The fight to save Puducherry’s heritage buildings, both in the French and Tamil Quarters, is slowly bearing fruit. Paul Comrie
Photos: Bob Rose
A common architectural language: The Hotel de L’ Orient in the French Quarter
ARCHITECTS draft lines; that’s what they do. But for a city as historically divided as Puducherry, the blueprints take on a life of their own. In the old French Quarter (Ville Blanche) affluence abounds. The infrastructure is good, the heritage well maintained and renovations can’t begin without official consent.
The region’s impassioned authority on heritage restoration, Ajit Koujalgi — both UNESCO Asian representative and the chair to the local chapter of INTACH (Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Preservation) — has ensured this state of affairs. It has been a hard-won fight.
INTACH’s new head office in the Tamil Quarter.
Subtle ambience
“I don’t think anymore than five or 10 percent of the original heritage has been saved in the past 25 years,” says Ajit. His life’s work has borne fruit however, evidenced in the subtle ambience that marks this city as a historical jewel in a country replete with cultural marvels.
“It’s really designed for pedestrians,” he says. “It’s almost unrecognisable from the Puducherry I first discovered 25 years ago. There were no motorcycles back then. Just people gently strolling under white umbrellas, often speaking French, and using pedal-rickshaws.”
Ajit, an architect, and his equally devoted colleagues at INTACH, have had to get by on their own consultancy fees. A non-profit organisation, INTACH chapters are to remain self-sufficient and privately funded.
Nowhere has this single-minded obstinacy in the face of opposition paid off more handsomely than in the recently restored Hotel de L’ Orient. Owned by the Neemrana Hotels group, the tourism company worked with INTACH to resurrect the skeleton of a building from a 19th century mansion on Rue Romain Rolland, just a stone’s throw from the Puducherry beachfront.
Whitewashed walls three feet thick and eggshell vaulted ceilings are natural deterrents to the pervasive southern heat but combine those with stunning archways and teak wood joists, period portraits and aristocratic wicker chairs and you have a winning combination. Spend an afternoon in the hotel’s sunny courtyard sipping cold rose and enjoying Creole delights from the staff kitchen and you’ll think you’ve slipped into a gleefully decadent past.
The Hotel de L’ Orient is now both a UNESCO world notable heritage building, and one of the most economically viable hotels in the region — proof that economic prosperity and heritage restoration can fit seamlessly together.
The old Tamil and Muslim Quarters of Puducherry (Ville Noire) lie immediately on the other side of the canal. Vibrant and packed, the city really comes alive with bustling street vendors and solid middle-class fare: retail chains, markets and traditional South-Indian restaurants.
But that’s not to say that heritage restoration beyond the canal’s divisive pale hasn’t taken place. The Muslim Quarter is a fine example of history and modernity in harmonious, if tentative proximity. The stunning Kutpa mosque still calls its denizens to prayer and the place has an aura of studied reflection.
Row houses are a subtle reminder of the carefully wrought communities that built these streets. Neighbours converse and veiled women make their way in quiet groups. There is something quiet about this place; people regard you with a sort of curious reserve that seems a form of respect.
The Tamil Quarter is wide, silent and tree-lined. Nearly public verandas have caused these places to be called the ‘talking streets’ as it’s so conducive to communal life and gossip.
The houses themselves are wondrously strange to the layman’s eye, but the low-set canopies and plain second-floor facades are a hybrid of culture and colonial politics, the most obvious example of Indo-French architecture: bright busy colours suddenly opaque and reticent. But like so much else in this city, it’s unique, quiet and inherently stylish.
But these beautifully kept streets are too few. The majority of the city is a working city, a place of survival. There are no designer boutiques or couples on the lookout for ‘buys’ at the antique bazaar. The hotels offer modern amenities at a reasonable price and house business types.
Population explosion
This commercial onslaught began roughly 20 years ago with the introduction of tax-incentives to small business owners willing to settle in the region. Ashok, Ajit’s colleague, explains the problems with this population explosion.
“Neither the climate, the location nor the infrastructure is suited to big trade,” he says. “This is a place for tourism and heritage. People come here to get away.”
Ajit, who has worked closely with his conservation partners in the European Union, furthers that notion. France brought in over 76 million tourists in 2006 alone. “Why do people go to Italy?” says Ajit. “It’s not to see supermarkets.”
To many, however, heritage restoration seems a luxury. INTACH aims to show the economic uplift beautifully maintained architecture brings. One thousand square feet in the French Quarter goes for roughly three times what it does in the Tamil Quarter.
“We act as a guide for renovations,” he says. “If the building is already knocked down, then we try and influence the street-facing portions of the new construction.”
The average person living in Puducherry doesn’t see centuries-old Tamil architecture — he sees an old, dilapidated structure and wants to replace it with something new, with modern comforts. What INTACH is trying to provide is a framework whereby it might see heritage as living in symbiosis with modern architecture and technology.
But first there must be government legislation, tax incentives and financial help for privately owned heritage property. INTACH’s move into its new head office in the Tamil Quarter sets an example. “We’ve always wanted an old Tamil building,” says Ajit. “It’s important to differentiate ourselves from the old notion that only French heritage is worth saving. There’s a common architectural language, a unity of thought about the city.”
The new INTACH office is indicative of both the struggles and rewards to come. It’s a two-storey building with a brightly lit courtyard and rooftop terrace. Under a compressed wooden entrance, the main room alights suddenly upwards, supported by magisterial teak pillars, delimited in brass. The central rooms open into an immense boardroom, showroom and a sprawling office space for the many architects yet to be hired. “We could get 15 more architects on board,” Ajit says.
Historical importance
One gets the sense of history coming a full circle. Excavations seven km south of Puducherry in Arikamedu show that the Romans were here in the 1st Century. Once, the imperialists fought over this strategic naval location on the Bay of Bengal; now, the race is to save the cultural heritage that history spawned. This time the benefit is to be gained by Indians and tourists alike.
“By the time you’ve created the climate for heritage preservation, will there be any left?” says Ajit, somewhat downcast. One certainty exists: to the victor go the spoils.
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