tag group of travel mates, I was scared of getting hurt or ending up in some silly accident with the scooter, and mostly, I was scared of hating the experience or weirdly, not doing it justice. Lesson for me: Being scared is okay, but staying frozen in fright is not okay. People travel for different reasons. They seek different things from it. I am learning that it is okay if what I seek from my travels and what I bring back does not sound anything like everybody else’s stories. It is okay if I don’t get along with the people I meet or travel with. But in giving them a chance, maybe I will come away with a new friend made unexpectedly. It is okay if I hate it. They say this about love, but I think it applies to hate too — better to have hated it than to have never discovered it at all. Finally, it is okay if I see only a tiny bit of the places I visit. I am getting fonder of the hope that I have started harbouring of revisiting the places I visit.
Why do we treat places like flings anyway? Marking each spot as done-and-dusted? I am starting to treat them like those random friends you make in the most unimaginable of places and you fall in love with — and then whenever you are in the vicinity, no matter how many years it has been since you last spoke or met, you will do your best to go visit.
Footnotes: Things to See in Pondicherry
Notes from K1
(Yes, we are going all in with the anonymity)
For old world cafe culture and food:
Coromandel Cafe (A MUST)
La Villa (less vegetarian options though, but very beautiful)
Villa Shanti
Le Dupliex
For Breakfast, Croissants:
Bread and Chocolate
For South Indian vegetarian food:
Adyar Ananda Bhavan
For Gelato, Sorbets and Ice-Cream:
GMT (it's towards the end of the Promenade, and is a must visit. They have great flavours)
In Auroville:
If you like Pizzas, go to Tanto's in Auroville. It's a modest outlet with good pizzas. During my college time it was great, I hope it has maintained. However, stick to only pizzas here.
Auroville Bakery and Cafe has good breakfast, so while at Auroville, you can eat there.
The Cafe near Auroville Visitor’s Centre is not good at all. So, you can avoid it completely.
Notes from K2
Alcohol is pretty cheap there, so stock up and have it in your room at night.
Most of the places get shut by 10 pm, so start your days early.
Auroville is a must visit. If at you plan to go, please go to Sadhana Forest. You will know why.
Go cafe hopping. Must visits:
Cafe Xctasy for pizzas
Cafe Des Arts
Tanto
Pondicherry's beaches are clean and very pretty. Rock beach will remind you of Marine Drive, only cleaner.
Notes from J
(Paraphrased and dramatised)
Have all the croissants you can!
Notes from Manali
Rock Beach, but schedule for sunrise, if possible. Otherwise, evening is fine. Don’t expect to see the sunset, this is the East Coast.
French Colony. Yassssss.
Coromandel Cafe is REALLY worth it.
Aurobindo Ashram. Don’t go with people who get restless with silence and lack of phones. Worth a pause. Pause!
Ganpati Mandir. Also, peaceful. A good example to see what temples here look like. So intricate and detailed. Visit.
Sacred Heart Church. Charts will tell you the Immaculate Conception Cathedral is better, but I liked the Sacred Heart Church better. For the details. It is like the Ganpati Mandir equivalent of churches — says the person who doesn’t even know what churches in Mumbai look like. But whatever. I like.
Boating in the Backwaters. Meh? But peaceful if you are into that thing. I am.
On food: Try everything that catches your fancy. Don’t google the seafood you eat until after you have digested it. Better to not google at all. Taste all the cakes! It would be loads better if you get to taste all the croissants, but if you are not an early bird, you are not going to get the worm. Sadly, I don’t have data on what construes as ‘early’ in Pondicherry anymore though — for me, All o’clock was Late o’clock.
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C wanted to fight. E wanted to comply. I wanted to work (don’t ask) - I completely agree with this statement :P