Pondicherry

A village called Puducherry — "new town" in Tamil — stood here long before the Europeans, and a few kilometres south, at Arikamedu, a port traded with the Roman world in the first centuries AD. The modern city dates from 1674, when the French East India Company's agent François Martin established a trading post on land granted by the Sultan of Bijapur's local governor. The town grew with a canal separating the European Ville Blanche from the Indian Ville Noire, and Pondichéry became the capital of French India.

Its great age was brief. Under Joseph François Dupleix, governor from 1742, the French made Pondicherry the base for a bid to dominate southern India, and for a decade challenged the British, capturing Madras in 1746. The British captured it in 1761 and razed its buildings; it changed hands several more times before its final return to France in 1816, by which time it was a small enclave rebuilt on the old plan. Through the 19th century it was a quiet French enclave in British India, and in the early 20th century a refuge for Indian nationalists beyond British reach: the poet Subramania Bharati, from 1908, and the revolutionary turned philosopher Sri Aurobindo, from 1910, who founded his ashram here with the Mother in 1926.

After Indian independence in 1947, France held on for seven years. The French settlements were transferred de facto to India on 1 November 1954, with full legal transfer in 1962, and Pondicherry with Karaikal, Mahé and Yanam became a Union Territory. The city was officially renamed Puducherry in 2006. Heritage conservation and tourism have since revived the French Quarter, while the Tamil town has grown into a busy ordinary Indian city around it.

Pondicherry's culture is Tamil with a French accent. Tamil is the language of the streets, the temples and the kitchens; French survives on street signs, in a community of French citizens, in the lycée and the Alliance Française, and in the ritual of Bastille Day. The Catholic churches, one of which still offers mass in French, Tamil and English, are as much a part of the skyline as the gopurams of the temples, and the city's Muslim quarter adds a third tradition.

The Sri Aurobindo Ashram gives the city a reflective tone that is unusual in India. Its members run a school, workshops, guesthouses and a printing press, and its houses spread across much of White Town. Auroville, the "city of dawn" founded by the Mother in 1968 as a place for people of all countries to live together, draws residents from dozens of nations and sends a stream of artists, craftspeople and seekers into the city. Together they have made Pondicherry a centre for yoga and for crafts such as handmade paper.

Tamil culture supplies the festivals and the daily manners. Pongal in January, the Manakula Vinayagar temple's golden chariot and the city's evening habit of walking the promenade are the rhythms of public life. The poets Bharati and Bharathidasan are honoured as the voices of Tamil renewal, and their houses are museums. The city's identity is often summed up by its own nickname, the French Riviera of the East — a phrase that flatters a small, friendly, slightly sleepy town, but captures its difference from everywhere else on this coast.

The city proper has a population of around 250,000, within a Puducherry district of about 950,000. The economy rests on government — the territory's administration is a large employer — together with tourism, education, light industry in estates on the edge of town and the ashram's own enterprises. Fishing continues from the villages along the coast, and the city keeps a community of French citizens, including retired French civil servants.

Daily life in the Tamil town begins before dawn, with kolam patterns drawn in rice flour at doorsteps, flower sellers in the markets and the first filter coffee from the meals restaurants. Shops open late and shut for the heat; the evening is for the promenade, when the whole city — families, students from the university and the medical colleges, ashramites and tourists — walks beside the sea. White Town keeps a slower, quieter pace, with its heritage hotels and cafés, and Auroville's residents move between the township and the city.

Current concerns include the loss of the city's beach: a harbour breakwater built in 1989 just south of the city stopped the natural flow of sand, and the seafront is now a boulder wall, though the government has taken steps to build a reef and bring sand back. Traffic has grown faster than the roads, weekend crowds from Chennai strain the French Quarter, and heritage houses are lost each year to demolition despite campaigns to protect them. Water, drawn from aquifers under the territory, is also under pressure.

Pondicherry's food is Tamil at heart. The day's staple is the meals restaurant lunch: rice on a banana leaf with sambar, rasam, kootu and poriyal vegetables, curd and pickle, refilled until the diner surrenders. Breakfast and tiffin bring idli, dosa, vada and pongal with coconut chutney and the strong, sweet filter coffee of the Tamil south. The coast supplies fish and prawn curries sharpened with tamarind, and the territory's lower alcohol duties mean beer and spirits are a draw for visitors from neighbouring Tamil Nadu.

What sets the city apart is the creole cooking that grew up between the two halves of the town. Franco-Tamil dishes use French technique with local spice: fish assad curry, a coconut-milk curry flavoured with anise and curry leaves; meen puyabaise, bouillabaisse reworked with turmeric; and a local vindaloo unlike Goa's, while coq au vin and ratatouille appear on menus too. Pondicherry's bakeries sell baguettes and croissants alongside Indian sweets, and the heritage hotels and cafés of White Town serve French and Mediterranean food.

The ashram and Auroville have added a third layer: wholefood bakeries, organic cafés and vegetarian restaurants with a European cast. The markets of the Tamil town are the place to see the raw materials — jasmine, bananas, fresh fish and the spices of the Tamil kitchen — and the streets around them have the snack stalls and sweet shops of a Tamil market town. On the promenade, Le Café on the seafront has long been where the evening walk pauses for coffee.