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Pondy by night

Most of Pondy goes early to bed, but a late-night stroll through the town is refreshing

PHOTO: T. SINGARAVELOU

WHEN THE TOWN SLEEPS There are a few who are awake and working.

It's late, but we're not sleepy. Why not go out, on foot or on a bicycle, for a breath of fresh air and to experience Pondy by night?

Midnight is one of Pondy's least seen faces. Most Pondicherrians are at home well before then. There is a general feeling that people who are outdoors after a certain hour are probably up to no good. Could this be so?

To begin with, there are quite a few people moving around the Boulevard Town in the dark. "In the dark" because some streets are badly lit, either because there is no lighting or because it has burned out. These occasional hearts of darkness stand in sharp contrast to the giant towers of light around the town (in front of the cathedral on Mission Street, for instance) that are so bright they must be beacons for extra-terrestrial landings.

Most of those out at midnight are men. Men going to and from night shifts in response to the mournful wailing siren from the mills. There are a few small shops still open on Bharathi Street where metal smiths prepare orders for tomorrow's customers. Bus and lorry drivers with their human and packaged cargoes still hurtle about, though most drivers are asleep within their parked vehicles.

There are men issuing en masse from the last movie and men high, but benignly so, from an evening of drinking. Other men sprawl asleep on the town's benches or in their rickshaws in contortions maximising the comfort possible in such restricted conditions. Others are hunched in states of consciousness that could be anything — madness, drunkenness, minds starved of nutrition (the brain consumes a lot of energy) or the sadhu's lucidity.

Yet there are also women about. Most are cleaning the streets here, there, everywhere, with brooms and buckets. Others lie on the pavements near their stalls in the various markets of the town, resting for a few hours until new produce comes with the dawn.

Walk along

Men and women are seldom together. Exceptions include those coming away from marriage halls in this auspicious season for weddings, and those in the brightly lit "station" by the canal meant for families and friends of patients in the government hospitals. If there are women with men at the southern end of Anna Salai and other places, said to be naughty, they're not to be seen. Pondy is not Mumbai.

Barring the occasional buffalo sitting near the Big Market or occasionally still foraging, the only visible quadrupeds are dogs that seem to take control of the night streets by their very numbers. They guard and patrol with lots of bristling and barking, occasional snapping, and occasional showdowns when other forms of warning have failed. But they continue their daytime vigilance against what indifferent humans can do to them. Sometimes they engage in choral howling, like the wolves they once were.

A few people sit and walk along Beach Road. The extended shoreline, now many metres above the long-gone beach at sea level, seems particularly incongruous at night. The new shore is composed of enormous jagged pieces of stone that have over the past year or so created a breakwater of imposing dimensions. This giant project must be the largest movement of stone for a single project since the French built their biggest fort in the 18th Century.

It is fascinating, even eerie, to watch the activity of a single machine against the dark vastness of the sea. The machine's invisible operator sits in his darkened cabin equipped with a single pivoting beam of light to show him (and curious passersby) what his huge hydraulic arm is doing. The machine's "eye" and "arm" move together with smooth precision. They first assess the dimensions of the next large chunk to be placed. They then move to prepare a crevice for that chunk, and then swing back to the first position to prise and juggle the designated stone into the belly of the huge serrated shovel at the end of the arm.

It's a suspenseful moment since this part of the cycle recalls a fumbling child trying to take in its palm a thing almost too big to grasp and hold. It's a classic case of "try, try again". Then, its prey finally secured in the up-facing scoop, the turret turns back again to invert the boulder into the allotted space, again with remarkable accuracy for so massive a tool and burden. And, finally, the shovel shows raw power by flexing and swivelling like a fist to smash the chunk into pieces that fit the crevice, with a ruthless noise and red sparks where steel smites stone.

And yet, the most remarkable feature of the tableau is the solitary man who, by hand signals to the unseen operator, acts as the sharp-eyed focus of the metallic behemoth that dwarfs him in size and weight, and calls urgent attention to his flesh-and-blood vulnerability. This visible man moves around so close to the restless fist that one fears for him. But his trust in an unseen operator is total, a late-night metaphor for an unwavering human faith in an omnipotent but caring god.

If Beach Road is the most exotic of the boulevards at night, Anna Salai is the busiest. Brightly-lit, aromatic food stalls satisfy the hunger of those fresh from the movies and the bars.

Those who prefer to take refreshment indoors can rely on 24/7 places such as Anandha Inn's Surabi room, or Salt & Pepper at the northern end of the Canal at Patel Salai. Surabi has a clientele consisting largely of those who have come in for a bedtime snack. The crowd at S&P is younger and livelier. Both places have impressive offerings of Indian and international snacks and meals. S&P has dosa and vegetarian curry on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights starting at 11 p.m. The number of people at both places varies with the night, but by 3 o'clock most have followed the rest of the town to bed. This is Pondy, after all.

PETER RICHARDS

(The author can be reached at peterrichards2000@yahoo.com>)

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