Pondicherry Travelogues: Part I

Pondicherry Travelogues:

The air hostess smiled at me as I was doodling in the plane, she stole a sneek peak and asked me if I had made it. I told her I had. She said, it’s nice, like I was in Kindergarten and had somehow managed to fill my wax crayon colours within the outlines of a complex animal figure or something. The men’s loo was taken so on the plane, I went to the men’s loo. Didn’t close the door properly and it flew open when the plane jerked due to weather turbulence. I think the male stewards caught a glance, I believe they liked what they saw because they offered me an extra glass of lime juice. I think Jet Airways is the coolest airline ever because they offered the latest albums of some of my most favourite rock and roll, heavy metal bands- AC DC, Metallica, Guns N’ Roses. They also had albums from two of my most favourite pop music icons- Michael Jackson, Madonna. It’s son exhilarating to be in a strange city, a city that I have never been to. As soon as the plane landed, I was filled with so much joy and anticipation, I have never smelled this city, I have never seen this city. I have never met the people of this city and I have never heard the city speak its language. Travelling makes me feel special because I know that I can enjoy places in an elevated sensory way, as the others plod along with their baggage and their mobile phones and themselves, as they make a thousand calls, get everything in order, they are missing something important. Thank god, I don’t have a cell phone. If I wanted to I could let myself loose in this city, I could lose myself in this city and no one would ever know where I was, no one would ever find me out, unless of course, if I wanted to let them know where I was. These people with their mobile phones, they should revel in the fact that they have made a transition from one city to another, one country to another, one continent to another, it is reason enough for happiness. Our forefathers, the people who created us, they couldn’t traverse such long distances in such a short time- this means we save time, which means we have more time on our hands to travel to places we haven’t smelled or seen before. We have been given this wonderful blessing, this unique privilege, shouldn’t we just take a moment out of our sad lives to admire everything in the moment. I am proud that I have made this transition on my own, with a little bit of help from my friends, of course. There are people in the world who won’t come to this city, they won’t know it as I will.

I can’t, I just can’t contain myself. Imagine, I have just crossed 1,329 kilometres from Mumbai to be in this city, right now, just a few hours before I was in Mumbai and now I am in Chennai.

I am the first one to arrive, I wait by the sidelines for my friends as I watch waves of weary faces walk by with huge overstuffed bags and every single one is carrying a carton, a giant cardboard box filled with who-knows-what. It’s a total mystery to me. I want to grab hold of them and ask them what’s in it. What are all these people bringing into the city in such quantities, what is this humongous object that this city does not provide to its people. In Bombay, the people going in and coming out of the airport have such little baggage, a backpack or a small, corporate-looking suitcase, it is de rigueur. What does this mean? That people in Bombay have everything and they won’t ever find anything in other cities that they won’t find in theirs. But, I guess, it also means that they are unwilling to share their largesse, their bounty. These guys have the stuff wrapped in some sort of a fluorescent green polyvinyl rope thing, are they afraid of their bags popping open and revealing some top secret content? I am stupefied, I am mystified. I want to know.

Quite cosmopolitan, Chennai is a veritable melting pot, has a sizeable Muslim population, but in the entire trip, I have just seen one mosque, I have seen many churches, many cathedrals, many multi-coloured, multi-layered typical temples of the south, but there was just one mosque and they can’t all go there. All men have moustaches and are armed with a withering, strict, military glance that they use to get through the day. You feel like they are getting ready to start a riot or contain a riot. It’s getting late, S.S and P.S are still not here. I try calling them many times from an Airtel booth outside the airport but I can’t get through to them. Then, I relax. I realize that if they want to find me, they will find me. A security guard asks me what I am up to, I tell him I am jotting down my thoughts on paper, he gives me a smirk, I think he thought I was copying the architectural plans of the airport or writing down the details of the security arrangement or something, maybe I do look like I am part of a devious terrorist outfit. Met S.S, apparently she has been at the airport for quite some time, turning it upside down, looking for me. She is the responsible one, she has planned and organized everything, the trip has manifested itself into a reality because of her. Anyway, so S.S and I went to this food stall at the airport called Sangeeta because we are always perennially hungry. We had some very average idlis and medu vadas, the sambar was depressing considering we were at the point of origin of all these beautiful, delicious things. However, the onion masala chutney was finger-licking good. In fact, S.S and I joked that the standard of the South Indian fare was at par with any North Indian joint serving the food of the south. Nonetheless, we had to wait for P.S who has missed her flight and was taking quite some time to reach. We found Muthu, the driver in charge of the white Indica that would take us to our final destination, Pondicherry. He is called Muthu, that’s his name, that is what he has been called his entire life, his parents thought it perfectly plausible to name him thus, no one bats an eyelid. There must be other Muthus like him in the city who like him have also gone thorough their entire lives being called that. I find this hilarious, but I guess, no one else does. Anyway, this Muthu, he looks threatening, but I think he is the most placid, content creature I have ever met. He waits for us as we wait for P.S to show up, she is almost 3 hours late. S.S and I sit in shade, we watch misplaced firagis showering each other with profuse hugs and kisses, they probably think its love, they probably cling to each other in the hope that they have found their anchor in the wiles of this world. I know they haven’t. It’s all transient, temporary. Everything.

But this city, this city doesn’t feel temporary at all. I can feel the tangible weight of its history bearing down on me, begging me to take a look. I wanted to see much more of Chennai, but it was not in the plan. Chennai is ancient, I get the feeling that it is trying to cope with the present, trying to bring the future nearer to itself, but it would rather just go back to the past. This is the similarity with Kolkata. That’s why this city calls out to me although Kolkata has lost me forever. The difference is that Kolkata is more proactive in digging tunnels back to the dark ages, this city is limping towards progress and growth and development and all those terrible things that signify Bombay. Kolkata is so busy sabotaging its present, it has no time to think except in terms of outdated communist principles that have been scooped out, laid out bare and hollow, to dry in the sun. Chennai is a thinking city. It’s a philosophical city. I like it, I like it. This city is endeavouring to build taller cement structures, it is trying to build flyovers, a functional metro rail, better infrastructure, I can tell this city’s heart is not really into it.

I think I want to call the Pondicherry trip ‘Three Cities’ because S.S came from Kolkata, P.S is coming from Delhi and I came from Mumbai. S.S starts about Kolkata, how inefficiency is so endemic in its archaic systems, how there is no way one catch a flight on time, how long queues are everywhere and nobody has any solutions to offer. Because, Kolkata doesn’t look for solutions, it looks only for the problems, the issues, the questions. In a way, I used to like that about the city.

The thing I love about being a strange city where I am the stranger is that I can be anyone, I can leave myself behind, I am very boring, after all, and I can assume the identity of whomever it is that I want to be. I can be fun, I can be adventurous, I can be a risk-taker, I can be an extrovert and I can be user-friendly. Travelling is therapeutic, I may be hurt, I may be dying, but I will come alive if I travel, I will repair myself and become whole again, if I travel.

Chennai is not pretentious, it’s counted amongst the top four great cities of India, but it’s very secure, it doesn’t feel the need to constantly prove itself, like Bombay does. In spite of the blinding lack of tall buildings, the main roads are spacious, sizeable in terms of width. It is only in the smaller sub-roads that dirt and dust fly around, I am guessing in the heat of summers, in the humidity, these areas could get oppressive. Chennai loves wall art, all its walls are covered with these indecipherable circular symbols that make up its script, they could pass for Hebrew but the curves are so fastidiously curvy, you would think somebody forgot to complete the circle. It’s an intriguing font they use, the colours are equally enchanting, I want to know what the walls say. I am sure they are not selling mundane things like soaps and cement and iron rods. I am sure they are quotes of some of the great Tamilian thinkers and philosophers whose names I do not know.

When this written language is translated into the spoken word, it sounds aggressive and it smoulders with a kind of raunchiness, a passionate, sublime version of raunchy, of course. We meet P.S, pleasantries are exchanged, she says I look the same, she says we will all keep looking the same till we get married. We get started on the car journey, it is going to be 3 hours long, sort of like the drive from Mumbai to Pune. I have gotten tired of the drive from Mumbai to Pune on the expressway. I have done it so many times, I can now predict with alarming accuracy the hoardings that will pass by, the colour of the buildings approaching, every crack, every bend, every sharp turn in the road. Even the mountains and the tunnels through the mountains that used to interest me so much hold no interest for me anymore. We decide to take the ECR, the East Coast Road, a scenic route to Pondicherry. All along the journey, we turn up the radio and listen to local FM stations, we jump up and nod at each other when we recognize a song that has been stolen/ borrowed by Bollywood.

There are lots of water bodies along the road, the traffic is light, we cruise along gaping at the greenery surrounding us as we leave Chennai and move towards the rural areas. The roads are like the posh, tree-lined avenues of Kolkata. I even see ‘Kash Phool’. This reminds of the ‘Pujos’ in Kolkata, ‘Kash Phool’ along with ‘Dhak’, they constitute this ubiquitous representation of the impending ‘Pujo’ season. Am I missing it? This cannot be. And then another reminder, a Tagore Institute of Engineering rushes by, there’s also a Tagore Medical College and a Tagore Dental College. It’s too much for me bear. Also, Ambassadors, fat, burly Ambassadors, the cars that every city in India has moved past, except Kolkata, I see them in Chennai. I will not spend these valuable moments reminiscing of a city I left long back. I see submerged farmlands with green dots, sprigs of new rice saplings that have been planted recently. I tell S.S that I would make a good farmer, I come from a long line of farmers, there was a time in my childhood when I could tell between the different varieties of rice and I knew the crop cycles, I knew all the little farming tricks and techniques. I don’t remember most of it but I can still tell just by looking, in how long a rice field will ripen, what kind of yield it will be. I know what to do to make sure your crops don’t fester and die, although there is no guarantee for anything, I know how to deal with different kinds of pests, I know. All along the road, I kept telling S.S about these things and she was surprised, I was surprised, I could still recall so much. Must be in my blood or something.

Along the road, sharp, green shrubs with thin, pointed leaves rise up in the air, I want to know what they are called. On the ECR, wherever you look, on both sides, the ocean is never-ending. It is flanks us, it follows us, it will probably do so till we reach our destination and beyond. That obsession with the roots, with the rudimentary, with the absolutely essential, it continues on the road to Pondicherry, the buildings are spare, no-nonsense structures, they look sturdy and that’s about it, they serve no decorative purpose. A majority of these buildings are colleges, Tamil Nadu will not tolerate illiteracy, education of its youth is of primal urgency. I don’t think rural Chennai is like the rural areas of Bengal and Orissa, with mud huts and thatched roofs. It’s getting hotter in the car, we are forced to resort to the air-conditioner as the air coming in through the windows is also hot.

With P.S and S.S around, a social, political, geographical, economical, biological, philosophical discussion is never far behind. P.S and I discovered we have something in common. We are morbid people. For instance, when we are on a plane, we think what would happen if the engine caught fire, there was no time for evacuation and the plane took a tailspin into the Arabian Sea. When we cross the road, we begin the countdown to when we would be hit by the ten-tonne garbage truck rapidly progressing towards us. When we are travelling behind a truck packed with iron girders, we think what if the flimsy ropes tying them together came loose and the girders pierced the windshield and went straight through our skulls. You get the picture.

The vegetation around the area is diametrically opposite- the tall trees remind me of the Fir and Pine trees in Canada and other colder regions of the world I have been to, the palm trees and the coconut trees dotting the landscape remind me of the hotter regions I have been to, the deserts of the Middle East. The ocean, the ocean. It is outside me. It is inside me. I hear its sounds. I talk to it. I have always had a connection with oceans, I remember a particular occasion when I stared at the waters of the ocean for the longest time, at Puri and tears came out of my eyes. It had nothing to do with happiness or sadness or any other emotion. Something to do with a state of being, a neutral state of being, like a tree, a frog, a stone, a lizard. We are all the same, anyway.

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Swati.