France give it a rest, the days of the empire are over and to be honest yours was always a little small – Pondicherry

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India must have more adverts per square mile than any other country in the world, certainly more than any country I have visited anyway. Indian towns are filled to the brim (and often well over the brim) with a sensory overloading array of billboards, posters and signs, you will often even find advertising painted on the side of peoples homes. Every centimetre of space seems to have been claimed by advertising, nothing but nothing is sacred. One of the things that has most surprised me is the amount of advertising that is dedicated to cement. Cement is perhaps the most heavily marketed product in India, I would even hazard a guess that there are more adverts for cement than there are for mobile phones, Bollywood films and soft drinks combined. There are countless cement brands and you will find adverts for them in every town, village, wall in the middle of nowhere and also continuously on radio and TV. I have even noticed a few programs on Indian television are sponsored by cement manufacturers! This plethora of cement advertising struck me as strange initially but I guess it’s not that strange when you consider that India is a country which is advancing/growing rapidly and a country where most construction is generally done by the property owners i.e families build their own homes. The only type of advertising that is more numerous than cement advertising is political advertising, which is so abundant in quantity it is both disturbing and laughable. You literally cannot drive more than 20 metres in any town big or small without seeing some form of political advert, often the same one you saw a few metres down the road. The sight of a (usually ugly) politicians giant face looking down at you can feel a bit Big Brother-esque at times, surely advertising in such quantities is not only a wasteful use of resources but also bordering on propaganda. I’m sure Goebbels would approve.

Sorry got a bit side tracked there, back to the case in hand.

Pondicherry was the governing and administrative centre for the handful of tiny colonies France used to control in India, the town is now famous for its Gallic influence which is visible in the towns design, it’s architecture and customs. Despite not belonging to France these days, (control was relinquished in 1954, Rough Guide, 2011) the French still keep a high commission here as well as various government buildings connected to for example trade. It all feels a bit like the French are trying desperately to hold on to some remnants of past glory, but now have nothing more than the tips of their fingers on the prize. Give it a rest France, the days of empire are long gone.

Pondicherry is a relatively pretty, if not a little dull town. The first few blocks by the seafront contain some nice looking French colonial style buildings and the streets in this section are noticeably less chaotic and chocked with traffic than the blocks that follow behind (which are just like any Indian town i.e complete madness). There is little to do in Pondicherry but it is a pleasant enough place to wander for a few hours. We were all however very excited about the opportunity to eat an actual beef steak, beef is a very rare commodity in largely Hindu India but the French influence in Pondicherry means that cow is very much on the menu here. No I can thank the French for something other than Daft Punk! Peter and myself visited supposedly the best restaurant in town, Le Club, to try the towns ‘legendary’ French cuisine. I had a sirloin steak with a blue cheese sauce, I asked for my steak rare and it came out blue (how very French), fortunately I don’t mind my steak raw. The sauce was a little salty and thick but still worked well with the steak, the fries that came with the steak were fantastic, really fantastic in fact, the side salad was limp and fairly pointless. Overall I enjoyed my meal but was a bit underwhelmed considering the restaurant was supposedly the best in town and the cost of the food here was dramatically higher than the other restaurants in town.

Other than being famous for being a French enclave Pondicherry is also famous for the Auroville Ashram, which is actually based 12km outside of town. The ashram is actually more like a commune where people from all over the world come to live life an ‘alternative’ self sustaining life style (and smoke lots of pot). I didn’t actually get the chance to visit Auroville as you have to book in advance which I didn’t realise beforehand, it’s a real shame I couldn’t go as I’m sure it would have been a fascinating experience. There are however signs of Auroville all over Pondicherry, for example most of the people wondering the streets look like they are Auroville hardcore meditators (and Auroville hardcore pot smokers) and many of the hotels/hostels/shops in the city are owned by Auroville and staffed by Auroville devotees. I would love to visit an Ashram one day to see how I found it, I suspect I wouldn’t get on with it very well and would probably get really bored but still I would like to give it a go one day.

We left Pondicherry the following day and headed to our next destination Mamallapuram. Supposedly most people visit Mamallapuram to see its famous temples, especially the shore temple which is built close to the sea and as such has been weathered and smoothed in a unique way by the salty sea air. For us cultural neanderthals however the main attraction was the beach, restaurants with WIFI and for the girls (stereotypical but true) the touristy clothes, jewellery and curios shops. The temple was ok, but it was so hot when we visited that none of us wanted to spend much time there. The beach, which I would describe as fairly average, was littered with signs of the local fishing industry (boats, nets etc) and was backed by scruffy palms, grass and restaurants. While it was not the prettiest beach, it was still a beach and we were pleased to be by the coast again, especially as we had anticipated the beach in Mamallapuram would be an open human toilet rather than something usable. I started my day by indulging in a rather large Thali lunch which was pretty good but not outstanding, I then spent the rest of my time exploring the town, frolicking in the sea and even doing a little bit of shopping, well trying to do shopping, but in reality failing miserably. Apparently the traders of Mamallapuram only sell really awful Peter Panesque trousers in colours that would make even a blind man cry.

The real big event for the group in Mamallapuram however was the farewell party we would hold in the evening for those that would sadly by leaving the tour tomorrow. Unfortunately it was not to be a night of good food or quick service for that matter either. Things started off badly when the waiter tried to sell us fresh fish at quadruple the rate we had paid in Varkala and at a price which would have even seemed a dear at home. In the end we didn’t buy any fresh fish as the waiter would not reduce the prices below a ludicrously inflated rate, it was a foolish strategy on the restaurants behalf as we are a group of 20 and would have purchased a lot of fish if the price was right. Following this incident I was a little annoyed and apprehensive about what was to come but not to the point of serious concern, at this point they still in mind had plenty of time to come good, the food will probably be great I told myself. I decided I would order the seafood platter which at 450rps (5.50 gbp) was comparatively expensive but with a line up of grilled fish, prawns and calamari served alongside vegetable fried rice I thought it would be worth the higher than usual outlay, especially as tonight was a special occasion. After placing my order I went downstairs to give the parents a call using my newly acquired telephone credit. It was really great talking to Mum and Dad, for various reasons it had been difficult to phone home prior to this point so it was really nice to finally be able to have a long chat and hear the news from home. After a 45 min chat to the parents I returned to the restaurant to find that no food and only a few drinks had been served, half of us were still missing our beers, how hard can it be to open a few beers? What on earth had they been doing for 45 mins? This was starting to become ridiculous and I was starting to get seriously hangry (hangry = when you get angry because you are so hungry, thanks for this one Jenny). Apparently the restaurant had run out of cold beer despite Jenny (tour leader) warning them earlier in the day that 20 of us would be coming in and wanting plenty of drinks. I did eventually get a semi cold beer (I’m still not sure where it came from) and my seafood platter after well over an hour’s wait and after some people had already eaten their whole meal. When my plate arrived I felt close to tears, what was this plate of misery and despair doing in front of my eager eyes, surely this could not be mine? Very quickly my despair turned to anger, I had hit boiling point and began to physically shake with rage. Never before has the gap between expectation and reality been starker, I had been sold a deluxe BBQ fishy dream and had been served a diabolical monstrosity a sewer rat would steer clear of. On my plate were 3 badly burnt prawns that tasted of carbon and two pathetic and sad looking tiny fish which looked and smelt like they were probably already past their best in the Jurassic period. I did foolishly try a nibble of the fish and as expected it was truly rancid. My calamari and vegetable rice had obviously been so embarrassed by the state of the prawns and fish that they decided not to show up at all, can’t say I blame them. I’m not a massive fan of complaining in restaurants and typically take the British view that it’s best to smile and pretend everything was great, don’t want to cause a scene now do you. However occasionally something annoys me so much that I have no choice but to make a formal complaint, tonight was justifiably one such occasion. I called the waiter over and pointed out the missing items (calamari and vegetable rice), the hideously black carbonised prawns and above all the dangerously gone off fish. In my most forceful and serious voice I told the waiter that I wouldn’t be paying for my meal and wouldn’t be having any of his funny business telling me otherwise. I did offer however to pay 100 RPS for the prawns as I had eaten them by this point, they were disgusting but I was bloody hungry. The waiter of course didn’t agree at first but I wasn’t going to be overruled, this food was not only terrible but also potentially dangerous. I can feel the rage building up inside me just remembering the experience! In the end they agreed to only charge 100 rps, which was still too much really. I didn’t order anything else as I wasn’t convinced the kitchen could prepare it in less than 5 months and even then who knows what I would actually get, maybe a putrefied rat curry? Sonia did however very kindly share her Chicken Tikka curry and rice with me so I did at least have something to line my stomach. Sounds like the night from hell right? Especially when you consider it wasn’t just me who had a bad food experience. However, for some reason halfway through the night the beer, wine and thus good times started flowing. One of the waiters bought round 2 bottles of just about drinkable local rum which he shared with us, encouraging us all to do shots that were so large they made you gag a little. We had forgotten about the dreadful food and prior terrible service and were now very much having a great time. I have come across a few instances in India where an establishment is very much better at being a bar than a restaurant, this was certainly one such case, as was Rock and Roll in Varkala. So after a very unpromising start things dramatically improved and we all ended up having a really cracking night. It was in the end a fantastic farewell party for a fantastic group of people who really did deserve a good send off.

It was a late night in the end, some of us headed off to bed at the rather unsociable hour of 03.00am, tomorrows early start would be a challenge. Maybe that last kingfisher strong wasn’t such a good idea........

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Photos

Seafront at Pondicherry
This is a photo from google and not my own, I forgot to take photos here!

The protein shop!
As you can tell by my minimal and rubbish photos there was not much to see in Pondicherry!

Mamallapuram beach
This is a photo from google and not my own, I forgot to take photos here!

Shore Temple - Mamallapuram
This is a photo from google and not my own, I forgot to take photos here!

Comments

[sonz]

You make me laugh:)
I seemed to have missed reading this particular blog! The paragraph about your awful dinner made me laugh soooo hard! hahaha! I love your description of the event...I wish Orna could read it in her "blog" voice! Anyways, I was really proud of you that night when you stood up to that waiter:) And I love that I was mentioned in your blog! Miss ya xx