On the street corner

As one stands on the corner of the old French provincial capital of Pondicherry the complexity of society passes before your eyes. It starts with the obvious features of skin colour. There is the sea of Indians mixed with various white tourists who stand out like a strange coloured flower in the blossoms. You can pick out the new arrivals as their whiteness glistens without even hints of tans. They also tend to stand out either by the newness of locally bought clothes in attempts to somehow fit in or by their complete lack of sensitivity to local modesty by continuing to wear western clothes that act as something of an affront to this culture. This lady wandered the streets with her friends in awe of the interesting city around here oblivious to the stares that followed her.

We had seen a similar experience some weeks back down on the beach of the city at the edge of the Bay of Bengal. Here was a western woman sauntering along with a sheer wrap tossed over her string bikini. Three young men sitting next to us in the 24 hour latte store (naturally I found it) sprung to action with their cell phone cameras and paid the bill faster than could be recorded. They hopped over the wall in front of the café and headed down the beach to follow her.

The next aspect of society that one sees passing on the street is official India. This comes in the form of the policeman standing on the corner wearing a uniform reminiscent of French days. I have observed he and fellow officers on corners throughout the city. I am mystified as to exactly what they do. A young lady visiting from Bangalore observed that there is something of a lawlessness about the traffic here with nobody wearing helmets (as they are apparently required to do where she lives) nobody paying attention to the rules of the road (my first hint that they actually exist in any formal way) and everyone on cell phones. Certainly we had a taxi driver for 5.5 hours yesterday who managed to be on his cell phone (hanging from his ear in some small consolation to safety) for the entire trip.

Official India is also seen in military and police personnel zipping by on motorcycles or more likely in SUVs. I have never yet seen a policeman perform any type of official duty so I am unsure what they do but there are plenty of them with a few large training facilities nearby. Official India also includes government officers being driven to and from places with an urgency that suggests some great plan of action is about to befall the city – or they are late getting home. Many are chauffeur driven in their air conditioned SUVs that zip by suggesting that they are somehow above the hoi polloi that the rest of us wander within.

The street is also alive with various religious dress. There are Catholic nuns wandering by in traditional habits rarely seen now in North America. There are nuns from the order founded by Mother Theresa as well as several other orders with operations in the city. I have seen them out helping the poor in the city as well as doing their daily shopping. I watched a monk buy cloth so that he could have a new habit made.

There being a large Muslim population there are also clothing of that religious faith as well as those who profess to live some form of ascetic life. There are also uniforms of children attending religious schools as well as the day to day uniforms of school children seen throughout the city as they move in great numbers to and from school.

The streets are also alive with various modes of transport ranging from the ever present sea of motorcycles through to push bikes, push and auto rickshaws, peddle delivery carts, cars and SUVs possessing ear piercing horns. Then there are the busses on major streets that, along with the trucks, are kings of the road.

Yesterday we also wandered into the countryside where a different series of images presents themselves. Yes there remain the motorcycles (driven by children as young as about 12) and the trucks, busses and cars. But there are also the many villages living quite traditional lives with evidence of some eking out an existence in hovels that provide only the barest of life’s essentials.

The fields are lush with corn, rice and sugar cane growing. Cows and goats wander by with their newest additions as spring brings the newborns.

Infrastructure out here is limited and often in poor condition. A road that we had traveled on some weeks earlier was no longer passable by taxi as the washout from the previous monsoon had not been repaired instead disintegrating into rubble that only a larger vehicle or a motorcycle could manage.

There are frequent power outages now that the heat is building and demand on the power grid grows. My favourite chai shop has been closed three times this week as a result. This might seem a minor inconvenience to me but it sucks the life blood from the family that runs it. The tourist season here is coming to an end in a matter of weeks. Business will drop here in big numbers. Taxi drivers leave for the hill stations where tourists and westerns who live in India run to avoiding the heat. Restaurants close for April and May here and the Kashmiri bandits who run the small clothing and trinket stores head off to find flocks of tourists elsewhere ripe for the picking. Thus, for the family who runs the chai shop, these last few weeks matter and each day they close due to power losses hurt.

In Pondicherry yesterday there were no evident outages. Thus, lest you feel sorry for me missing my daily chai, I did get one from my now favourite street vendor in the city (we are about 7 km away from the city). This street vendor delivers a warm sweet spicy tea that bears some resemblance to what I imagine they serve in Heaven.