One week only left in Vellore! It will be a sad moment for me.- I've grown used to this place and have also made a circle of friends here, who I'll miss. Yesterday, Prof Chandy invited me over to dinner at his place, about 20 minutes drive out of Vellore, into the countryside literally. He has a lovely house set in a vast plot of land with coconut palms, flowers and medicinal plants (including the periwinkle from which vincristine, a chemotherapy agent, is extracted). The place is serene and sitting in his living room, the bustle of Vellore seems a distant memory. He had also invited a classmate of his (from CMC, where they both had trained 40 years ago!) who is presently Prof of psychiatry in Pittsburg, USA and a gap-year student who is working in Mrs Chandy's playroom for children at CMC Hospital. The food was excellent and I had a nice time, talking about non-haematology matters for a change! The pet Daschund they have is very friendly... a little too firendly.
This Saturday I've invited most of the Department for a farewell dinner at the favourite local restaurant, on the rooftop of one of the best hotels in Vellore, the Darling Regency. I've been there a few times and the food and service is excellent.
On Sunday, a couple of us are planning to climb the hill that I must have mentioned earlier- unfortunately due to my frequent ramblings out of Vellore, this earlier intention of mine seems so have been relegated to one of the last things I'll be doing here.
On the subject of rambling, I finally managed to visit Pondycherry last weekend. It was a gruelling 5 hour journey and I left Vellore at 6am. On arrival, first impressions were those of yet another south indian city, however a walk across a canal that divided the old colonial town into a Hindu Ville Noire and a White Ville Blanche, quickly and dramatically revealed that that ancient boundary had not yet evaporated. The 'Ville blanche' closer to the sea was cleaner, less crowded and had beautiful colonial whitewashed building dotted about the well marked streets carrying famililar names of old french governors and political figures (familiar because the same names took an active part in the story of Mauritius e.g Mahe de Labourdonnais, whose statue is on the waterfront, Dupleix, etc). The other dominating feature of the town is the omnipresence of the Aurobindo movement. Sri Aurbindo Ghose (b.1872-1950, a King's college, Cambridge graduate) fled Calcutta under British Raj, against which he had actively fought before turning into a philosopher/sage/spiritualist, and settled in Pondy. He seems to have a worldwide following and there is an AShram set up by him in Pondy which receives visitors and followers from the word over. I stayed at one of the AShram guesthouses, which had a beautiful location right in from of the sea. The food in some of the French-Indian restaurants was excellent. Overall, Pondy was very atmospheric, but one could sense the tentacles of a certain laissez-allez gradually overtaking the place and leaving some of the colonial architectural relics in dire state.