5th November
Pondi has just about redeemed itself. While calling it "Gallic" is still a stretch - the people are friendly, for one - it's not the gora-gone-wild hellhole it seemed last night as we exhaustedly passed a succession of street corners with whey-faced dreadlocked gap-year students vomiting excitably into gutters or dour sanctimonious hippies tutting at them. Pondicherry still has a hippie-'n'-hooligan air to it, but the streets are paved in stone, have pavements and gutters, some of the buildings are attractive, and there's a promenade alongside the Bay of Bengal which looks like you could swim in it.
Saturday started well; for all my you-can't-polish-a-turd- by-giving-it-marble-floors griping yesterday the hotel had outstanding showers, prompting Ben to comment that it had "almost made the entire utterly miserable experience worthwhile". This upset the girls enormously, as their room's shower didn't work - but as I'd gone and got us all pains-au-chocolat and pastries for breakfast by the time I relayed news of Ben's insensitivity to them, he only suffered a glancing blow to the head with a bottle of water for it.
From there we wandered through town to the Dumas Guest House where we'd initially tried to stay at the previous night, and checked in to a homely sort of appartment with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room and a balcony.
By the time we'd sorted that out it was near enough to noon that we felt we could start on lunch. This was when Pondi really started looking up - we had salads, and shrimp soup, and Ben's bleu steak in blue cheese sauce, and prawns in garlic and parsley, and lemon tart, bitter hot chocolate, and above all proper tea. After a fortnight of curry, it was basically food porn, and we went there again for lunch today (Sunday) and added more steaks, coq au vin, and perfect chocolate mousse to the list. Rough Guide to India (mine, on loan from my sister Susie) 1, Lonely Planet Guide to South India (Ben's) 0.After the three or so hours we spent lunching, we ambled through town looking at the sea, buildings, things in shops (where Toyin comfortably took the "Shopper of the Day" award by buying as much as the rest of us put together), and then began to think about where to have dinner. Midway through our meander, my seafood-related reverie was interrupted by someone dropping an armful of tupperware down some stairs. I was about to suggest to the others that we let Toyin add some tupperware to her list of purchases when a carefully bedraggled-looking guy in his early 20s who asked if I wanted to buy one of his bongo drums.
"Thanks, but I don't want one," I replied, silently cursing the lost tupperware-buying opportunity.
"For you, special price." His response had a reassuring feel to it; I'd forgotten what it was like to be worked over by someone trying to sell tat to tourists. For all Vellore's flaws, being off the tourist trail has its advantages.
"I'm sure your prices are excellent, but I still don't want one."
"Come on, they're very good! As a present for someone."
"I don't want one." He was beginning to sound really whiny at this point.
"I'll do swap."
"No, really - I don't-"
"Ok, ok - I'll swap it for your watch."
"No - you won't." Mercifully he gave up at this point; I'd been expecting his next offer to involve swapping it for my passport, wallet, or perhaps one of my kidneys. Curiously, he and his ilk left the (numerous) Indian tourists entirely alone, evidently relying on the gora-gone-wild and hippie clientele.
After everyone but Ben had had the obligatory ayurvedic massage - which prompted Toyin to comment that "I've always known that I would know true love when I found it, and I'm sure Lina's the girl for me", Lina being her masseuse - we resorted to type by going for dinner. The evening's meal was billed by Ben's Lonely Planet as the best place to eat in Pondi, and somehow we'd managed to work up an appetite again by the time we arrived. The rooftop terrace was a bit of a let-down as places featuring green-painted bamboo and no views can be, but we had high hopes for the food - two types of salad, bouillabaisse, seafood gumbo, silver pomfret, sear, crab, and beef lasagne. Actually, this is only partly true - my hopes for the crab were deflated when they said they couldn't serve it in the shell (implied: because it comes from a tin), and they were dashed entirely when, seized by a desire fora post-colonial eating experience, I eschewed "baked" and "garlic" in favour of that well-known Indian staple, masala crab. The instant regret I felt after placing the order was alleviated somewhat by my seafood gumbo being very good while the salads were unremarkable and the bouillabaisse gloopy and full of gelatin - but after the crab the others have begun changing their order if I ask for the same thing: it was the worst of a bad set of mains. The pomfret was roasted to within an inch of the life of a fish twice its size, the lasagne had gristly bits in, and the sear was bland. All this culinary disappointment was accompanied by the most expensive bottle of Indian wine on the men (an insane ten pounds) which tasted like benelin and was barely drinkable when chilled almost to freezing point, and crowned by three puddings (Charlotte sensibly having abandoned hope after her pomfret) which tasted like they'd been freshly bought at Costcutter. Rough Guide to India 1, Lonely Planet Guide to South India -4. Not a success, in short, but we bought a few beers on the way home and sat up drinking in the appartment and setting the world to rights.
Sunday involved a fantastic breakfast (fresh fruit, toast, eggs, bacon, tea and coffee) and a lunch I've already praised, a trip to the botanical gardens where we entertained a dozen or so local kids by letting them take pictures of one another with our cameras (and unlike our bongo-selling friends, they didn't ask for a thing and were just a joy), and then a five-hour bus journey back to Vellore. This was actually preferable to the taxi ride as the buses have wheels like tractors and so can take the potholes and speed humps at speed without sending you too far into the air, and it's an eight of the price. On the trip we saw our first Indian elephant being ridden through Villampuram, and I had a long and endlessly entertaining discussion with Shankar, the Tamil man sat next to me. We started out with the usual where-are-you-from chat (he lives in Pondi but works in Vellore during the week making shoes for export), and then paused while he read Indian Marie Claire, which Fenulla and Sarah (two of the Aussie girls) had given to Toyin and Charlotte. He seemed particularly appalled by the article on transsexuals here, but gave it back without comment; from here, however, the conversation got markedly stranger.
Shankar: "People are healthier in England than here, no? Why do you think this is?"
Me: "Well, we spend more on healthcare, people are better fed and educated, and-"
Shankar: "No - it is because of the roofs! We get healthy by absorbing cosmic rays, and how do we do that?"
Me: [thinking correctly that there is no way I would be able to guess] "Er..."
Shankar: [triumphantly, making an arch with his hands] "The roofs are sloping in England! This means you absorb more cosmic rays."
He also enlightened me about babies being heavier when they were asleep ("I will give you an example. Take a baby who weighs ten kay-gees. Then when it is asleep, perhaps it will weigh twelve kay-gees."), summarised several ghastly management books with titles like "The ten types of person in business" and "How to create an ideas-culture", and explained how breathing through your right nostril slowly will cure headaches. There were some sane elements to the conversation, however, and not only was he thoroughly charming, but he also arranged for the bus to drop us just by Ananda Bhavan where we're staying and not 20 minutes' rickshaw ride away in town - so if, as he said while we were getting off the bus, that we would see one another in heaven, at least I know I'll be entertained. Odd thing for a hindu to say, come to think of it.
This week I'm doing community health for three days, and then we're skipping school to go to the beach and eat more seafood before flying home on Sunday. I also apologise to those of you who've wanted to hear about the head-waggle; I'm hoping to persuade my fellow students to be filmed illustrating it for educational purposes, in which case it will have to wait until I'm back and am able to add photos to the blog. Bye for now.
No comments:
Post a Comment