Pondicherry, ma cheri

Pondicherry is a former French colony, and has a distinct French flavor that is lacking in the rest of India. We stayed in the “Ville Blanche” or white town, which is where the French colonials lived. While the “Ville Noir” area of town has a similar look and feel as much of India, the “Ville Blanche” has wide tree-lined boulevards, with French names and locals who still say Bonjour instead of hello. Since we had just arrived from Tamil Nadu, where we ate nothing but thali, the smell of fresh baguettes was a god send. We spent much of the first day lounging in a boulangerie, where we found Wi-Fi and real cappuccino to compliment the chocolate cake. We caught up on e-mails and internet, and planned the next few stops on our journey. At the end of the day, we went exploring in the “Ville Noir. “ We walked the streets, searching for a place to rent some scooters. We went from shop to shop, comparison shopping, and occasionally getting swept up in the impromptu parades that appear in front of the many Hindu temples. We finally found what we were looking for, but realized that we wouldn’t be able to find our way back home, so we hopped in a rickshaw and went back to our hotel for a nightcap and a good night’s sleep.
Our second morning in Pondicherry, I woke up early to get my haircut at the local salon (a bargain at $1.50 including tip), while Leon and Rachel went to pick up two rental scooters. We had plans to leave Pondicherry and visit the settlement of Auroville, located 8 km north of town. Leon had driven a scooter before, but never in the city, and Rachel and I were both a little afraid of learning to drive in such heavy traffic. We decided that Rachel would drive one scooter, and I would ride on the back of Leon’s scooter switching places half way through the day. We tried to look for the roads with the least traffic, giving Rachel time to adjust to a new style of driving, but before long we found ourselves at a major intersection. She handled the traffic well, and we made it safely to the Auroville welcome center.
Auroville is this sort of experimental living community, founded by a French woman named “The Mother” and based on the teachings of Swami Sri Aribindo. It is supposed to be a place where people from all races, creeds, and backgrounds can live and learn together in harmony, in hope of creating a perfect society. I was more than a little skeptical, and was counting on the welcome center to provide some answers. It didn’t. They showed a short video that didn’t give any more information than our guide book. Frustrated, we went to one of the settlements where our friend Chelsea was staying. We were eager to see her, and we thought that since she had been there for a few days that she might be able to provide us with some answers to our questions. We missed Chelsea, but talked to some of the other people staying at her camp. From what I can tell, Auroville is mostly foreign travelers, not locals. They stay for cheap, and work on various projects throughout the community of Auroville. The project that Chelsea was working on was a reforestation project. They have very little contact with the local community, and to me it seemed like people were looking more for an escape from the real world than for a way to change it. We couldn’t find Chelsea, and we wanted to get home before dark, so we got back on the scooters and headed south.
Rachel was driving the scooter again for the ride home, and I was riding as Leon’s passenger. We had switched places after visiting the welcome center, thinking that the peaceful roads in Auroville would provide a good place to learn. Right as I was getting the hang of things, a huge truck came roaring towards my. Though technically the road is not one way, there wasn’t room for the both of us on that road, and the truck’s blaring horn made it clear he wasn’t planning on stopping. I swerved off the road into a puddle of mud, lost my balance, and nearly took out the old Indian women who rushed over to help me. After that I was too shaky to keep driving, so I handed the scooter back to Rachel and continued as Leon’s passenger. On the way home, we had to take the highway, which was a frightening experience. I just closed my eyes and kept listening for the scream of a crash. Amazingly, we made it into the city and through rush hour traffic in one piece.
Thinking out motorbike adventure was over, we got a good night’s rest in our hotel, and the next morning we went down to return the bikes, only to discover that one of the bikes had been stolen! We checked with the hotel to see if they had seen anything suspicious. They hadn’t, so Leon and Rachel rode the remaining scooter back to the rental agency and told the owner about the theft. They told him that they would go with him to the police station to file a report of the theft. After several wasted hours at the station, they returned home. The owner of the scooters was extremely upset. He had no insurance on the vehicles, and was expecting us to reimburse him for the cost of a new bike! We refused, and said that we would pay for our rental, and offer him a small amount for his time and trouble, but that we would not pay for a new bike. He kept insisting that we were rich Americans who could surely afford a new bike, whereas he was a struggling business man and this loss would surely break him. He threatened to call the police if we didn’t give him money, which of course we had no objection to. We knew that the threat was empty, and once he knew that we knew this, he stopped making threats, but refused to leave our hotel. Finally, the hotel managers came out and repeated the previous offer that we had made. He finally left, but he wasn’t happy. Not the best way to end our visit in an otherwise beautiful city.