Sunils blog

This week i took a rather long off from work and went home to Mahe. This visit was special because, it is after a long time that i am going back to mahe. I took a bus to MAHE from bangalore, that is the only method of transport available between these cities. I slept well in the bus.Next day i were woken up by the fresh fragrance of kerala.

I started spotting the green on both sides of the road. Thats again the speciality of kerala. Its green everywhere. This greenery can probably be atributed to the amount of Rain that it receives through out the year. It is reasonable enough to wonder i do i need to be praising the beauty so much. Only thing i want to say is that i am not a keralite. instead i am from U.T. Pondicherry. (Now i think that point requires an explanation..)

Much to my surprise i have found that, not many people know that pondicherry is unique in its geography. It has only 4 districts but none of them shares boundaries with another. The 4 districts are called Pondicherry, Karaikal, Yanam and MAHE. All of these places were ruled by the FRENCH (and not BRITISH). and so they still co-exists as one single state. Out of these districts Karikal and Pondicherry are in Tamilnadu (although far from each other), Yanam is in Andhrapradesh. and MAHE is inside kerala near the Malabar coast. (Yes. It is a bit of a dilema to coexist as a state when the Mahe share the culture of kerala and pondichery with the tamilian culture, but that itself is the best thing about MAHE.)

Mahe went though the French rule without much Fuzz (The reason being the frech were really very considerate to the civilians in Mahe) and so we got Freedom only 5 years after the rest of india - in 1954. Mahe still boasts some of the unique remainings of the Frech rule and culture. Like the school that teaches French “Ecole Centrale et Cours Complementaires”. Mahe, animated by the rustic green and the white sand of long beaches. A visitor could easily mistake Mahe for Goa, with its beaches and the bars. While walking through the narrow roads, one can see the newly built palatial houses, memorials for those who fought for independence, the church built 150 years ago by Frenchmen, the sea-side and the temples. Noted for its Gothic architecture, the church contains rare and beautiful glass panels depicting events from the life of Christ. Mahe is a good example for communal harmony with its breathtakingly beautiful churches and temples existing side by side.

Mayyazhi (Mayye or Mahe) as described by the great novelist M. mukundan is the land of myth’s. And mukundan’s “ON THE BANKS OF THE MAYYAZHI” (translation by Gita Krishnankutty) is a collection of all those myth’s and stories.

Mukundan conjures a potpourri of characters, from the impotent Gaston, strumming a guitar through the night, incarcerated in the darkness of his own choice, to the idealistic but doomed Dasan and the voluptuous courtesan Kunhichirutha. When freedom dawns on Mayazzhi, the French leave behind a perplexed populace, rudderless and lost, not unlike the souls of the departed that hover aimlessly like dragonflies over the Velliyan Rock. “A veil of darkness as fine as hymen” continues to envelope the town. One of Malayalam literature’s favourite sons, Mukundan has woven a memorable tale.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 2nd, 2006 at 4:38 pm and is filed under nostalgia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.