Superficialities

‘I had always maintained that in the choice of an itinerary one should always be guided by the sound of names, and that in doing so I had never been disappointed.’ So wrote Edith Wharton in her splendid, archly refined memoir A Backward Glance. I confess my presence in Pondicherry has more than a little to do with the allure of the name Pondicherry, a name that has since childhood sounded the promise of multicoloured seaside larks, magicians and sundry exotica.

Now arrived, what do I think of Pondicherry?

I wasn’t even slightly disappointed by Pondicherry and so hold Wharton’s axiom true. Pondicherry is quite splendid, an odd little Gallified pocket of India, all town squares and balconies and greenery dripping down walls. The streets are broad, shady and clean and the guesthouses are full of French people. Whether their journeys are spiritual or secular, it has been my experience that the more French tourists are clustered in a particular destination, the higher the likelihood of finding drinkable wine, salty bread and satisfactory coffee. Insofar as these essentials were concerned, Pondicherry delivered.


The festival of Pongal, a fertility celebration for the New Year in Tamil Nadu, was in full swing when I was in town; so the beaches were full of picnicking families and the roads were sealed off to make room for painted bulls to amble around. The streets and paths were all decorated with chalk images like this, touched up every day of the festival. Admittedly, this is not one of Pondicherry's cleaner by-ways.

Enfin, the slogan emblazoned outside the local tourism office – ‘Pondicherry – you can check out but you can never leave’ – proved, happily, to be false. Even though my reprehensible backpack alienated many people, I made it back to Chennai on the local bus this afternoon. Next stop, Calcutta.