I was visiting my a town for my friend’s wedding this week. The bus journey took me through many tiny villages which I used to see through the bus window as a kid. I started to realize that they changed as it happens to any place with time. Many new built houses which lost the ‘Telangana village house’ touch, youth wearing all the modern attire, shops with modern names written in abused Telugu. There were old people with wrinkled faces still wearing traditional Telangana attire and jewellery like those few old houses which almost looked hunched.
It is not bad to get along with the world, I am not against it. Learning new things, following trends and imitating others is inevitable in this time. But my only worry is that once these old faces fade away, bodies with the traditional attire die and the house are demolished, there won’t be any difference between the Telangana Village or some random village in North India or some place in western world ( except the faces) . The whole heritage will be lost in time. Traveling won’t be an experience any more. It would just be a task. You just go to this particular place, take pictures and come back. I really am not sure whether thinking this way is proper, but I simply dislike Globalization.
Talking about heritage takes to me to the Heritage town, Pondicherry. When I was a preparing a list of places to be seen in Pondicherry, I came across walking/ cycle tours through heritage town, Pondicherry. Which made me wonder. As it happens our hotel was located in the heritage town itself. So one evening we wanted to explore the area by foot.
Pondicherry used to be a french colony. Heritage town, Pondicherry is a kind of colony with planned and structured streets. There are many perpendicular and parallel roads and it is pretty easy to get lost. You can wander for hours in the streets without getting to your destination, if you are lost. The houses have this typical french or traditional tamilnadu building styles. Those buildings are now used as residential complexes, schools, offices and even heritage hotels. This is also a prominent shopping area where all major brand stores are located. You get various options for street food.
As we got lost multiple times, a 1 km to the beach walk took more than 40 mins for us. But this was a worthy effort as we could see these beautiful buildings en route.
As I was emphasizing earlier, If you have a special heritage, it is crime not to preserve it properly. INTACH is doing that job in Pondicherry. Kudos to their efforts.
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