A Day in Pondicherry

Pondicherry, now known as Puducherry and formerly known as Pondicheri was the seat of the French imperial ambitions in India. It’s known for beautiful old colonial buildings, cuisine, being one of the few places in Tamil Nadu where you can buy a drink, and subsequently, for being a tourist haven. I came to Pondicherry to get away from the haze of Chennai and to try relaxing. And right now, drinking Indian malt liquor in the dimly lit, seedy Court of Bacchus at Annamalai Hotel, things are good, if not a little bizarre. I am drinking from a bottle claiming to contain “India’s largest selling beer” in a bar full of chattering, smoking Tamils who seem like they can’t hold their booze.

The road here is long but beautiful. Between the outskirts of Puducherry and Mahaballapuram, flat plains covered in wide, blue rivers and shining palm trees stretch for miles. Rice paddies host statuesque egrets that hunt between the rows of green shoots. This time of year, you see farmers working muddy fields with water buffalo whose horns have just been decorated for Pongal. The Bay of Bengal appears on your left as you near Pondicherry and the ECR moves closer to the coast.

While Pondicherry is by no means completely tranquil, you can walk the streets without being engulfed in honking torrents of motorcycles, auto-rickshaws, and bicycles. You can also walk largely without fear of stepping in excrement, be it human or otherwise. The French quarter streets are clean, garbage is collected, and sidewalks are swept every morning. It’s a step up from the status quo of Chennai.

Walking from the rooftop cafe where I had dinner, a small herd of water buffalo meanders aimlessly through the intersections of busy streets and bats dart around the lamplights, their wings transparent in the sodium vapor illumination.



Spending a day amongst the neoclassical and art deco colonial buildings, it’s easy to romanticize the legacy of the European empires. The picture you get of a peaceful community is disembodied from the probable brutality of the people who created it. But living in Madras, one of the British Empire’s largest outposts, you have to wonder how Pondicherry and Chennai came to be so different. While Puducherry is far smaller than Chennai, the colonial buildings here are largely intact. The beautiful Indo-saracenic and neoclassical buildings of Chennai are crumbling, even as they remain in use. The offices of the University of Madras are covered in dust, trees sprout between the red brinks of The High Court near Parry’s corner, and parts of the gorgeous Government museum are condemned. Perhaps there is a difference in relative revenue for the two cities, or maybe there is just a difference in attitude toward the colonial past.