Pondicherry Diary: Room with a view and the Banana

By Rahul Banerji

Golf worldwide at a low ebb with the festive season, it was time for the once-in-a-while getaway, and an overdue visit to Pondicherry.

In June of 1980, five young men walked into Loyola College in what was then Madras and struck up an instant friendship.

It is now 40 years and more later and the Choirboys (with due apologies to Joseph Wambaugh) are still a unit.

Tunku (Raya Reddy), Disco (Bhalla), Kuri (Abraham), Sub (Subramanian) and yours truly have all been on life’s roller-coaster in our different ways but have always stayed in touch.

More importantly, we’ve made the effort to meet up as and when circumstances have permitted.

There’s a point to this little walk back into the past.

Injax to Manjax

Two of the first three are still in Chennai and Kuri (Koods to the group) has shifted from his base in Injambakkam (Injax) in Chennai to Manjakuppam (Manjax) near the Tamil Nadu-Pondicherry border.

And Manjax has over the past few years become a haven, the getaway of choice.

Hence the Pondicherry Diary for the next few weeks.

Just short of Manjax — at Koonymedu — is the splendidly-named Hotel Banana Restaurant, where Maglesh lords over his iron griddle with aplomb.

He is the Ceylon paratha (borotta) king of the popular roadside eatery, churning out quantities of the oily stuff that locals flock to consume morning, noon, day and night.

Maglesh does up to 30 of the blessed things at a time after dexterously tossing lumps of dough into wafer-thin sheets that are then folded into squares.

The borottas are then fried with artery-clogging helpings of oil.

The unmentionables

The paratha/borotta comes with a helping of salma, a nutritious coconut-based broth made of veg, fish, meats etc..

In this case, I did not dare to ask but it ticks all the boxes when it comes to taste. They also do a mean tandoori chicken.

Masterji, who migrated to this village 20 years ago from Jharkhand, runs the tandoor and oversees sundry other preparations from the kitchen.

“Shaadi karo, phir jao (get narried before you go),” were his father’s orders then.

Masterji today is the proud father of two bright school-going daughters when he is not bossing the kitchen.

Hotel Banana Restaurant is our go-to fallback when Koods tires of churning out fine dining options at Imagine, his home named for the John Lennon song.

It is to this oasis I retreat every once in a few years to rest and recharge pollution-drained spirits and batteries.

Haven

Imagine is five acres of walled in and bougainvillea-protected peace, dotted with coconut and other fruit trees planted around the house over the last 15-odd years.

The rest has been left to nature and her whims that have in the past included tsunamis, cyclones and the odd lightning strike.

Like the Garden of Eden, it is idyllic, and also has its share of serpents in the form of goons and sundry other roughnecks from surrounding villages.

It’s an uneasy peace, and it holds (mostly).

But the beach is a five-minute walk away, and the sound of wind-rustled leaves and surf are an unfailing lullaby.

Plus, Pondicherry (Puducherry now) with all its attractions is a 10-minute drive away.

Of that though, more on another day.

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