Mahé: Then and Now, and the Sad Demise of all Things French!  

It was lovely to be back in Mahé! The place looks different, smaller somehow, less grand, but located in a beautiful spot where the Mahé River flows into the Arabian Sea. The forest behind the house that we clambered over as 16 and 17 year olds, used to be full of dangerously steep rocks and dense vegetation with a hard to reach lighthouse at the summit. 

Hilltop and Walkway

Now there’s a stone stairway, constructed in 2015, reaching all the way to the top. The wilderness and brambles have been tamed. There are canopied lookouts and stone seats at the summit to admire the horizon beyond the Arabian Sea. The path below has been developed into a walkway that’s very French-looking, très Corniche! Another small vestige of the French is the statue of Marianne (symbol of the French Republic - of liberté, égalité, et fraternité), still standing in the garden, now rather inaptly called Tagore Park! 

A former French colony on the west coast of India in northern Malabar, (just south of Tellicherry in Kerala State), Mahé is an obscure and sleepy little backwater - only famous (I like to think) for hosting us Joseph siblings during brief blips in our lives: our holidays while we studied at Coimbatore’s Nirmala College, Madras University!  

Administrator’s Bungalow

We stayed at the Administrator’s bungalow when my late Pondicherry-based uncle, P.L. Samy, was appointed Administrator, the highest government position in the territory. Known by my immediate family as “Uncle Lourdes,” P.L. Samy was a tall, intensely scholarly man, better known for his book on the flowers in ancient Tamil (Sangam) literature rather than for any administrative proclivities!  

However, as an IAS officer with the Pondicherry Government, Uncle Lourdes accepted the Mahé position and (I’m assuming) enjoyed the few perks that came with the job, although he found it irksome to be away from the center of power (Pondicherry). We, his nieces enjoyed the perks more than he did! This meant getting access to the latest copies of Paris Match and French music: Enrico Macias, Françoise Hardy, Adamo; we were so fashionably on trend, we thought!  

At Indian Independence in 1947, the French colonies were Pondicherry and Karaikal in Tamilnadu, Mahé in Kerala, Yanam in Andhra Pradesh, and Chandernagore in West Bengal. The last was ceded by 1950 and, by 1954, the majority of legislators in the remaining enclaves opted to join India. Pondicherry’s name was changed to Puducherry in 2006. 

Arikamedu

I remember my Dad mentioning Arikamedu, an archaeological site not far from Pondicherry on the (east coast), where the archaeologists Sir Mortimer Wheeler and Jean-Marie Casal conducted excavations nearly a century ago. They found Roman amphorae and lamps, black ceramic ware, glass and stone beads and concluded that Arikamedu traded with the Roman Empire from as early as the first century BC. Later excavations in the 1990s placed the settlement and trading post from the 2nd century BC to the 8th century AD. 

Kutty Thambi

I peeped inside the Administrator’s house and took a quick pic of the ceiling notorious for being the spot where my then-infant cousin Kutty Thambi peed in the upstairs bedroom and the pee dripped into the parlor below - where a meeting with important guests from Pondy headquarters was taking place! Grace à Dieu, the guests were none the wiser about what was stealthily dripping over their heads through the worn out wooden slats!  

Mahogany Furniture, Muskets and Bayonets

I remember the house as large with creaky stairs. It was old, poorly maintained, but with rather striking 19th century mahogany and rosewood furniture: chests of drawers, cabinets, stand-alone cupboards full of moldy newspapers, magazines and other detritus left behind by the French colonial rulers that I loved to explore. I recall how exciting it was to discover faded newspaper cuttings on Arikamedu stored away by previous staff. 

Some of that furniture, including a very handsome table, as well as antique muskets and bayonets are now on display in a one-room museum on the premises which we took a quick peek at! When I first saw the bayonets I thought of W.M. Thackeray’s description of the Battle of Waterloo in ‘Vanity Fair’ or even Georgette Heyer’s evocative account in, was it “An Infamous Army?”

I distinctly remember the cook from the old days! He was an elderly Kerala Muslim and an expert in French and local cuisines. He could whip up the lightest of soufflés as easily as he could a Keralite molee curry! He had been trained by the French ladies who once lived in the bungalow. 

French Culture or Lack Thereof

Sadly, there are even fewer remnants of French culture in Mahé than there are in Pondicherry. On the east coast, it is quite overwhelmed by the all-encompassing all-enveloping Tamil culture! Why, even the strong waves of Bengali culture emanating from the Aurobindo Ashram don’t stand a chance against the Tamil! Sure you have the French Quarter and the street names in French and Tamil, but they’re just tokenism in my view! The French were in Pondy for nearly 300 years; there should’ve been more of an impact!  

I remember a discussion with the French Ambassador in Hanoi years ago (when I visited Vietnam for the WB/IFC) and he was grumbling about how the influence of America was so pervasive that French was practically unknown in Vietnamese schools or elsewhere. It was all American English and American movies, all the time, he mourned! He didn’t know a single family that maintained French traditions or even spoke French! I told him Pondicherry was very similar and that the French - despite being in India even longer than they were in Vietnam - were content not to be the dominant culture! 

Ludi Joseph

Krishna Beach Resort

Pallikunnu, Kerala

January 20, 2020

The Walkway

Administrator’s Bungalow 

Hilltop Plaque 

View of the Bungalow from the rear garden 

Heritage Hillock

Stone Stairway

The Infamous Ceiling!

The Mahé River Enters the Arabian Sea

Lighthouse

At the Bungalow, Mahé 

Le Corniche