Geetanjali Krishna: It's a lonely planet after all

PEOPLE LIKE THEM

It's a hot, hot morning in Pondicherry. I duck into a juice shop for some much-needed refreshment, and order a fresh pineapple juice. The owner beckons me inside while he makes the juice, and asks whether I want some milk in the juice. "Milk?" I ask, wondering if I've heard him right, "Why would I want milk in pineapple juice?" The owner shrugs, as his ancient juicer takes off with a drone befitting a helicopter. "That's how I make it for most of the foreigners who come to my shop.

They seem to like it that way. I don't, but then, I don't really understand their ways!" I linger on a bit, happy to be under a cool fan, and we chat some more. I ask what places he thinks I must see in Pondicherry. "Go to Auroville," he says, "the Matri Mandir is very beautiful." I ask him whether he's seen it, and he replies in the negative: "but the foreigners seem to like it a lot," he says. I walk on ahead to find that Pondicherry's famous Sunday market is overflowing with surfing gear. "Can one surf here?" I ask stupidly. The shopkeeper grins: "no, but the mad foreigners who come here love these shorts." He shows me some that were bright yellow with side panels in black and white zebra stripes. Their built-in net briefs leave one in no doubt they're for men. "I've got them especially for French ladies!" he says.

The next couple of days, I find that in Pondicherry, even more so than in other touristy places which the Lonely Planet-types seem to frequent, the twain between the East and West, between the locals and the foreign tourists "" looks as if it rarely meets. In social interactions, the locals use Tamil and the all purpose nod to keep foreigners at arms length. And most foreigners I see wear Indian clothes, read Hindu philosophy and go for that yoga lesson every morning "" but in the evenings, congregate in homogeneous groups, in restaurants that the guidebooks recommend, making little effort to get to know any locals.

Local attitudes towards the tourists range from curiosity to apathy. "How can these people come and stay here for months without really doing any work?" asks the waiter at one of the restaurants I visit, "don't they have any jobs, families?" The man I buy fresh pineapple from everyday says he doesn't need any extra contact with the people who give him so much business, "these white people are on holiday. They don't want to befriend us and get depressed by our poverty. As long as they buy pineapple from me, and feel benevolent for paying me more than the market rate, I don't care if I don't know them and they don't know me!"

Stories about westerners blissed out of sync with reality, who throng the Aurobindo Ashram and Auroville, abound. Here's my favourite "" some years ago, a cyclonic storm hit Pondicherry. The manager of an up-market hotel saw the thatched roof of his garden restaurant about to lift off. "Let's try and hold it down," he shouted to his dismayed staff, "and two people shift whatever you can inside!" Everybody was working furiously, the rain relentlessly battering their heads and the wind making it almost impossible to stand upright. Just then, two foreigners strolled in, seemingly oblivious to the weather and the drama in the garden. They went to the manager, holding a tall stool on which a waiter teetered, fighting a losing battle with the wind, and ask, "could you get us some coffee please?"