Tamil Nadu

Outside India, Kanyakumari is rightly known for its beautiful sunsets. (Within India, Hindus come from all over the country to worship at a famous temple here, and Tamils celebrate the memory of a famed ancient poet immortalized in a colossus-like statue emerging from the water). For its location on India’s southern tip, the town probably should be equally renowned for its sunrises over the water. Of course, being the generally nocturnal person that I am, I couldn't be bothered to catch the sunrise, but the sunset was out of this world. Having made my way around this land's end, I'm now making my way up India's east coast.

North of Kanyakumari, Pondicherry was India’s only formerly French colony. So let’s do some math here: During the Raj, Britain controlled some 1.3 million square miles of India. With Pondicherry, the French managed to squeeze out a little less than 200 subcontinental square miles. I think it’s clear who won that particular game. What was the deciding factor? My theory: Cuisine. Have you ever tried British food? They’ve needed all the spices they could get from the East, and so were keen to get an early advantage in colonization. Meanwhile, the French were only too happy to continue farming their fertile home landscape to achieve their vaunted regional tastes. Like I said, it’s a theory, but I’ve found that much of the French psyche can be traced through their stomach.

Pondicherry is one of just a few cities in India that is laid out like a grid. The French quarter of the city has a very European feel to it, and is quite pretty and inviting. Historically, under French rule the Tamils were not even allowed into this neighborhood! Elements of French culture are only sporadically manifested: For example on the one hand, social welfare offices and other government bureaus proliferate throughout. However, French speakers, whether ethnically Tamil or otherwise, are mildly prevalent even in this quarter. At least the continental food in the trendy, posh restaurants is fantastic and authentic. While I’ve been sticking to vegetarian food for health reasons since leaving Bangalore, I made an exception in Pondicherry when I noticed my drool on the menu listing for coq au vin.

A stone’s throw from Pondicherry is the small utopian venture called Auroville. Auroville’s history dating from its founding in1968 is tied to a famous local ashram that is still very active today. The founders wanted to create a settlement that was independent of any nation’s sovereignty. Today, Auroville is a pioneer in alternative energy technologies including solar water heating, photovoltaic system deployments, water filtration, and wind power for electric and mechanical applications. The specialized cooperatives engaged in manufacturing these systems, which together contribute an important part of Auroville’s small export economy, count both small villages and urban homeowners throughout India as their customers. A busy greybeard engineer I talked to leads one of the cooperatives, drawing from thirty years of experience developing wind and water systems. The original intent of these systems was to sustain the settlement before they became a source of commercial gain for the community. He arrived in town when he was twenty.

Auroville’s technical prowess has a funny way of mixing with the village’s spiritual identity – for example, in water filtration, the final processing step (after a series of conventional steps such as reverse osmosis, UV and ozone treatment) resembles, as best as I could ascertain, a spiritual pep-talk for the water. No complaints here – the water was delicious.

The Auroville excursion also marked my first rental of a geared motorcycle (i.e. not scooter). A new local acquaintance in Kanyakumari showed me how to ride his brand spankin’ new Hero Honda bike (with Yamaha-style paint schemes and all). It’s a lot like driving a manual car – clutch, neutral, gears one through five . . . but no reverse =) . As I was riding back to central Pondicherry from rural Auroville, I wound up in the middle of rush hour Indian traffic (this kind of traffic is truly its own phenomenon). And so with my dilettante motoring skills I had to dodge oxcarts, rickshaws, cargo lorries, family-bearing scooters, and most importantly, buses whose rash drivers must in fact be closet philosophers; having clearly pondered the Hindu sense of fatalism to its extreme, they have absolutely no fear of death. During one close encounter with a few tons of mobile steel, it occurred to me that my trusty laminated medical insurance card, while eminently useful both logistically and financially when unfortunate circumstances befall (a comfort which in turn enables me to rent motorcycles in the first place), doesn't actually repel these hulking vehicles from merging into the modest square meter of road that I occupy.

Further north still on the way to Chennai, I reached Mahabalipuram, a town with temples and carvings in excess of one millennium old. The carving skills remain with the inhabitants today, many of whom make a living selling small statues of gods made of green granite and marble. My favorite: Ganesh, the god with the elephant’s head, kicking back and tapping away on his laptop.

Now I’m in Chennai, formerly Madras. The city is far from tourism-focused, and from a budget-traveling point of view, costly to get around, so after visiting the century-old markets of Georgetown and hitting some of the widest beaches in the world, I’ve decided to hunker down to do errands in preparation for the upcoming leg of the trip (in two weeks!) to Shanghai via Hong Kong. The highlight of my stay here was actually an evening spent with the local family of a friend living in California, particularly the impromptu course in cooking and Hinduism they gave me!

Tomorrow I’m headed to West Bengal starting in Kolkata. Looking forward to lots of fish – shortly after it will be time to justify all of the warm clothes I’ve been carrying around with a visit to Darjeeling!