A few days ago I posted a Brazilian professor's impressions of India's erstwhile Portuguese colony of Goa on India's west coast. Today's New York Times travel section has an article on Pondicherry, a tiny town in south India on the Bay of Bengal which was once colonized by the French.
AS colonies go, Pondicherry was not exactly a success story. Almost immediately after the French set up this lovely nugget on the Bay of Bengal in 1674, it was captured by the Dutch, retaken by its founders, then sacked and destroyed by the British. And though the French kept rebuilding it, Pondicherry never became more than a stopover on the way to Indochina. Even after Pondy, as it is nicknamed, rejoined India — late, in 1956 — it languished, out of step with the rest of the nation. In other words, for most of its history, Pondicherry was a backwater, in decline.
No more. Today, Puducherry, as it is officially known but rarely called, is capitalizing on a glammed-up version of that history, and emerging as an artsy, design-savvy destination with a quasi-Gallic approach to eating, drinking, shopping and relaxing. It’s like India seen through a French lens, or maybe vice versa.
On the southeastern coast, about 150 miles south of Chennai, Pondicherry is, for an Indian city, tiny. Just about a million people live there, mostly in the types of charmless, three- and four-story concrete buildings erected all over the poorer parts of Asia. But near the Bay of Bengal, the cityscape changes drastically. Soon you see tile roofs and wooden shutters, balconies and colonnades, wide brick streets and pastel Catholic churches — the neighborhood once known as the Ville Blanche, or White Town, where the colonists lived.
i did my high school in Pondicherry.The NYT story -well there's a lot right and wrong with it.
even in those days(latter half of sixties), i used to think it was a decaying city, despite the fact i came from a town in Kerala.what impressed me was the perpendicular streets cut sharply at 90 degrees uniformly - absolute straight wide streets in the white town-remnants of french occupation. But coming from the then clean kerala. i was put off by the filth on the roads.
yes-'it languished, out of step with the rest of the nation'-how true of those days. it's different now , i hear. Those days there were 2 colleges and a medical college in the surburbs but in the town none! the first college came up in 1968 i think. The foundation stone for Auroville was also laid around that time.
Once more, i endorse the NYT remark about Pondy being out of step with india. i used to always have a back- home -in -India feeling while i was there.
can go on- not here but.
Posted by: kochuthresiamma P J | July 08, 2008 at 02:14 PM
My blog just started.
http://pondiblog2009.livejournal.com/.If you have requests , please feel free to comment. See you.
Posted by: Pondiblog | April 11, 2009 at 12:39 PM