If you look on a map for Pondicherry, in Tamil Nadu, you may see it listed as Puducherry.
In India, since the
government isn’t really doing much else, they are changing the names of many of
the cities to names that sound more ‘Indian’.
That’s why you’ll see both Pondicherry and Puducherry, Bangalore - Bengaluru,
Bombay - Mumbai, etc. It’s all a political thing.
On both Sunday and Monday I went to Pondicherry, a 15 minute drive or so from Auroville.
Sunday I went with Kaushik,
another one of the residents at the guesthouse where I’m staying. We took an auto rickshaw to the nearby
village, then boarded a crazy crowded bus to go to Pondicherry. Even though it was so smelly and load in the
bus, it was only 5 rupees to go all the way to Pondy so I couldn’t complain. There was a super huge and busy Sunday market
going on downtown, where people had mats everywhere selling anything from old
tvs and radios to jewelry, clothes, and fruit.
Some people were selling things that basically came straight of the
dumpster, like old gears and wires and bicycle tires.
On Monday I met up with Venkatesh, an alumni from the
University of Delaware’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy who is now
working with a solar company in Chennai.
I showed him around some aspects of Auroville, then his driver took us
to Pondicherry to a vegetarian South Indian restaurant. We had the best Naan and Goti and then went
around to an Ashram that was founded by Sri Aurobindo, the same person who
helped found Auroville. I also saw the
sea again, and a statue of Gandhi (with a homeless man sleeping right on the
statue, at Gandhi’s feet. Maybe it will
bring him good luck??)
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