Le dernier weekend, j’ai voyagé à Pondicherry, une ancienne colonie française se trouvée au côte est de l’Inde du Sud, avec mes amis, trois qui viennent de l’Allemagne et un de la France elle-même. À Pondicherry, il y a des choses vraiment françaises comme les boulangeries, les gendarmes portant des chapeaux rouges, et les francophones indiens. Mon dieu!
As difficult as it was to compose the above few phrases, speaking was even more of a challenge. Though English is probably still the second most important language in Pondicherry after Tamil, I brushed off my French to order a croissant at the bakery, and at our hotel, I declined the services of the maid in la belle langue, saying we were “au moment, indisponible.” My inability to speak the one language other than English that I have studied was disappointing to me and a little embarrassing in light of the multilingual mastery on display in India, but c’est la vie. My weak excuse is that I didn’t grow up in an environment where it was necessary or easy to learn a second language.
What was Pondicherry other than a pleasant linguistic experience? The simple answer: a culinary one. Wherever French is spoken, French food is eaten, and my, how good even bad French food tastes after eating almost exclusively Indian food for four weeks straight. The crêpe complète and the pain au chocolat were not exactly up to Parisian standards, but I wasn’t complaining. Taking advantage of the French taste for flesh, my friends and I, like primitive hunters on the savanna, went in search of pâté, saucisson, and bouef. The first restaurant we patronized had not received their daily shipment of beef, so after finishing our appetizers, we paid the bill and departed for greener pastures (the pastures were decidedly less green from the perspective of the cow). I don’t consider myself a great carnivore, but I truly relished that steak.
My friends and I traveled to Pondicherry on the night train, leaving Friday night after work and arriving Saturday morning. To explore the city, we rented some bicycles, and without much of a preconceived plan, meandered through the town. We saw the French consulate, the Alliance Française, and the Lycée Français, but if we had been expecting to find a little piece of France in India, we would have been sorely disappointed because Pondicherry is definitely still India (with a faint French accent and a higher concentration of foreign, yuppie enlightenment seekers).
In some sense, traveling through India is an attempt to find a different or new “India” that one hasn’t yet seen, if not an attempt escape “India” altogether. Pondicherry, especially, held this promise, but it seems that India is “India” wherever you go, and it is pointless to look for something else. In my experience, no matter the region, the language, or the local customs, there is some fundamental Indian character that unifies this vast and diverse country. Defining that character is both difficult and dangerous, but suffice it to say, it is easily and fondly recognizable.
On our second day in Pondicherry, we rented a few two-wheelers to make the journey to Auroville, a sort of utopian community located 9 km up the coast. Auroville was founded in 1968 by a mythic French woman known as La Mère who envisioned a settlement bringing together people from every country in the world to live peacefully in a shared pursuit of spiritual enlightenment. The UN supported her vision, and 30 years later, the community has about 2,000 inhabitants and a large visitor center, which was pleasant enough. The food was decent, and the short film about the Mandir, Auroville’s geographical center and most impressive building, was interesting (unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to see it as the viewpoint is closed on Sunday afternoons for unclear reasons). I personally enjoyed traveling to and from Auroville on our scooters more than the community itself.
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| Local construction team |
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| Pondi Market |
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| The nativity |
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| The trip to Auroville |
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| The Mandir |
That evening, we hopped an overnight bus back to Bangalore, arriving in the city at 5:30 a.m. Monday morning. Needless to say, it was a long day at work, but I was sustained by the promise of an even longer, more relaxing holiday the upcoming weekend. After what by all measures has to be considered a thoroughly unproductive workweek notable more for my return to the basketball court than any particular action or result in lab (actually that’s something of a lie because, completely serendipitously, it looks like we may have produced our desired compound in >99% purity, meaning that our project can move forward though it now seems those results may not have been correct), I departed Bangalore again on Thursday night, catching a plane to Cochin, the capital of the South Indian state, Kerala. And who was there to meet me at the airport? My mother!!!
Though I hadn’t felt very homesick since arriving in India (despite what I may write in my blog about missing Tropicana OJ, etc.), it was wonderful to be received in the warm embrace of my family. Aside from the tangible benefits of family-sponsored travel like air-conditioning, buffet breakfasts, and the like, it felt good to be in the company of people who really cared about me and understood me on a personal and cultural level. It highlighted certain aspects of my life in Bangalore that I have come to take for granted, such as the tendency to evaluate a person’s language skills within the first few moments of meeting him or her and modify my conversation accordingly. That process had become second nature, and suddenly, I could say anything and be understood 100% of the time (then again, not being understood 100% of the time has its advantages). It also emphasized the transitory nature of my stay in Bangalore, and how many of the relationships I’m forming here are relatively superficial. I’m doing my best, but it’s hard to form lasting friendships in the course of a few months with people who view me as temporary or with people like my expat friends from the Pondicherry trip who are temporary themselves. I suppose this all comes with the territory of living abroad.
After one comfortable night in the hotel in Cochin, my family and I squeezed into the car and traveled to the backwaters, which you will recall I last visited about three weeks before. Instead of exploring the backwaters on a houseboat, we opted for the resort option, and my what a beautiful resort it was with its infinite pool, quaint cottages, and magician. For Christmas Eve, they threw an event with a stupendous amount of food, a gregarious and glamorous M.C., a live band, various traditional performances, fireworks, and a very short, skinny, Indian Santa Claus who arrived by boat because Rudolph and co. had a prior engagement. All the waiters wore Santa hats, and decorations included an enormous albatross hanging above our heads (I’m not sure how exactly that related to Christmas), an iceberg with papier-mâché penguins on top, a family of polystyrene polar bears, and a Chinese fishing net, which had been built that afternoon and was disassembled after the festivities were over.
Our two nights at the Kumarakorum Lake Resort were very pleasant, and we reluctantly checked out on Sunday to travel to Munnar, a hill station six gut-clenching hours away from the idylls of the lake. The trip was difficult; I’m still a little queasy just thinking about going up those narrow, twisting mountain roads, dodging traffic in that characteristically hair-raising way. After climbing through several different climate zones marked by pineapple, banana, rubber tree, and cardamom plantations, we arrived in a breathtaking series of picturesque valleys completely covered in tea bushes. As the sun was getting low on the horizon, with a thin fog rolling down the bald, jagged mountains, the scene was oddly reminiscent of the Lake District in the U.K., which I suppose makes some sense, as it was the English who originally developed this area for tea cultivation.
When we finally pulled into our hotel, darkness had settled. In the gloaming, our rooms seemed comparatively dingy and dirty to the digs we had just departed, and we considered returning to the lake if only there wasn’t a painful six-hour drive separating us from its shores. Fortunately, in the daylight, our situation did not appear nearly as grim as we had imagined. That said, my sister had developed a cold, and she was very miserable as we piled into a jeep to ascend to the highest tea plantation in the world, located at, if my memory serves, about 8,000’ above sea level. If the ride to Munnar was difficult, the officials at the Tour de France would label this jeep journey as hors categoire. It was so bumpy, spine-shattering, coccyx-crunching that we would have been more comfortable riding a stegosaurus with a limp. In the end, it was worth it because the tea plantation was interesting and the view was fantastic, but my sister may have another opinion.
The next day, we left Eden to return to Bangalore on the night flight. I logged a half-day at work and then met up with my family in the afternoon to show them my apartment and my neighborhood, which both pass inspection. We shared a final meal that night, and then we said our goodbyes as they were flying to Bombay in the morning and I would be at work. But oh, how plans change.,,
NEWSFLASH… NEWSFLASH…
On the night of December 30th, at approximately 7:15 p.m., a certain individual by the name of Alex Beecher met an accident as he was crossing 80 Feet Road in the Koramangala area of Bangalore. After topping up his mobile phone, he began the treacherous passage across with the intention of patronizing a favorite juice stand on the other side. The first half of the crossing was remarkable for being unremarkable, and he had hopes that the second half of the crossing would be just as successful.
Standing on top of the divider in the middle of the road, he saw an opening in the traffic and decided to make his move. Keeping his eyes fixed on the approaching bus, he stepped down and pop… He had landed awkwardly on his right foot, badly rolling his ankle, and stumbling forward into the road. His first instinct was survival, so he immediately moved to regain the safety of the divider, but there was no need as, defying the law of conservation of momentum, the oncoming vehicle stopped to let him hobble across.
Thinking it was just a sprain, he walked it off, just as Dad always taught, and limped all the way back home where, upon taking off his shoe, he discovered a very disturbing bump on his foot, not the expected swelling around his ankle. Judiciously, he decided to go to the hospital where an x-ray revealed an avulsion fracture at the base of the fifth metatarsal.
When asked about the incident, the involved party declined to comment.
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| My foot |
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| The fracture |
Noooooo… I’ve got a broken foot, and I have to wear a stupid cast for at least 4 weeks, and I won’t be fully healed for at least 6, and then I have to do ankle exercises to regain ankle mobility, and, and, and, and OH, THE HUMANITY!!!
It could be worse. It doesn’t really hurt that much, and I should make a full recovery, but what bad luck. The only redeeming factor was my injury enticed my mother who hadn’t yet left India to return to Bangalore where she pampered me and ensured I didn’t go out on New Year’s Eve and do anything foolish. We also made a furtive trip to Mysore to see Tipu Sultan’s famous palace, but don’t tell anyone at work about that (if you're curious, look at Interactive Mysore Palace). Speaking of which, this injury does affect my ability to do lab work (if only indirectly, because I’m still physically capable of doing lab work; I’ve just been put on a tight leash by my boss), but I’ll let you know how it turns out.
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