Bonjour, mes dosts!

Basically, this combination of French and Hindi words (you Canadians should be able to differentiate between them, at least from the French side!) is a pretty miserable attempt by me to highlight the fact I'm in Pondicherry, France...uh, I mean India. Unsurprisingly, a lot has happened since I last blogged, most of which is associated with a significant amount of train travel (approx. 15 hours since I left Mysore). The remainder of my stay in that city was comparable to the first couple of weeks, which I think I sufficiently broke down in the previous couple of posts. The classes ended up being pretty interesting and decently easy, with the exception of Hindi, which reinforced the fact that I am absolutely inept at learning new languages. I seem to recall telling you about a fellow who invited me in off of the street one day - well, I went back and visited him a couple more times, though not nearly enough as I should have. Along with his wife, whose name I forget, Sejoy (spelling?) was eager to show me and my friends outstanding hospitality. I'm somewhat bitter at the fact that I had to do an increasing amount of schoolwork as the Mysore academic module went on, in the place of getting to know top-notch people like this better.

From Mysore we proceeded to take a train to Madurai, a prominent religious city in the extreme south of the subcontinent. The main religious monument there, the Meenakshi-Sundareswarar temple (think I used Wikipedia on that one?), was devoted specifically to the deity Shiva and his wife Meenakshi, who are incarnations of God according to Hindu religion (if I'm feeling really ambitious - and more informed than I am now - I may make a humble attempt at outlining Hinduism at some point in the next few months). Spanning 45 acres and in some portions dating back to the 15th century BC, the temple is recognized as one of the most important architectural landmarks in South Asia. I took the adjacent photo in one of huge chambers in the central area of the temple - our patient and pleasantly non-scheming guide informed us that this section was 3500 years old! Although its presence necessarily dictates huge numbers of tourists, it's still easy to get totally lost in the hubble-cabubble of the city, and not see a single westerner for a whole afternoon.

In contrast, the city that I've spent the last couple days in , Pondicherry, contains more white people than my Haliburton Highlands S.S. history class. The French only relinquished control of the region to the Indian Union in the late 50's, so the city is chock-full of French expats and a plethora of European tourists. As you can imagine, the town is somewhat divided into one area where the colonials made their nest (closer to the beach), and everything else, where the Indian majority resides. Contrary to the negative image this might advance, however, an impressive harmony seems to have developed between Indians and Westerners - although they live in separate parts of the city, it becomes evident that their everyday lives are greatly interlinked. For example, as I was walking over to the internet cafe this morning, I saw European expats and Indians alike driving their kids to school on the backs of their scooters, and it seems commonplace to see Westerners haggling vendors at the fruit market like any Indian would. All in all, it seems like a really neat type of syncretic culture has developed. At least that's the conclusion that I've come to based on my limited experience here - in reality, I suppose, the picture might be much less rosy, and the more negative aspects of colonialism much more pronounced.

Tomorrow morning we take a bus to Chennai (formerly Madras) where, after a day of doing the tourist-thing, we're going to catch a train to Varanasi in the state of Uttar Pradesh. My first taste of the north is going to come at a price, however; specifically, 20+ hours lounging around in the second class cabin. I've actually quite enjoyed the train thus far, as it really is a mosaic of sights and sounds, ranging from the SLR-worthy landscape views to the amusing drone of the food and drink vendors. The funniest example of the latter is the "chai-wallahs", or tea sellers, who walk up and down the aisles droning "chai chai, tea chaiiiiaa, chaii chaii." Remarkably, they all sound the same on every train you step onto. I can see it becoming irritating eventually, but for now, its just one of those pleasurably-unique qualities of this country that is really making the trip.

As you may recall, I promised pictures by the time I get to Jaipur. I'm going to try and fulfill that pledge a bit early, but there's no guarantees that I'm going to be able to upload many - if any - before my ADD tendencies kick in.


Cheers,
Tom

(note: as you can see, I managed to get one photo up, but apparently I don't know how to use Blogger, and can't figure out how to put in captions, etc. Also, it's taking way too long in this cafe, so I'll probably wait until I get to a place where I can surf for free.)