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A walk through the park

Will a renovated Bharathi Park hold the same charm and be user-friendly?

PHOTO: T.SINGARAVELOU

GETTING A NEW LOOK The Bharathi Park in Pondicherry

Some questions are hard to answer. One of them is: "What is it that best expresses the spirit of Pondy?"

It's easy enough to suggest to visitors what to see, where to shop and where to eat when you know what their preferences are. But what single experience best sums up Pondicherry's charm? My answer is: the Bharathi

The park has a number of official and popular names, but to say "the park" says it all. It sits right in the central axis of the old city, so it's hard to miss. It has a good size at nine acres or 35,000 square metres. It is always cooler than any part of the city that isn't air-conditioned. But what is best about it is the company it keeps: the people who use it.

Right now, it's undergoing comprehensive and expensive transformation. There is construction throughout - dust, bits of its past and its future strewn everywhere, and the sound of dozens of hammers on granite. Yet such is the park's magic that it has as many visitors as ever during its makeover, maybe more.

This is heartening. When I heard that the park was going to be "upgraded", I couldn't help thinking: why not leave well alone? More than that, I feared what its high, spear-topped fence - replacing the low, easily surmountable fence that would collapse in places so that even the occasional cow could wander in - would convey to the people: This is a government park or a tourists' park but not your park. I hope I was wrong.

If the authorities can resist the temptation to "police" the park, all will be well. Even in the "good old days" I remember a park warden, whose job involved moving around the park, waking recumbent dozers on the benches with taps of his cane. I was once one of those so awakened. It was a very hot day, there were plenty of empty benches for others to sit on, and I needed a quiet moment. There are some signs that officiousness may try to restrict access to the park in various ways. The limited number of access points is ominous. The transfer of family and friends of patients in the General and Maternity hospitals to the noisy, smelly, dusty cement "island" behind the General Hospital is another negative indicator. These people, often from quiet villages in Pondicherry, until recently used the southwest quarter of the park as a green outdoor waiting room and occasional dormitory. It was probably the world's most civilised waiting room. I just can't see how anyone could object to their use of the park as a peaceful place at a time of anxiety - the hospitalisation of a relative or friend.

People's place

It would be a mistake to think that visitors come to see parks bereft of local people. If the fortune teller isn't there with his parrot, if people are not promenading and chatting and picnicking and, yes, napping, is a park not merely a dull outdoor museum of plants and statues?

It will be instructive to see whether the "magic mountain" in the southeast quadrant is retained. Topped by a fossilised tree, this man-made hill has two cunning spiral paths so that the ascending route is not the same as the way down. This childlike lack of stuffiness is what makes a park a Park, and not a monument. We already have such an empty monument: the all too rarely visited Botanical Garden where various uses, like playing games and quite a few others, are strictly forbidden on boards all over the place. It's like visiting your grandparents' bric-a-brac shelf or almirah : Look but don't touch!

But, at this point in its transformation, it seems that a good place can be made even better. After all, the current park is a considerable improvement over time on what it was before. Once partly covered by a French fort, it was then a barren sandy parade ground until the French planted trees, notably gold mohors, in 1938. These trees, buffeted by cyclones and the passage of 75 years, are still there, gnarled and magnificent.

This post-Independence park had charming old statues of gods and yalis (animals with lion's head, protruding eyes and clawed feet), a small popular shrine for Lord Balaji and statues of some of Pondy's and India's great figures. These are retained. Indeed, yet another poet's statue is being prepared for garlanding. That would make the current score: Poets 3, Others 3. Though what unites all six is that they were involved in the national struggle. Earlier this park also had road traffic weaving through it and dividing it into four zones, a completely unused road safety playground for children, and large ugly concrete hoops that were meant to train vegetation to bend over them, but never achieved this. These, happily, are gone.

The park's centrepiece, the Aayi Mandapam from the time of Napoleon III, about 150 years ago, will be even more gleaming, illuminated and accessible. Surrounded by flagging, it will be the focus of a series of granite walkways - most of them meandering through the park and inviting a ramble. Will a well-lit new park be open in the evening to permit this leafy alternative to Beach Road's evening promenade?

If you have a moment, go have a look at our park in transition. There are plans to remake the area around it, all the way to the Beach Road. It all looks quite promising. Let's hope for, and encourage, the best.

PETER RICHARDS

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