For Fiona Wilson and Ian Tattersall

Monday 9 th March in Chennai Port.

Fiona thank you for the very lovely book you sent me which was lying on our cabin bed when we returned from Pondicherry (or to be Indian-correct) Puducherri. I had a glass of wine, some South African biltong and read the beautiful poem....all I can say is a heart felt thank you. It seemed so amazingly relevant to you and me.

Ian thank you for your lovely long email. Your experiences in Pondi were fascinating and yes we are coming into the dock you mentioned which is about 2 hours out of Bangkok. I shall look for a hotel for us in the link you gave. And let you know by email before we arrive where we shall be staying. We arrive on the 15th and sail again on the 19th.

We found a driver and air conditioned car to share with another prof and her daughter on the morning we had to get to Pondi.. It took us about 4 hours in all to drop us at our guest houses. Ours was a dream; in the White Town on Rue Romain Roland....Colonial Heritage. It was an old house and we entered into a lovely courtyard with trees and palms, a veritable little jungle...cool and green. Our room was huge with fans and air conditioning...thank goodness as it was hot and humid. There were statues and pictures of all the Indian gods around the room and 'patio'. In the evenings they burned incense....lovely! We had our own bathroom/shower....pretty basic and there were lots of mosquitoes in there but the rest of the "apartment" was lovely and cool and comfortable. I felt immediately content just to be there... in Pondicherry, in India. We found the people everywhere to be either totally indifferent as they went about their business or, if we spoke to them or asked anything, warm, friendly, gentle and fun to talk to.

Interestingly, although English is the official language here very little was spoken fluently in Pondi.. Tamil, Malayalam and Hindi are more popular. My mother always said that I spoke Hindustani fluently as a child....hardly, considering I was only two years of age when I left the first time and I remember wanting only to speak English or Swahili ( in which I was fluent having spent the previous six years in Zanzibar) when I returned at the age of eight, both utterly useless with my Hindu ayah who spoke neither! She I remember had a habit of grinding her teeth in frustration with me ( I wasn't a good child) and cracking her knuckles as she lay beside my bed when my parents were out at night. She put up wih me because she had been my ayah since I was a few weeks old and in fact she actually spoiled me rotten. When we left Karachi again to go to South Africa my parents completely underestimated our feelings for each other. We went by train to Bombay and Ayah was changing at Hyderabad and promised to say good bye to me there. Hyderabad is a junction and the station was packed with thousands of people but I caught a glimpse of her in her white sari in the dense crowd. I opened our carriage door, jumped down on to the platform and rushed into the crowd towards her, but my father came after me and hauled me back into our compartment. I never saw her again and was heart broken. When I told my mother this story many, many years later she looked at me in puzzlement and disbelief...'why would you do that?' she asked!

In Pondicherry George and I walked almost everywhere and what struck me was the inherent sense of colour that Indian women have; their sari's and blouses might seem to clash in our culture but look ravishing in theirs. Pinks and mauves, peacock blue and red or orange, maroon with black or pink...an unending variety. Transport was mostly, for both men and women, on bicycles (with children hanging on the back or perched on the front!), mopeds or motor bikes, auto rickshaws...and a few cars. One auto-rickshaw which should barely seat four might have as many as eighteen people in it all chatting and laughing and hanging on for dear life! We walked along the sea front (which had been slightly affected by the Tsunami but there was less destruction than on the Chennai coast)on Sunday evening when all the families came out to stroll and walk along the boulevard; there was a constant hum of chatter and laughter and the shouts of children and concerned parents: it was a blaze of colours and lights. Traffic on the road was constant and crossing it, as everwhere we have been here, is a life threatening operation.

Yesterday we got a car and driver to take us to Mamalapuram (2 hour drive from Pondi..) to see the excavated Temples there. It was terribly hot walking round them but they were absolutely stunning. No bare feet (thank the gods!) as they are not functioning but they are exquisitely beautiful. They are sculptors and carvers in Mamalapuram and in little stalls near the temples and in the town streets were small shops with hundreds of intricate and delicately carved images of the gods and elephants and birds. I bought a small one of my favourite God, Ganesh. Ganesh has an elephant head (so you sort of get a two for one deal!), I think a god of well-being. I am going to attempt to put some photos on this blog so will stop here for now.