Celebrating the 5th Heritage Festival of Pondicherry -2019

The festival expanded this year with several local organisations and individuals actively involved in organising events, under the Pondicherry heritage festival banner. This overwhelming response made the heritage festival again a three weeks event from 22nd January to 11th February 2019

The emphasis for this year’s festival was on Pondicherry ’s splendid natural heritage, including the coast, and wetlands. The natural heritage is as much at risk as built heritage, and often gets overlooked. Hence this year the focus was on coasts and wetlands through photo exhibitions, storytelling, excursions, art activities and community events to create awareness about the deteriorating natural heritage of Pondicherry.

The Press were invited at the Alliance Française (AFP)Auditorium, 58 Suffren Street, Pondicherry, on Monday 21st January 2019 at 11:00 am to announce the 5th Pondicherry Heritage Festival 2019

Organisers: Mr. Ashok Panda and Mr. Arul (co-conveners of INTACH Pondicherry); Kakoli Banerjee, Bitasta Samantaray, Radha Srinivasan, Raje (People for Pondicherry’s Heritage); Sunaina Mandeen (co-founder, PondyCAN)

Festival Partners:Dr. Satish Nallam, President, Alliance Francaise; Dr. Raphael Mathevet, Head of department of Ecology, French Institute; Mr. Dipen Desai, Director Marketing, Hidesign.
along with others from the organising team were present to meet and brief the Press

The various events for this year have been divided according to the nature of the events as follows

EDUCATIONAL

Events organised for school children in order to inculcate a sense of preserving their heritage

EXCURSIONS

To visit our wetlands and see the flora and fauna that we have in Pondicherry

EXHIBITIONS

Photograohy contest entries and the artwork of students and artists were displayed at various locations

MADE IN PONDY

Our annual event of setting up an art and craft bazaar of all things made in Pondy

PERFORMANCES

Various performances were held at different locations by well known artistes.

HERITAGE AND FOOD WALKS

We started a Food trail this year, which was very popular

OPEN HOUSES

Another regular feature of our festival when visitors are allowed into buildings which are generally not open to all.

ROUND-TABLE

We had a discussion between well known local authors at the IFP

BOOK LAUNCH

"Beyond the Boulevards" written by Aditi Sri Ram who teaches writing at Ashoka University.

ACTIVITIES FOR CHILDREN

Creative Expressions

This year Pondicherry Heritage Festival hosted various programs for the school children to ignite the young minds about their heritage and make them participate and celebrate the heritage of their town. The program also made them understand the importance of heritage and the need to preserve them. The program was hosted by Dr. Kannan and his team with the support of INTACH Pondicherry and Department of tourism, Pondicherry. The Government of Puducherry School of Education department had accorded permission to conduct the programs and a circular to this effect was sent to nearly 500 schools by India Post and email. Invitations were sent to all Government, Govt. aided schools and private schools of Pondicherry Urban and Rural areas and to Cuddalore and Tindivanam. The entire program was spread over 2 days
The first day events CREATIVE EXPRESSION competitions were held at the Art and Craft Village, a project of Tourism Department Govt of Puducherry. Below are the events that were conducted as a part of the festival.

Painting, Sketching, Collage, Letter Writing, Poem Writing, Powerpoint, Debate, Solo dance, Group dance, Photography competition.
The topic for all competitions was heritage (Cultural / Spiritual / Natural) and History of Pondicherry

The schools had mailed the organizing team and there were 1100 participants on the first day

Heritage Quiz

Thanks to volunteers from INTACH Pondicherry – their office staff, architects, Interns and college students from Mahatma Gandhi Medical College and PHF members were there in large numbers to take care of registration, event coordination food and security. The government agencies like Police outpost was created. Fire equipment’s kept ready and a full-fledged ambulance was also ready at the site. The Tourism Department staff were very helpful, and the Director of Tourism attended the program and gave his speech to the students. Food was arranged for all 1100 students and to all accompanying teachers also. The program commenced at 8 00am and ended by 4 00 pm.

On the 23rd of January, a Heritage quiz was organised by Dr. Kannan and Pondicherry Heritage festival organisers. It was held at Alliance Francaise Campus, Pondicherry with the support of Education Department, Pondicherry. All the schools of Pondicherry participated in the program. There were about 48 schools with 500 children. Winners were felicitated by the Alliance Francaise officials and Dr. Dinkar Palande, an internationally recognised pioneer in hand surgery. The program was coordinated by Monsieur Saikat and Madame Marie Joelle of Alliance Francaise and INTACH Pondicherry.

Streetplay

Reclaiming the streets for children - Street Play

On February 10, one of the streets in the historic area was pedestrianised from 10 AM – 1 PM for the children to play. The street play event was meant to revive the manner of experiencing public spaces the way it was meant to be as we transformed Eswaran Koil Street in the historic town to be free of motorised traffic and clean for children to play. Historically as well, the streets in the Boulevard town was a place for social activity where people gathered, built relationships or shared thoughts about their world while children played in the streets without any concerns. Unfortunately, the streets have been lost to vehicles. Children today need the chance to be outside, active, making friends and being part of the community just as much as the previous generation did. Hence Pondicherry Heritage Festival brought this back to promote greater sense of community, overall happiness and reclaim more friendly streets for children. Like any other open streets in the world, it was a free event. Door to door campaign was done in and around Eswaran Koil Street to create awareness about the need for the children to be outside.

Residents and children in the Boulevard town actively participated in the event and made it a huge success. The event was conceptualised and hosted by Ananthi Velmurugan, Conservation Architect and Research Scholar at INTACH Heritage Academy and was largely supported by INTACH Pondicherry. Mrs. Radha of Pondicherry Heritage Festival team taught the traditional games for the children.

Creating awareness through art at Lake Kanagan

Storytelling, walking, fishing, drawing and painting at Kanagan Eri Lake

To create awareness among children to conserve the waterbodies of the town, a painting and Kolam (Rangoli) competition was organised by the French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP), INTACH Pondy and Pondy Can on the banks of the Kanagan lake on February 10th. The objective was to create widespread awareness among students and sensitise them towards protection of water resources, its augmentation, conservation and reuse. As many as 47 children from schools located near the lake participated in the event as a part of the Pondicherry Heritage Festival. The Kanagaeri lake needs a long-term action plan to conserve for the future generations. Frederic Landy, Director of the French Institute of Pondicherry, said that all lakes and tanks in South India were created for bringing surface water to the farmers. Now the farmers neither use ground water or surface water and there is no agriculture. The idea is to make people aware of the use of Kanagan Eri. Cities need green spaces and must preserve the natural habitat in order to attract tourists and investments. Hence Pondicherry Heritage Festival was used as an anchor to create awareness among the locals, especially children.

Color Pondy Book event

Colour Pondy’s heritage

On the 11th February 2019, evening, around 80 school children were invited to French Consulate lawn for the Heritage colouring event “Colour Pondy’s Beauty” – for children and adults in love with Pondicherry ’s Heritage”. During the evening the French counsulate distributed the book to school children along with colouring pencil and required stationary. The kids were excited to colour the heritage of Pondicherry from the book. The Colour Pondy’s heritage was the last event of Pondicherry Heritage Festival 2019.

Excursions

Discover Bahour

The town of Bahour has played an important role in both the cultural and natural history of Pondicherry. It is home to the Chola-period Mulanathaswami temple as well as Bahour lake, one of region’s most important water-bodies and a significant habitat for migratory birds. Totally, 25 people made to the tour. The event was organised by PondyCAN. Alex, lead the tour and explained the participants about the heritage of Bahour. The walk commenced with the visit to Moolanathaswamy temple, where he spoke about the history, significance of the placement of the statues, inscriptions and others. Then the participants were taken to the Bahour lake, where they had the opportunity to view the natural heritage of Pondicherry. The trip was concluded with the visit to the Bangari and Singari water tank.

Wetlands tour- World wetlands day Oussudu lake adventure

On the World Wetlands day, a wetlands tour was organised as a part of the Pondicherry Heritage festival. Oussudu Lake is the region’s largest water-bodies and a designated protected (as opposed to actually protected) habitat for migratory birds. Raphael Mathavet, Head of the Department of Ecology at the French Institute of Pondicherry conducted the tour. The century old lake, which attracts about 20,000 migratory birds every year is around 12 kilometres from Puducherry and has been designated one of the most important wetlands in Asia by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. An enthusiastic group of locals and school children actively participated in the tour.

Exhibitions

Photography exhibition: A walk through Pondicherry ’s streetscapes.

Pondicherry heritage festival hosted a “Built Heritage and Streetscapes of Pondicherry” exhibition. The aim was to capture the heritage of Pondicherry through the lens of the locals and make them actively participate in conserving the heritage of Pondicherry. Many young and amateur residents enthusiastically participated in the competition. Art work created by school children on the art activities event were also displayed in the exhibition. The exhibition was held at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Exhibition Hall in the beach road for a period of 5 days from 28th January to 1st February. The event was hosted by Ms. Kakoli Banerjee, Pondicherry heritage festival team and INTACH Pondicherry.

Photography exhibition - Groves of Aiyaṉār / les bosquets Sacrés d’Aiyaṉār

In sacred groves at the edges of settlements, Aiyanar, the local god, deploys his army of cows, horses, and elephants of terracotta. They stand in wait, ready for him to mount, so that he may chase away maleficent forces that threaten to disturb the serenity of sleeping villagers after dark. The exhibition featured the photographs of Jean-Louis Cardin’s photographs titled Les bosquets sacres d’ Aiyanar/ Groves of Aiyanar which was inaugurated by her excellency, Kiran Bedi, the Lieutenant Governor of Pondicherry. This photographic exhibition reflected the fragile and eerie beauty of such shrines, ancient and modern, that are spread across the length and breadth of the Tamil-speaking south. The exhibition was held at Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient from 31st January to 28th February.

Photography exhibition: Interpreting heritage through art

This exhibition of works by Pondicherry artists featured local streetscapes and captured the essence of the town as well as vignettes of its special heritage. Artists include: Abel, Ejoumale, Candappan, Gopal Jayaraman, Gayatri, Silambarasan, Shanmugam, Vaasudevan, Saravanan. P, S.r.Vengadesh, RadjaPerumal, Sugumaaran, K.K. Segar, Tiroumalai, Sreedar, S.M.C. Rajesh, Manimaran, and Saravanan P. The exhibition was held at Maison Colambani from 1st February to 10th February.

World Wetlands and Climate Change

Our wetlands are a crucial defence against many of the ravages of climate change. This photo competition was hosted by Raphael Mathavet, Head of the Department of Ecology at IFP to create awareness among the residents about theirnatural heritage. The participants captured the unique importance and beauty of the imperilled ecosystem. The selected entries were displayed on the French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP) beach side façade. The Chief Secretary of Pondicherry gave away the prizes to the winners.

Performances

Dance/storytelling by Dr. Anita Ratnam

Dr. Anita Ratnam presented her complex and multi-dimensional” neo-Bharatam” and spoken word piece, ‘Ma3Ka’, on a Tuesday night in the serene courtyard of Gratitude, a restored French- era building, as a part of Pondicherry Heritage Festival. Using Vedic hymns, singing, silence, drumming, contemporary mythology, and a distinctive movement vocabulary, Ma3Ka is the performative expression of the Hindu goddesses Saraswati, Lakshmi, and Meenakshi. Each of these divine matriarchs — representing knowledge, prosperity, and martial art — is refracted through the prism of Dr. Ratnam’s personal narratives. The event was held at Gratitude Heritage Guest House on February 5th.

Dance Navarasa
An odissi dance recital based on the nine aesthetic flavours or emotions of Indian art was performed by Ms. Unmukta Sinha. A rasa when translated literally means “juice, essence, or taste”. According to the natya shastra, entertainment is a desired effect of performance arts but not the primary goal. The primary goal is to transport the individual in the audience into another parallel reality, full of wonder and bliss, where he experiences the essence of his own consciousness, and reflects on spiritual and moral questions. The event was held at Alliance Francaise on January 31st.

NRITYASANGEET

Poojarini Chowdhury, a dancer, choreographer and singer, of Redfeet dance studio Pondicherry, presented a Nritya Sangeet Recital for the Pondicherry Heritage festival 2019 titled “Dancing Devotion”, with dancers from the heritage village of Anegundi, Hampi, and others. She danced with them and also sang while dancing, wonderfully refreshing renditions of well-known traditional songs of devotion through the ages.

Set in the courtyard of the Lycee Francais, with the back drop of the beautiful tree, this program took the audience on a journey in time through the Spiritual poetic Heritage of India from the 7th century till our times. Starting with a sloka in Sanskrit followed by songs and poems written by Annamacharya, Amir Khusroo, Namdev, Meera bai Rabindranath Tagore and Boloram Jana, in seven different languages from four corners of the country. Poojarini led the singing as she danced, with a guitar and tabla accompaniment. This unique and fluid performance with the lilting melodies in the multiple languages were further enhanced by the French circus artist who danced with a crystal ball.

NRITYANJALI

Performing Arts Club of Mahatma Gandhi Medical College & Research Institute, a constituent college of Sri Balaji Vidyapeeth in association with Pondicherry Heritage Festival organized Nrityanjali, an Odissi Dance performance by Mr Aneesh Raghavan at SBV on 4th February 2019. Aneesh Raghavan, a disciple of renowned Odissi exponent Smt. Sangeeta Dash has performed at several prestigious venues in our country and abroad.

Music - Songs of Nature
Carnatic music students presented folk songs on nature in several languages. The renditions were in Tamil, Malayalam, Telegu, Gujarati, Bengali, Kashmiri and Rajasthani with the accompaniment of Arumukhanam-a six faced percussion designed by S.Gopakumar, assistant professor of Bharathiar Palkalaikoodam. The event was held at INTACH Pondicherry on 8th February.

Heritage Walks & Food Trails

Local food- The Pondicherry Culinary Trail

An exclusive food walk was conducted from Feb 7- Feb 8. The food walk explored the local cuisine of Pondicherry ranging from local road side shops to restaurants to coffee shops to ice cream bars. The tour was designed and guided by Edwin of Eat Pondy. While the tour was free, participants paid for their food. Both the days, the trail was a hit and people kept asking for more such walks

Heritage walks were also conducted as we have done in the previous years

Open Houses

Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient and Lycee Français de Pondicherry opened its doors on 2nd February and 9th February respectively in the occasion of the Pondicherry Heritage festival. These open houses gave the opportunity to the residents and travellers to Pondicherry to visit some of the most beautiful heritage buildings which are normally not open to the public.

Made in Pondy

The heritage of creativity and entrepreneurship continues to this day. Each year at the Pondicherry heritage festival, made in Pondy brings a collection of the finest products in the region, made and design by our brightest local talent. The products were at sale in the Crafts bazaar, Gandhi Thidal from 1st February to 5th February.

Book Launch

Beyond the Boulevards: a short biography of Pondicherry by Aditi Sriram
Pondicherry has been arranging and rearranging itself ever since it was pétanqued onto a patch of South Indian land where different boules—artists, journalists, scholars, language learners, DJs, tourists, students, labourers, shop owners, ashramites—knock against each other, “tok-tok”. Some boules confront each other, some keep their distance, others roll purposefully in different directions. Beyond the Boulevards was written by Aditi Sri Ram who teaches writing at Ashoka University. The event was held at Palais de Mahe on 6th February and was organised by Dilip Kapur, Founder and President of Hidesign and Pondicherry Heritage Festival.

Round table discussion on cities

The roundtable on cities was hosted at the French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP) as part of the Pondicherry Heritage Festival 2019 which brought together five authors – Anu Majumdar and Akash Kapur, writers from Auroville, who have authored books on Universal township, Nirmal Lakshman, Director of The Hindu Group of Publications and author of Degree Coffee by the Yard, Aditi Sri Ram, author of Beyond the Boulevards and P. Raja, historian-author.
The authors discussed challenges in their respective journeys towards discovering the soul of their cities in their books. Frederic Landy, Director of French Institute of Pondicherry and Sunaina Mandeen, co- founder of PondyCAN and organiser of the festival, also participated in the discussion.

Mr. Kapur discussed the philosophical content of the City of Dawn and the complex concept behind the founding of Auroville and growing up there. While Ms. Sri Ram pointed out the different perceptions of the city life and amid the dramatic changes in the landscape, one still felt that one had a handle on things. Mr. Raja recounted that the inspiration to write the ConciseHistory of Pondicherry cameas much from his school teacherwho always emphasized the importance of a grasp of local history that largely shaped his perspective. Ms. Lakshman described how she developed newer insights into what the city really was and how it differed from the assumptions ingrained while growing up. Ms. Majumdar, who moderated the discussion, noted that what distinguished the works of participant- authors was that the narrative was not removed from the realities of other people.