Four Shells and the Sea Shore
I was a lost soul, physically exhausted and emotionally drained, by the time December arrived. No, I did not have a breakup. I didn’t fail my exams either. No family issues. No addictions. I just was being too harsh on myself for the whole year. Sometimes you get so involved with moving forward in life that you forget to stop for a moment and retrospect. But then once in a while come these enlightening moments when you suddenly remember that you have a life to live too. And at that moment the most amazing trips are born. I will get into details but a few disclaimers first.
Firstly, it’s not a story about an unplanned adventure where a group of college friends get lost in the middle of nowhere and then they happen to find Atlantis. So, if you are here hoping for a movie script you may as well save your time and look elsewhere. Secondly, this is a personal account elaborating my discovery of the real meaning of traveling and not necessarily a travel guide (Although, I would most subtly let out here that there cannot be a better way to go about it).
I had been on trips before. Some with family, others with friends. Why didn’t I blog before? Well, I never understood what all the hype was about. People talked of finding themselves while on a trip, building new relationships, and on and on while all I got out of a trip was a completed checklist of tourist sites and a handful of souvenirs. But this time, I got it all right. Pondicherry did it for me.
I had been to Pondicherry before, not when I was three, but the previous year itself. Situated on the east coast, housing the most exquisite French architecture and cuisine, Pondicherry grew over me like new music. It was the first time I wasn’t satisfied with a completed checklist after our two day weekend getaway. I wanted to go there again, this time not with a checklist but to breathe in the city until it got under my skin. And, things cannot get easier to execute when your hard-working friends just got placed and are looking forward to chilling. I vouched for Pondicherry over Goa and they don’t regret it at all now.
It is popularly recommended to take a place in the French town, but we rented a villa on the East Coast Road, that runs away from the city to avoid the banter. Decorated with artifacts, carved teakwood doors, and ornate lamps, the place had a homely feeling. There was a fully-furnished kitchen, and we cooked Maggi and soup, twice a day. Autos can get mundane, so we rented two Vespas — one yellow and the other red. These two beauties played an indispensable role in making this trip so memorable.
Who cares to live stories when you can build your own?
On my first visit to Pondicherry, I dared the mighty sea only to come back tanned as charcoal. This time, I made the boys apply sunscreen till we all looked like white dolls. As I said it is a real story, and in real stories, the characters get sand stuck in their behinds and it hurts. But we did manage to get over it and played a game of soccer with the locals till the hot sand burned our feet. I don’t know whether it was the soothing sea breeze or the hot sand, but nothing in the past one year made me feel so alive. These locals were not the only people on the beach.
There was this little kid there with his parents. We all have read stories and believe that we are supposed to make sand castles on the beach. But he sat in the sand, making and mostly breaking mounds of sand. We joined him. Who cares to live stories when you can build your own?
Crime Confessions
We four are wannabe studs who cannot handle as much as a pint of beer. But a trip can make you overly adventurous. The plan was to buy a lot of alcohol and take it back to our abode. Apart from the embarrassment of not knowing a single brand and pointing at random things at the liquor store, everything was perfectly under control until we realized our Villa was in Tamil Nadu and therefore, taking any commodity across the boundary was smuggling and a punishable offense. We risked it anyway. Sometimes luck gets so generous that it causes the guard at the checkpoint to stop only the bike that didn’t have liquor.
We are not lucky people though. We ended up in the police station for trespassing a one-way sign the next day. It took a sincere request from our side before the inspector let us go.
You may be lucky once, but you need to be smart always. :p
Auroville: A dream come true?
The night we smuggled alcohol, we got drunk and started to come up with all sorts of theories about an ideal world. There were supporters of Thanos and Hitler and there were supporters for a no-boundary united world. What happened after that, none of us remembers. But we do remember visiting Auroville the next morning and feeling we were being overheard last night. For those who don’t know, Auroville is a universal city in the making dedicated to the ideal of human unity based on the vision of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. Although we were planning to execute it more on the lines of technology, spiritual unity is not a bad place to start from. The place attracts a lot of interesting people from around the world and is surrounded by a lot of cafes.
White town and the guilty pleasures
When people say they don’t like shopping; don’t believe them. They say they can’t afford it; introduce them to window shopping. But when in Pondicherry, keep a watch on your friends. This place gets tempting enough to make you want to shoplift. We made sure we checked out every store and art gallery we were allowed to enter and posed in front of every yellow wall we could find.
Ratatouille v/s Bhindi
I am a connoisseur myself but bhindi won when I realized ratatouille is nothing but boiled vegetables eaten with half-cooked millets. Maybe this was the moment I realized I am what I am. I realized I can travel the whole world, make it my home, but I would always come back here, to loving bhindi as my food. And sitting there, seeing the three weirdos eat chicken (their bhindi), it struck me that no matter how many people I meet on my trips from now on, I will always want to meet them with these people.
