ON THE WATERFRONT
December 19, 2106
The Richter scale, developed in the 1930s, is a base-10 logarithmic scale, which defines magnitude as the logarithm of the ratio of the amplitude of the seismic waves to an arbitrary, minor amplitude, as recorded on a standardised seismograph at a standard distance. In short, it helps measure the intensity of an earthquake. If you are wondering what this has got to do with the annual trip of the Pilgrim Fathers (Gajanan Radkar, Harsha Rao, Vipul Shah, S Vaidyanathan, Dilip Bhandari, Ganesh Shinde, Rajesh Bayas, Huned Contractor), wait a second, it’s coming. Not the earthquake, the connection!
As we sat for our evening ‘gappa-shappa’ in a room of the Ajantha Guest House at Pondicherry, Vipul measured the volatility of each of us in terms of the Richter scale. We are all prone to anger, some of us more so. And so Vipul assigned us individual rankings. Dilip topped the list and was termed the ‘coolest’ guy – he has never displayed a temper tantrum, never gets irritated about anything that goes wrong, and takes it all in his stride. Down the list were the others, some of us prone to get itchy and bitchy about things in a flash while some take a while to hot up. The conclusion: Most of us are pressure cookers waiting for the whistle to blow! So, what comes next? Vipul, once again! He suggested we have a goal to accomplish before the next pilgrimage. Well, someone wants to get into anger control management, someone wants to lose weight, someone wants to create a world record in walking, someone wants to do a course in bag packing, someone wants to become spiritual (just joking) and all of us want Dilip to show some anger!
If this reads like a travelogue that has got its timeline all mixed up, the fault is mine. I just cannot hold myself from talking about the good things first. But, to go back to the beginning, this year the trip was scheduled from December 15-18 and it was going to be Pondicherry again. No, we weren’t so enamoured of the place that we wanted to do a second trip. It’s just that last year the destination was crossed out because of extremely stormy weather and flooding, and this year it would have been the same had not the god of rain shown some mercy on us, especially on Harsha who has to go through a logistics nightmare to fly from Singapore and also include in his India itinerary several marriages, sightseeing trips with his family, and meeting the widespread clan. The unfortunate part was that Ganesh had to drop out at the last moment due to a personal issue and I wonder if he got his refund on the flight bookings.
The trip started with the usual pick-me-ups from home for the night flight to Chennai and since dinner was going to be a problem, Vaidya (and here, our annual award for best sportsmanship goes to his wife) had the foresight to pack dinner for all of us – great ‘masala’ idlis and curd-rice which we tucked into at the airport itself when it was announced that the flight had been delayed by an hour. Reaching Chennai late night meant going straight to bed in the hotel booked near the airport and the next morning Harsha arrived in a Marks & Spencer blazer looking like he was going to replace Daniel Craig in the next James Bond installment. I am sure Craig will find something else to do. So, back to some quick idlis and egg omelettes (with jam, if you please!) for breakfast and off we went in a hired Tempo Traveller on our way to Pondicherry.
En route, we stopped at Mahabalipuram. This is a small town in Kancheepuram district in Tamil Nadu, around 60 km south of Chennai. It is an ancient historic town and was a bustling seaport during the time of Periplus (1st century CE) and Ptolemy (140 CE), from where ancient Indian traders sailed to countries of South East Asia. By the 7th century it was a port city of the South Indian dynasty of the Pallavas. It has a group of sanctuaries carved out of rock in the 7th and 8th centuries: ‘rathas’ (temples in the form of chariots), ‘mandapas’ (cave sanctuaries), giant open-air rock reliefs such as the famous ‘Descent of the Ganges’, and the ‘Shore Temple’, with thousands of sculptures to the glory of Shiva. This group of monuments at Mahabalipuram has been classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The modern town of Mahabalipuram was established by the British Raj in 1827.
Reaching Pondicherry late afternoon, we checked into the Ajantha Guest House, a pretty neat and well-managed property right in front of the ocean and the long promenade that lines it. Pondicherry is the capital city of the Indian union territory of Puducherry. The French East India Company established this town as their headquarters in 1674. Five trading posts were established along the South Indian coast between 1668 and 1674 and the town was separated by a canal into the French Quarter and the Indian Quarter. And while we didn’t exactly bump into French residents like you would do in Paris, Pondicherry has retained some interesting architectural links to its French heritage, which gives this town a unique look and ambience.
Pondicherry experiences extreme coastal erosion as a result of a breakwater constructed in 1989, just to the south of the town. Where there was once a broad, sandy beach, now the city is protected against the sea by a 2-km-long seawall. While there was an early seawall made by the French in 1735, this was not hard structure coastal defense so much as an adjunct to the old shipping pier and a transition from the beach to the town, which sits at a height of 8.5 metres above sea level. Today, the seawall consists of rows of granite boulders which are reinforced every year in an attempt to stop erosion. As a consequence of the seawall, Pondicherry experiences severe seabed erosion and turbulence at the coastal margin, resulting in an extreme loss of biodiversity within the critical intertidal zone. Whenever gaps appear as the stones fall into the continually eroding seabed, the government of Puducherry adds more boulders.
Essentially, a quiet place that may not have much to offer to those seeking adrenaline-driven holidays (though we did notice a board about an agency offering scuba diving facility), Pondicherry offers a chance to relax and spend some time looking inwards. And to do so, our next day started with a trip to Auroville after tucking into a breakfast of idlis, dosas and filter coffee intermixed with a comedy of sorts about giving directions to certain members about how to reach the small South Indian cafe. Sometimes it makes me think what would happen if Rajesh was given the charge of air traffic control or managing the local train network in Mumbai. Most planes would fly into each other and so would the trains. But then, as one of us put it, the important thing was to reach the place, not how you reach it. Great philosophy there!
Auroville (City of Dawn) is an experimental township in Viluppuram district mostly in the state of Tamil Nadu with some parts in the Union Territory of Pondicherry. It was founded in 1968 by Mirra Alfassa (known as the ‘Mother’) and designed by architect Roger Anger. As stated in Alfassa’s first public message in 1965, Auroville is meant to be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony, above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realise human unity. In the middle of this huge expanse or township is the Matri Mandir, which was conceived by Alfassa as “a symbol of the divine’s answer to man’s aspiration for perfection.” Silence is maintained inside the Matri Mandir to ensure the tranquility of the space and the entire area surrounding the Matri Mandir is called the ‘peace zone’.
While tourists are not allowed inside the Matri Mandir (not the noisy, camera-flashing, quintessential tourist types at least), it is said that a spiralling ramp leads upwards to an air-conditioned chamber of polished white marble referred to as a place to find one’s consciousness. Matri Mandir is equipped with a solar power plant and is surrounded by manicured gardens. When there is no sun or after the sunset, the sunray on the globe is replaced by a beam from a solar-powered light. Radiating from this centre are four zones of the city area: the ‘residential zone’, ‘industrial zone’, ‘cultural and educational zone’ and ‘international zone’. Around the city or the urban area lies a green belt, which is an environment research and resource area, and includes farms and forestry, a botanical garden, seed bank, medicinal and herbal plants, water catchment bunds, and some communities.
Back in Pondicherry, we also visited the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, a spiritual community that grew out of the efforts of a small group of disciples who had gathered around Sri Aurobindo after he retired from politics and settled in Pondicherry in 1910. On November 24, 1926, after a major spiritual realisation, Sri Aurobindo withdrew from public view in order to continue his spiritual work. At this time he handed over the full responsibility for the inner and outer lives of the spiritual aspirants and the ashram to his spiritual collaborator, the Mother. The best part of being in Pondicherry is that there is a coffee house on the promenade that offers a fascinating view of the ocean and the long path alongside. An hour spent on its terrace was enough to give our trip its spiritual solace even as we contemplated on the destination for our next trip. There’s a museum too for those who love to dig into history.
The return journey to Chennai included a stop at the century-old man-made Ousteri Lake, also referred to as Osudu Lake, about 10 kms from Pondicherry town. It has been recognised as one of the important wetlands of Asia by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) and it is the most important freshwater lake in the region. The structure of the lake is complex - consisting of water, wetland, marsh and mudflats; it acts as the single largest catchment of fresh water in Pondicherry. A boat ride rounded off this peaceful visit and it was back to the hustle and bustle of Chennai. To conclude, just a word of advice who may want to visit Pondicherry. Always make sure you make your arrangement for dinner well in advance. The last order at any restaurant is at 10.30 pm and it is difficult to source a meal thereafter. Also, include a very early morning walk along the ocean in your plan. Your lungs will thank you for it! And keep your cool! The place demands it.
December 19, 2106
The Richter scale, developed in the 1930s, is a base-10 logarithmic scale, which defines magnitude as the logarithm of the ratio of the amplitude of the seismic waves to an arbitrary, minor amplitude, as recorded on a standardised seismograph at a standard distance. In short, it helps measure the intensity of an earthquake. If you are wondering what this has got to do with the annual trip of the Pilgrim Fathers (Gajanan Radkar, Harsha Rao, Vipul Shah, S Vaidyanathan, Dilip Bhandari, Ganesh Shinde, Rajesh Bayas, Huned Contractor), wait a second, it’s coming. Not the earthquake, the connection!
As we sat for our evening ‘gappa-shappa’ in a room of the Ajantha Guest House at Pondicherry, Vipul measured the volatility of each of us in terms of the Richter scale. We are all prone to anger, some of us more so. And so Vipul assigned us individual rankings. Dilip topped the list and was termed the ‘coolest’ guy – he has never displayed a temper tantrum, never gets irritated about anything that goes wrong, and takes it all in his stride. Down the list were the others, some of us prone to get itchy and bitchy about things in a flash while some take a while to hot up. The conclusion: Most of us are pressure cookers waiting for the whistle to blow! So, what comes next? Vipul, once again! He suggested we have a goal to accomplish before the next pilgrimage. Well, someone wants to get into anger control management, someone wants to lose weight, someone wants to create a world record in walking, someone wants to do a course in bag packing, someone wants to become spiritual (just joking) and all of us want Dilip to show some anger!
If this reads like a travelogue that has got its timeline all mixed up, the fault is mine. I just cannot hold myself from talking about the good things first. But, to go back to the beginning, this year the trip was scheduled from December 15-18 and it was going to be Pondicherry again. No, we weren’t so enamoured of the place that we wanted to do a second trip. It’s just that last year the destination was crossed out because of extremely stormy weather and flooding, and this year it would have been the same had not the god of rain shown some mercy on us, especially on Harsha who has to go through a logistics nightmare to fly from Singapore and also include in his India itinerary several marriages, sightseeing trips with his family, and meeting the widespread clan. The unfortunate part was that Ganesh had to drop out at the last moment due to a personal issue and I wonder if he got his refund on the flight bookings.
The trip started with the usual pick-me-ups from home for the night flight to Chennai and since dinner was going to be a problem, Vaidya (and here, our annual award for best sportsmanship goes to his wife) had the foresight to pack dinner for all of us – great ‘masala’ idlis and curd-rice which we tucked into at the airport itself when it was announced that the flight had been delayed by an hour. Reaching Chennai late night meant going straight to bed in the hotel booked near the airport and the next morning Harsha arrived in a Marks & Spencer blazer looking like he was going to replace Daniel Craig in the next James Bond installment. I am sure Craig will find something else to do. So, back to some quick idlis and egg omelettes (with jam, if you please!) for breakfast and off we went in a hired Tempo Traveller on our way to Pondicherry.
En route, we stopped at Mahabalipuram. This is a small town in Kancheepuram district in Tamil Nadu, around 60 km south of Chennai. It is an ancient historic town and was a bustling seaport during the time of Periplus (1st century CE) and Ptolemy (140 CE), from where ancient Indian traders sailed to countries of South East Asia. By the 7th century it was a port city of the South Indian dynasty of the Pallavas. It has a group of sanctuaries carved out of rock in the 7th and 8th centuries: ‘rathas’ (temples in the form of chariots), ‘mandapas’ (cave sanctuaries), giant open-air rock reliefs such as the famous ‘Descent of the Ganges’, and the ‘Shore Temple’, with thousands of sculptures to the glory of Shiva. This group of monuments at Mahabalipuram has been classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The modern town of Mahabalipuram was established by the British Raj in 1827.
Reaching Pondicherry late afternoon, we checked into the Ajantha Guest House, a pretty neat and well-managed property right in front of the ocean and the long promenade that lines it. Pondicherry is the capital city of the Indian union territory of Puducherry. The French East India Company established this town as their headquarters in 1674. Five trading posts were established along the South Indian coast between 1668 and 1674 and the town was separated by a canal into the French Quarter and the Indian Quarter. And while we didn’t exactly bump into French residents like you would do in Paris, Pondicherry has retained some interesting architectural links to its French heritage, which gives this town a unique look and ambience.
Pondicherry experiences extreme coastal erosion as a result of a breakwater constructed in 1989, just to the south of the town. Where there was once a broad, sandy beach, now the city is protected against the sea by a 2-km-long seawall. While there was an early seawall made by the French in 1735, this was not hard structure coastal defense so much as an adjunct to the old shipping pier and a transition from the beach to the town, which sits at a height of 8.5 metres above sea level. Today, the seawall consists of rows of granite boulders which are reinforced every year in an attempt to stop erosion. As a consequence of the seawall, Pondicherry experiences severe seabed erosion and turbulence at the coastal margin, resulting in an extreme loss of biodiversity within the critical intertidal zone. Whenever gaps appear as the stones fall into the continually eroding seabed, the government of Puducherry adds more boulders.
Essentially, a quiet place that may not have much to offer to those seeking adrenaline-driven holidays (though we did notice a board about an agency offering scuba diving facility), Pondicherry offers a chance to relax and spend some time looking inwards. And to do so, our next day started with a trip to Auroville after tucking into a breakfast of idlis, dosas and filter coffee intermixed with a comedy of sorts about giving directions to certain members about how to reach the small South Indian cafe. Sometimes it makes me think what would happen if Rajesh was given the charge of air traffic control or managing the local train network in Mumbai. Most planes would fly into each other and so would the trains. But then, as one of us put it, the important thing was to reach the place, not how you reach it. Great philosophy there!
Auroville (City of Dawn) is an experimental township in Viluppuram district mostly in the state of Tamil Nadu with some parts in the Union Territory of Pondicherry. It was founded in 1968 by Mirra Alfassa (known as the ‘Mother’) and designed by architect Roger Anger. As stated in Alfassa’s first public message in 1965, Auroville is meant to be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony, above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realise human unity. In the middle of this huge expanse or township is the Matri Mandir, which was conceived by Alfassa as “a symbol of the divine’s answer to man’s aspiration for perfection.” Silence is maintained inside the Matri Mandir to ensure the tranquility of the space and the entire area surrounding the Matri Mandir is called the ‘peace zone’.
While tourists are not allowed inside the Matri Mandir (not the noisy, camera-flashing, quintessential tourist types at least), it is said that a spiralling ramp leads upwards to an air-conditioned chamber of polished white marble referred to as a place to find one’s consciousness. Matri Mandir is equipped with a solar power plant and is surrounded by manicured gardens. When there is no sun or after the sunset, the sunray on the globe is replaced by a beam from a solar-powered light. Radiating from this centre are four zones of the city area: the ‘residential zone’, ‘industrial zone’, ‘cultural and educational zone’ and ‘international zone’. Around the city or the urban area lies a green belt, which is an environment research and resource area, and includes farms and forestry, a botanical garden, seed bank, medicinal and herbal plants, water catchment bunds, and some communities.
Back in Pondicherry, we also visited the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, a spiritual community that grew out of the efforts of a small group of disciples who had gathered around Sri Aurobindo after he retired from politics and settled in Pondicherry in 1910. On November 24, 1926, after a major spiritual realisation, Sri Aurobindo withdrew from public view in order to continue his spiritual work. At this time he handed over the full responsibility for the inner and outer lives of the spiritual aspirants and the ashram to his spiritual collaborator, the Mother. The best part of being in Pondicherry is that there is a coffee house on the promenade that offers a fascinating view of the ocean and the long path alongside. An hour spent on its terrace was enough to give our trip its spiritual solace even as we contemplated on the destination for our next trip. There’s a museum too for those who love to dig into history.
The return journey to Chennai included a stop at the century-old man-made Ousteri Lake, also referred to as Osudu Lake, about 10 kms from Pondicherry town. It has been recognised as one of the important wetlands of Asia by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) and it is the most important freshwater lake in the region. The structure of the lake is complex - consisting of water, wetland, marsh and mudflats; it acts as the single largest catchment of fresh water in Pondicherry. A boat ride rounded off this peaceful visit and it was back to the hustle and bustle of Chennai. To conclude, just a word of advice who may want to visit Pondicherry. Always make sure you make your arrangement for dinner well in advance. The last order at any restaurant is at 10.30 pm and it is difficult to source a meal thereafter. Also, include a very early morning walk along the ocean in your plan. Your lungs will thank you for it! And keep your cool! The place demands it.
