Okay, I'll admit it. I was perhaps, just the tiniest bit, expecting a dirtier, more "sultry" version of Paris. It's not all my fault either. That expectation was conceived from the pages of guidebooks that promised romantic, Parisian streets with old men reading the paper and sipping espresso outside of adorable French bakeries. The bakeries were very present, and French baguettes were a welcome change from our constant supply of roti and chapati bread at Tagore. But I saw no French-Indian men sipping espresso, thinking they were sitting on a shaded street in Paris. Instead, the streets were filled with slightly confused, and entirely exhausted French tourists stumbling from cafe to bakery to beach and back again.
On our first day of exploring Pondicherry, my friend Kate and I found ourselves being lured to the Promenade by the curious melodies of Indian instruments. We followed a trio of Indian men, clad in white robes, ambling down the Promenade playing a drum, a clarinet-type wind instrument, and a horn. Their destination ended up being a congregation of Hindu devotees, surrounding an enormous, live elephant as if it were just another follower. The elephant was magnificent, wearing a silk blanket and elephant sized anklets! The elephant and the rest of the congregation were performing puja, as a part of the Ganpati festival, which apparently was still going on in the state of Tamil Nadu. An elderly devotee came up to me and offered to smear my forehead with white powder. I accepted. One thing I've noticed about Hindus: they always welcome us into their ceremonies, and are happy to show us the various rituals involved in going to temple and performing puja. It feels so good to be welcomed into the festivities, but not expected to convert.
Kate and I stayed at the Park Guest House, right on the ocean. It was part of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, also located in Pondicherry. This meant that we had a curfew (10:30), an extremely zened out staff (we had to wait several minutes before getting a reply to a question from the gentleman at the front desk), a lovely meditation garden (no talking, no shoes), and spooky pictures of "the Mother" and Sri Aurobindo in every room...if you're interested in them or Auroville, their futuristic, "utopian" society near Pondy that we also visited, you should look them up online. It's a little too crazy for me to describe here.
Being in a city famous for its ashram, Kate and I decided to attend a yoga class on Friday night. In a dimly lit attic room overlooking the sun setting over the Bay of Bengal, we took our seats on the mats, next to several Indians (dressed in full salwar-kameez sets) and one fiesty, middle-aged French woman. We started the class by sitting in lotus position, hands on our bellies, breathing in, then leaning forward and pushing all the air out by saying "AHHH!!" really loudly and as much like a dying cat as possible. It was very hard to not giggle. I thought we would do that maybe just once or twice to get things going. I was very wrong. We proceeded to make dying cat sounds for the first 25 minutes of class, after which I thought I would pass out from breathing so hard. Then we did a series of moves that could be distant cousins of moves I've done in yoga classes in the U.S....after which we did several sessions of "extreme breathing" and jumping up and down a few times, which the french lady took very seriously and ended up halfway across the room. We left the yoga studio in a state of shock.
Alas, Pondicherry was not Paris. But, then again, I chose to come to India, not Paris. The french baguettes were well worth the 14 hour train ride through the beautiful Indian countryside. And at the end of our last day in Pondicherry, lying in my mosquito-net canopied bet, swimming in a pool of my own sweat, I asked myself again why I didn't just go to Europe. But thinking about that enormous elephant swaying slightly to the beats of the drum, and the kind old man who smeared powder on my forehead during puja, and the strangest yoga session I had ever attended....well, let's just say that I entered the 'love' phase of my love-hate relationship with India all over again.
Photographic Evidence:
