Tamil Nadu - southeast India

I met a British couple in the Backwaters who were heading to Ponticherry. I didn’t have any particular plans and they asked me if I wanted to come. So I went.

They had lived in Delhi several years ago and had traveled extensively in India and were much more experienced than me on getting around. We took an overnight train on New Year’s Eve to a town called Trichy. New Years was more or less a non-event other than people saying “Happy New Years”. No raucous parties on the train to write home about. I’d never been on a sleeper train before. It wasn’t bad, but not the best night’s sleep either. I was lying in my bunk and could feel the train going up and down the hills and around the bends and stopping at each of the 19 stations. The interesting thing about traveling through the interior southern part of India was that there were really no westerners. There were many, many Indian pilgrims going to the various temples, but not a lot of tourists.

We only stayed in Trichy for a few hours to see two of the landmark temples - it was 473 steps up at the top of a rock. It was one of the festivals we managed to hit, which was an accident as far as I know. The temples in southern India, in Trichy and Chidambaram, are different from any I’ve seen in other places. The architechture is called Dravidian, but they were built under several different dynasties. They are like pyramids with colorful, almost comical figures of gods carved on the outside. I assume they are repainted fairly frequently because they are very vibrant. The temples complexes are surrounded by walls and courtyards where people assembly. In Trichy, the temple had seven surrounding walls and courtyards, but non-Hindus were only allowed into the first six. We also managed to hit a festival – the chariot festival, at Chidambaram. There were literally tens of thousands of Indians visiting the temple while we were there.

At the entrance to the temple complex in each city, there is a temple elephant - of course. If you hold out a rupee, the elephant will take it out of your hand with its trunk and then will bless you by tapping your head with its trunk. I decided to pass for now because the elephants, even when painted for decoration, are still really big and a little scary. Also, although its silly, I felt like I didn’t want to get to close to it with bare feet (you have to walk around all the temples barefoot), as if my shoes would have helped if the elephant stepped on me.

After Trichy, we took a one-hour trip to Tangore. Tangore was another town which had virtually no other tourists. We saw a few in our hotel, but when you went to the sites, there were masses of Indians visiting, coming to pray, but very few westerners. The temple at Tangore is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was different from the earlier ones because it was not painted, but the carvings were stunning and something about the shape of the temple made it a little mesmerizing.

There seemed to be less poverty in the southern parts of India. Although I guess it should have been obvious, there is more water and regardless of all other circumstances, they can grow food. The cities were still dirty, and lacked basic sanitation, but I didn’t see anything which seemed as desperate as in the north.

On day four, we drove to Pondicherry. Until 1954, Pondy was a French colony – and it shows. The second language (or first) of many of the residents is still French and there are more French tourists than from any other country. It has more (western) culture than any other city I’ve been in in the south. Maybe its even a little chic -- they serve coissants instead of wonder-like bread and they use plates and silverware instead of banana leaves. It’s also the cleanest city I’ve been in. Pondy is located on the Bay of Bengal so it has a beautiful view of the water, but the beach is not really for swimming because it has big boulders you have to climb over to get to the sea. The boulders were said to have protected it from significant damage during the tsunami. I did actually climb down one day and put my feet in just so I could say I'd touched the Indian Ocean (then I found out it was the Bay of Bengal). It feels like a combination of a beach town, a hippy hang out, a very proper colony, and a touch of the architecture of New Orleans (although not the jazz music or craziness).

While here, we visited the Sri Aurobindo ashram. When I say visited, I mean, had a tour, but did not stay at the ashram. The couple I was traveling with had a friend involved in the ashram and one of the directors gave us a tour. The founder and his second in command, known as “The Mother” wanted to create a place to facilitate all people of all religious beliefs to meditate and find inner harmony. There are 1200 members who live in the city and exist for the most part on a barter system, offering whatever services they can, whether it be dishwasher or professor. I’m a little bit of a skeptic though. The group owns a tremendous amount of property and has an associated society with members from around the globe, but I think they tend to target big donors. One interesting tidbit of information -- I always assumed "sitting Indian-style" came from American Indians, but after visiting the ashram, and someone asking me where I learned to sit like that, I'm pretty sure its from India. I answered "kindergarden."

The Mother also started a Utopian community called Auroville about 15 km outside of Pondy. Its purpose is to broaden the ashram's goal to help a community find universal harmony. I visited it for a day. Unlike the ashram, they were more open about their challenges. Their goal is to create a society which does not use money and appreciates all members of society. Its especially interesting to try to create this in a country where castes are still an important social status issue. They admit they have not succeeded and that to live there you need to have support from outside family or other funds. However, the tour was very sanitized and there was little opportunity to interact with people from the community except as shopkeepers selling the community members crafts. I wanted to know why they felt were the biggest issues. Did people get along? Was it really a model for the world if you start with people who self select themselves in the community? Why couldn't they do away with money? Would people not do the work they needed to? Did they attract loafers? Regardless, for the people living there, I'm sure it was a very nice way of life. I couldn't help comparing it to a kibbutz, but the community was diverse and seemed to have a lot of communal process, rather than focusing on survival. The picture is of the groups meditation center.

We also went on a tour given by a group called INTEC which has branches in 15 Indian cities which tries to preserve and restore the buildings and historical character of the cities. However, unlike zoning laws or historical sites in the US, there is little-to-no interest or legislative support to aid in their efforts. This is understandable in a country with 30% of the people living below the poverty line. And what little government focus there is goes to preserving and restoring temples and monuments. That said, there are still amazing architectures which are not being preserved.

The group in Pondy seems to be having an impact. They have identified roughly a thousand buildings they want to preserve and although they have no authority have pushed themselves into the building permit process, where they at least now get to try to influence the owner before an old building is knocked down or renovated. And their efforts are having an impact on tourism, so building owners are beginning to take notice.

They are also responsible for starting trash collection in Pondy which I view as perhaps their greatest contribution. I was thinking about one of my urban studies professors who was involved in a project called "the center city district" in Philly. The group was a non-governmental organization which collected money from businesses to privately clean the streets. The philosophy was that people would litter less if the streets were clean. When I asked the director of INTEC about it, he said he thought the Indians just assumed that now someone would clean up after them. It would be interesting to see if it would work in other Indian cities, but again, in a country without a lot of very basic services and a lot of needs, its not a high priority.

The final event of note in Pondy was the International Yoga Convention which had very few non-Indian participants. The main event was a yoga competition, scored in a similar manner to gymnastics. I saw the 10-12 year old category. It was pretty amazing what they could do, but just the same, "competitive yoga" seems to defeat the purpose. Next they'll want to make it an olympic sport.

Tomorrow I'm heading back to the west coast to go hiking in one of the national parks. I'll write more when I get back. Happy New Year and I'll see you when I return (now scheduled for January 27th.