A Signpost to Certitude

I left Trichy to go to Pondicherry by car. This city is now officially known as Puducherry but that only cuts the name down by one letter, so the old diminutive of Pondy is still in use - and sounds much nicer, I think. The French name is also very slightly shorter, as they spell it Pondichery with only one "r". But any advantage this may give them is lost because they use an acute accent over the "e".

The journey here took about four hours and was a very interesting one. Soon after leaving the town we crossed some marshlands where I saw many people doing their washing in the streams and masses of clothes hanging up to be dried on washing lines stretched across the marshy land. Our way was briefly held up by a train of bullock carts bearing vegetable produce of some sort.

The bullocks were notable for their long, curved and sharp horns. These were usually coloured, as I had seen before, to denote ownership but these, in addition, were topped with brass caps covering the horns' points.

I noticed that although many vehicles had writing in Tamil on their rears, the words "Sound Horn" almost always seemed to appear in English. Once again I saw a few examples of the almost pleading "Please Sound Horn, Please" and was slightly taken aback when my driver passed one of these without honking. Although, to give him credit, he did use his horn frequently and with vigour.

He drove in a very aggressive way and a couple of times attempted overtaking manoeuvres that didn't quite succeed. But he got me safely from Trichy to Pondy in four hours, and that can't be bad.

A large part of the route was on a new road in fairly good condition. I noticed that on this road signposts showed the English form of town names whereas on the more minor roads the names were only in Tamil. However, work was still going on on the road and there were diversions, which so far as I could see were not signposted in any way, so that we might find ourselves on a dirt track at a moment's notice before returning to the highway after a mile or two.

As we were travelling along the road, nowhere near a town or village, I saw a golden statue. I wondered what it was doing there. There were a few statues painted in gold in Hyderabad and also in Trichy (it must be a South Indian thing), but this one seemed to be in the middle of nowhere.

Along the roadside, when we were near villages or towns, were rows of thatched shacks. One of these was had a small cross on its thatched roof and was, in fact, a small church.

I'm not sure if I have mentioned the Indians' prediliction for rumblers yet. These are "sleeping policemen", bumps deliberately made in the roads to ensure that cars do not travel too fast. Since nearly all of the roads here are already bumpier than than the face of a child with chicken pox, and since it is impossible to travel faster than about 20 miles an hour on most roads because of the sheer volume of traffic these seem unneccessary most of the time. But Indians must love them because they are all over the place.

They also have an odd trick of covering up half of the road, forcing drivers to slow down so as to access the only remaining track of road. They did this in Thailand too. I would have thought that this would cause more accidents than it prevents but Indian and Thai drivers manouvre through these chicanes with no apparent effort.

Shortly before arriving at Pondy, we drove through Vilapuram (Villy?) and I was impressed to see a mosque and a Christian church standing side by side.

There were also a few temples which all had a giant statue of Hanuman, the monkey leader who helps Lord Ram, on their roofs. I wondered if he is particularly venerated in this area. He's popular everywhere, of course, as a fine example of selfless service.

When I arrived at my hotel (Ginger Hotel) I was pleased to find that it had its own branch of Cafe Coffee Day. You can actually order froom service from Cafe Coffee Day! The hotel also has its own bookshop. The only problem is my room number - 101 . .

I'm not sure if I mentioned it but most large towns in India have at least one Cafe Coffee Day. It was in the Kochi CCD that I met Chaim Weisman. Panjin didn't have one and neither did Trichy, but most places did. Mumbai and Delhi have loads of them. When there's a choice between CCD and Barista, the other one of India's home grown coffee chains, I prefer Barista, but CCD is also very good, especially for cold coffee based drinks. In Udaipur the CCD was a very good place to relax a bit before going back to Bedla.

After unpacking and showering I went to explore the town. After Trichy it is a revelation. At first I wasn't sure what the difference was but then I realised - there was no rubbish on the streets. No cows or goats yet, either. I saw signs in English and French: "Notre ville est la beaute, notre devoir est de la maintenir" "Our town is beautiful, It's our duty to keep it that way." There were rubbish bins along the pavements. And they have public toilets too, which are free of charge (or "gratuit" as they say here). Actually, I have now seen one cow on the roads and, surprisingly, it was black and white in colour - the first like that that I've seen here, I think. Despite its couloring it did not otherwise resemble English cows, but looked like the other ones here in all other ways. Many roads in the French area are wide and tree-lined.

There are many more signs of the French past here than there were in Panjin of that city's Portuguese past. Perhaps that's becasue the French left willingly, by agreement, without having to be pushed out like the Portuguese. The town hall still has the words Hotel de Ville emblazoned outside.

I think I read a story on the internet recently about a tourist in France who was locked up in the Mairie under the impression that it was a hotel (because it was called Hotel de Ville). Here in India, "hotels" are more normally roadside eating places than either places to lodge or town halls. But this one was a town hall.

Nearby the Hotel de Ville, on the promenade by the sea front, is a larger than life statue of Mahondas Gandhi, surrounded by eight giant granite pillars transported here from the Gingee Fort. Facing that statue, about 100 yards away is a slightly smaller one of Jawaharlal Nehru. He only gets four granite pillars. They face each other in the manner of Wild West gunslingers. Panditji looks ready to draw but Gandhiji looks as pacific and disarming as ever.

Behind the Nehru statue there is a lovely park with lots of old sculpture (also brought from Gingee) and a few newer bits. There's a grassy mound with a winding path up to the top which is used by children to play King of the Castle etc.

In the centre of the park there is the Aayi Mandapam, a square white building with classical pillars and porticoes surmounted by a cornucopia and with a fountain in the middle. This was apparently built on the instructions of the Emperor Napoleon III. Many years ago, the story goes, a local raja and his entourage went on pilgramage to a great saint who had evinced his holiness by getting hair to grow on the soles of his feet. On their way back after visiting this holy and hairy man the raja and his companions saw a place with red lights perfumed with pleasant scents. Being religious and simple types and thinking they had been fortunate enough to have come across another holy place, the group dropped to their knees and prayed. But their prayers were interrupted by a local man who asked them why they were praying outside the local prostitute's place of business.

They all got up and, probably a bit embarrassed, the raja said that he would build a proper shrine in that place instead. At that the prostitute (whose name was Aayi), came out to see what was going on and swore that she would give up her calling and pay for a temple and its tank herself out of the money she had earned. That tank subsequently became a major source of water for the town. Apparently Napoleon III heard this story and ordered the Mandapan built in Aayi's honour.

Further along the promenade at its southern end is a statue to Joseph Dupleix, Clive's great adversary (not my brother but Clive of India) who was Governor of Pondicherry as well as a great general. I have been reading about his exploits in H G Keene's Fall of the Moghul Empire in Hindustan. This is a short but very interesting book that I downloaded for free onto my iPhone. The edition is dated 1887, so historical opinions may have changed a bit, but the book is well written - obviously trying to imitate Gibbon as well as the author could. Anyway it was interesting to see the statue. Since then I have also seen one of Dupleix's chairs and a bed that he may have slept in!

The history of the eighteenth century in India as set out in the book is fascinating. As the Moghul empire declined and fell many other groups were fighting to get most of the spoils, and the empire was fighting among itself and so were most of the other groups. As presented in the book they are a motley bunch of Persians, Afghans, Jats (largely but not entirely Sikhs), Mahrattas, Rohillas (independent Afghans), the French, the British and individual war lords with their own followings. And all of these groups are constantly scheming against all of the others and are riven with internal dissent and none are faithful but all are treacherous. Fascinating as I say. The Chinese curse was to be doomed to live in interesting times and those times were nothing if not interesting.

I was most impressed with the stories of the individual warlords, Dupleix may almost be included in this group as he got so little help from his native country. But my favourite is the Begum Sumroo.

This woman, yes she was a war lady rather than a war lord, inherited her position from her husband, He was a German, or possibly a Frenchman or a Luxembourgais or a Swiss but at all events a European named Walter Reinhardt (or possibly Reinhart). He was a soldier of fortune who seems to have had no redeemng feature whatsoever (unless it be his good sense when deciding upon a spouse). He was deceitful, treacherous, inconstant, boastful and cruel. He was known for waiting until he could see who was going to win a battle and then adding his forces to the winning side, so he could share in the spoils.

He was nicknamed "Sombre" as a pun on his assumed name of Summer, because of his swarthy complexion and this nickname was subsequently corrupted to Sumroo (presumably based upon the French pronunciation). After his marriage his wife was addressed as Begum Sumroo because Begum is the form of address used with regard to muslim women of high status.

Not much is known about his wife's early years except that she was brought up as a muslim. Some say she was a dancing girl, some that she was a dancing girl's daughter, some say she was a princess, some say she was a primcess who was kidnapped and forced to be a dancing girl. She was short - about four foot six tall - but was regarded as beautiful and always dressed stylishly.

After the death of her husband she assumed leadership of his army and of the province of Sardhana which he had secured. She was an able leader in battle and rode at the head of her troops wearing a large turban to make her appear taller. She was so daring that it was popularly believed that she was invulnerable to battle wounds and able to wield magic.

As well as being a succesful soldier, she was an able administrator and she ruled her principality well for fifty eight years from the death of her husband in 1778 to her own death in 1837 at the age of 85. She died shortly before the accession of Queen Victoria to the British throne.

She had converted to Catholicism in 1781, a few years after having lost her husband, and had been christened with the name Joanna. She seems still to have been known as "the begum" after her conversion.

She was immensely wealthy at the time of her death and even now, more than 170 years later, there are many rival claimants to that wealth, awaiting a final court decision. The total amount in question, held by Swiss banks, now amounts to approximately GBP60 billion, including 170 years of accumulated compound interest.

Back to Pudicherry! The promenade is a lovely place to stroll along. There is a beach but after a narrow strip of sand there are lots of rocks before you reach the sea. Apparently there's a nicer beach a little farther off called Serenity Beach. At night the streets are adequately but not well lit. The gutters are similar to those in Goa but most have been covered now so there is less risk of injury.

I looked out across the Bay of Bengal, towards Thailand. This is the same sea across which I looked to India a few months ago. the Andaman Sea. The Andaman islands belong to India, for some reason, even though they are nearer to Thailand and Burma.

There was an amusing drinking fountain on the promenade in the shape of an adult dolphin with its child. As opposed to most towns in India, Pondy, or at least its French Quarter is a delight to stroll along. The pavements are in good repair, the roads are wide and the rickshaw wallahs are not quite as bad as they are in some other places. Much more than in Goa, you can have the impression of being in continental Europe.

Just past the Gandhi Statue there is a really nice cafe with a French name. Le Cafe. It does what it says on the can. It is housed in an interesting bulding that used to be a post office. Along the beach there are several palopas - the first I have seen since leaving Ao Luk.

As was the case in Goa, there are many cannons outside buildings here facing into the street. I noticed two outside the office of the Superintendent of Police. I think they're just for decorative purposes but it's a coincidence that I have only seen this in former French and Portuguese territories. There are also all women Police Stations. The police still wear those funny French hats called Kepis.

Pondicherry is famous for its large ashram - the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. This was founded by the eponymous Aurobindo Ghose who moved to the French territory of Pondicherry from his native Bengal because he was on the run from the British police for publishing allegedly seditious writings.

He gave up politics after his flight and at first the ashram was just a house where he and a few friends would meditate together. The taking off point came when he was joined by a remarkable person known as the Mother (not the one from the 1960s version of The Avengers). Her actual name was Mirra Alfassa but Sri Aurobindo called her the Mother and so did and does everyone else.

When you enter the Ashram (you have to take your shoes off first) you walk round a large pleasant courtyard. Men and women sit in shady nooks meditating. There were no Eurpeans that I could see. In the centre of the courtyard is a flower covered tomb, the Samadh, where Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are buried side by side. He died in 1950 (so he lived to see Independence) and she in 1973.

Next you walk into the buildings where one room is preserved as it was in the days when they both still lived and where there is an interesting bookshop. I later bought a book of the stories that the Mother told and it was interesting to have seen the room as it and its furniture are often referred to in her stories. I could see no religious symbols of Hinduism or of any other faith in the ashram.

A couple of streets away there is a craft shop belonging to the ashram where you can buy utensils of the sort used there and small gifts. There were hundreds and hundreds of pictures of the Sri Aurobindo and of the mother. The funny thing was that, especially with the later pictures, he looks the more European and she the more Indian of the two.

I walked up to the cathedral church of the Immaculate Conception. This looks beautiful from the outside - all pastel coloured and strangely cake like, like the churches in Trichy - but I thought the interior was narrow and cramped.

I went to the town's museum and had a feeling of deja vu (again!) on being told that it was closed due to a power cut - the same thing that had happened to me at Trichy's museum. However there was a happy ending this time because I went off and had a bite to eat and when I returned the power was back too.

The museum had a lot of beautiful bronze pieces but they weren't explained sufficiently for someone with my exiguous knowledge of Indian mythology and history to properly appreciate them. Having said that, most of the labelling was done in English with Tamil running second and French a poor third. Part of the problem is that the Tamils and other South Indians have their own names for the gods, so the familiar Ganesh becomes Vinayaga etc.

This museum was where I saw Governor Dupleix's chair. The chair was very big, I suppose to manifest his importance, but it gave me the impression that he must have been a big man. On the other hand, though, the bed was quite small. There was a very interesting gallery devoted to archaeology which showed the evidence of Romans trading with an Indian town located just to the south of modern day Pondy - Arikamedu.

The Sri Aurobindo Ashram is associated with a remarkable project - the town of Auroville, City of the Dawn. This is a city planned on the basis of co-operation between all people where, hopefully, people of all religions and races can mingle and live together and generate the next step in human evolution. An ideal township devoted to an experiment in human unity which could, ideally, be self supporting, environmentally sound, housing up to 50,000 inhabitants. This was a project originated by the Mother and, by an incredible coincidence, the four girders that support the emblematic Matrimandir that is the "soul" of the city were completed at thr exact moment her soul left her body.

Auroville is outside the city of Puducherry and mostly outside the National Territory too, in Tamil Nadu, though a small part does fall into Puducherry state. I went there in an auto. The journey was in parts so bumpy that I thought I might fall out. I think this was due in equal parts to the state of the auto and of the roads. I saw a few more cows along the roads as we went.

You realise you are getting close when you see that all the properties along the road now seem to have names like Hope and Harmony etc.

There's a lengthy procedure once you get to the township's Visitor Centre. First, you have to watch a video about the founding and purpose of Auroville and only then are you issued with a ticket, free of charge, permitting you to go to the Matrimandir Viewpoint. This is about a kilometre away, a pleasant walk through a newly planted wood - the land here was all scorched and barren when acquired by the ashram, and they have planted lots of trees. Before leaving the Visitor Centre though there are lots of shops and cafes to visit. The ice creams in the nearby kiosk are kept cool in a solar powered fridge.

On the way I was pleased to see a signpost indicating the direction to Certitude. It would be nice to be in that place, to know things for certain. I thought it migt just be a coincidence but it seems to be the name of one of the communes. To get there you have to go past Courage Gardens.

At the viewing point there was a good view of the Matrimandir. It's a slightly flattened dome covered in gold coloured discs. Inside this dome is a meditation hall known as the inner chamber which contains the largest optically-perfect glass globe in the world. The four main pillars that support the structure of the Matrimandir, and carry the Inner Chamber, are set at the four cardinal points of the compass and are each symbolic of one of the four aspects of the mother as described by Sri Aurobindo: Kali to the north, Ishwari to the south, Lakshmi to the east and Saraswati to the west. Also in the Matrimandir is an urn with soil from over a hundred different countries, left there at the opening ceremony.

I am attracted to the some of the ideas behind Auroville. Its charter is rather vague:

1) Auroville belongs to nobody in particular. Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole. But to live in Auroville, one must be a willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness.

2) Auroville should be a place of unending education, of constant progress, and of a youth that never ages.

3) Auroville should be a bridge between the past and the future. Taking advantage of all discoveries from without and from within, Auroville should boldly spring towards future realisations.

4) Auroville should be a site of material and spiritual research towards creating a living embodiment of actual Human Unity.

Fair enough.

The Mother expressed her hopes in slightly more detail:

There should be somewhere upon earth a place that no nation could claim as its sole property, a place where all human beings of goodwill, sincere in their aspiration, could live freely as citizens of the world, obeying one single authority, that of the supreme Truth; a place of peace, concord, harmony, where all the fighting instincts of man would be used exclusively to conquer the causes of his suffering and misery, to surmount his weakness and ignorance, to triumph over his limitations and incapacities; a place where the needs of the spirit and the care for progress would get precedence over the satisfaction of desires and passions, the seeking for pleasures and material enjoyments.

In this place, children would be able to grow and develop integrally without losing contact with their soul. Education would be given, not with a view to passing examinations and getting certificates and posts, but for

Policeman in French style hat

enriching the existing faculties and bringing forth new ones. In this place titles and positions would be supplanted by opportunities to serve and organize. The needs of the body will be provided for equally in the case of each and everyone. In the general organisation intellectual, moral and spiritual superiority will find expression not in the enhancement of the pleasures and powers of life but in the increase of duties and responsibilities.

Artistic beauty in all forms, painting, sculpture, music, literature, will be available equally to all, the opportunity to share in the joys they bring being limited solely by each one's capacities and not by social or financial position.

For in this ideal place money would be no more the sovereign lord. Individual merit will have a greater importance than the value due to material wealth and social position. Work would not be there as the means of gaining one's livelihood, it would be the means whereby to express oneself, develop one's capacities and possibilities, while doing at the same time service to the whole group, which on its side would provide for each one's subsistence and for the field of his work.

In brief, it

Immaculate Conception Cathedral

would be a place where the relations among human beings, usually based almost exclusively upon competition and strife, would be replaced by relations of emulation for doing better, for collaboration, relations of real brotherhood.

I like the idea that the community can be a spiritual one without following any particular religion but where followers of all religions are respected. But it seems to be slightly disappointing that after more than forty years, the population of Auroville is still under 2,000 compared to the optimum of 50,000. Its history is one of almost constant quarelling between its residents. And I wonder what the rate of churn is. How many new residents arrive each year and how many leave. I do think it would be an interesting place to stay in and experience at first hand, for a while.

The people from the local villages have, apparently, happily accepted the presence of an odd community largely made up of foreigners at Auroville. There is a legend that explains this. Several hundred years ago there was a religious ceremony attended by all the important local people, including a very religious yogi who had been living as a hermit for many years. In the course of the ceremony one of the temple dancers was filled with the spirit of the god and danced amazingly well . But as she made a sudden move her anklet fell from her foot and this put her off her stride. The Yogi, seeing this, bent down (he was in the front row, as befitted such a distinguished yogi) and picked the anklet up and put t back on her foot.

Every one laughed and mocked him because he, supposedly such a holy man, had toched the foot of a dancing girl.

But he said that they didn't understand. He had done it for the honour of Lord Shiva and he called on the god to make stone rain on the village and for the area to be cursed for ever if he was right.

At that the temple's lingam exploded and fragments of its stone rained down on the horrified congregation. They begged the holy man to lift the curse but he said it would only be lifted "when men come here from many foreign countries and they will lift the curse and irrigate the land".

So that is supposedly why the folks around here are so accepting of foreigners.

On my last day in Pondicherry, I wanted to visit Serenity Beach as the book says it's the nicest one around here (there's also a beach near Auroville). So I went to an auto driver and asked him if he could take me to Serenity Beach. He said he could, for 100 rupees, and then went off to the other auto wallahs to find out where it is. That sort of thing often happens. But in this case none of the others knew where it was, either. One came over and asked if I wanted Sarengam and I said no, Serenity Beach and spelled it for him. He wrote Saengam on his hand and showed it to me and I borrowed his biro and wrote Serenity on my hand and showed it to me.

At last the auto driver told me to get in and off we went. We drove for a few minutes and he stopped and asked a few people and then carired on again. Then he asked me to read a board across the street, hoping it would say "Serenity". But it didn't, it was a sign about the Tsunami rehabilitation fund. The Bxing Day tsunami struck the coast here as well, but was not so destructive or fatal as in Thailand.

So we drove on and he asked me to read another board, which was for a dental surgery. Eventually I thought we might as well go back, so I returned to my hotel without ever having seen Serenity beach. But it didn't really matter as I went down to the town beach instead and still had a nice time.

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Part of trip: Thailand, Cambodia and India .

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