Pondicherry, 15.april.99

India is by and large not a comfortable place.  All the well-worn travelers' tales are true:  the heat, the 
dust, the sewage, the hassles; though these by no means diminish its national character of fascination, 
passion and intrigue.  But here, Pondicherry, is a special place among special places.  To begin with,
 this was one of a handful of Indian enclaves which the Brits never got their hands on.  It was an island
 of French property on the subcontinental mainland, a trading port and supply station along the
 sea-route between France and its far-eastern colonies, and therefore offers a dramatically different
 flavor of town from the surrounding areas.  Though it has since been restored to Indian control, it
 remains an anomaly, with clean thoroughfares, a promenade along the sea, a markedly French brand
 of colonial architecture (down to the Parisian-style street signs), and a considerable French population
 even now, bringing with it cultural considerations (such as an art-paper factory (and CHEESE!!)) not
 easily to be found elsewhere.  And, as if to maintain this high level of civilization, Pondy is also home
 to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, a spiritual center founded by a British-raised Indian (Sri A himself) and a
 French follower of his system (commonly called THE MOTHER) which seeks to promulgate the vastly
 transcribed teachings contained in the voluminous (make that a capital V for emphasis) philosophical
 texts of Sri A.  Not having read it, what I know of his philosophy is very basic, to wit, that we are
 capable of evolution towards a divine state of being and consciousness.  Sri A apparently outlines a
 very compelling system by which this is meant to be achieved, for the city is full of devotees even 30
 years after his death.  People come from all corners of the world to study here, and also to live the
 Ashram life.  I'm told that it's a very complex metaphysic, by smart people I've met and trust, so maybe
 I'll read some, but apart from a Bostonian named Bob who's lived here twenty years now, a fair number
 of genuine freaks, deeply lost souls deeply seeking deep salvation, are in constant evidence as well. 
 One notable, a woman who daily wears loose white cotton with an elaborate blue and red sash, paces
 up and down the promenade, perpetually, counting her steps, turning at a fixed point, retracing her
 steps until another fixed point, and then turning again, all afternoon, every day, blank, methodical,
 repetitive, again, and again.  Her meditation.  Whatever she's looking for, you'd think she would have
 learned by now that she won't find it on *that* sidewalk.  Yet she continues, with an expression
 empty, void, her steps unhurried, nothing about her extreme except for the fact of everything about
 her.  And the town is full of people like her, not all pacing, but each with his own inscrutable method
 of elevating his soul (author's note: add the words "catatonic" and "automatonic" somewhere into the
 preceding description).

And, outside of town, a new town is happening, a response to THE MOTHER'S AGENDA, called
 AUROVILLE, a utopian community based on Aurobindism and laid out in the form of a spiral galaxy of
 roads and settlements with a rather fascist-seeming system of property rights (you buy your own land
 from the government, but when you've paid for it, you don't own it anymore; the collective does. They
 control what you may do with it, and all this only after living there for at least a year at your own
 expense doing volunteer work for the community, and still only then after they've given you
 permission, based upon your ideology, to buy land which doesn't even belong to them) and free
 speech controls... well, we'll see how the next generation likes it, since they'll be living there without
 the need for such screenings.  It's largely undeveloped at this point, and most of the land which the
 town will someday occupy is still in the hands of farmers or the Indian government.  I'd like to buy up
 some of it and build a bar, since alcohol is forbidden by the guru.  You could do worse than to own the
 only bar in a town full of westerners.  Or even better: buy up ALL the land they're planning on
 someday owning but cannot yet afford, and then with that monopoly charge them prices for it which
 the individual farmers dare not ask.  Opportunities abound.

And so this place, with its red-wine availability and its books and libraries, its culture and cleanliness,
 its first-rate people-watching opportunities and its (mostly) reliable internet access, this city of modern
 comfort in a sea of third-world deprivation, is a nice respite, a relaxing stronghold of civilization, in
 which yet again to watch life get more interesting and hilarious by the day.

It's all just a whirlwind of the bizarre.