My last night in Pondicherry was destined to be an eventful one, literally.   It was a full moon and evidently the Hindu astrologers had noted that this was an important and valuable date for taking the idols out of the temples and immersing them in the sea.  I returned my motorcycle to the rental shop at 8:30 PM.  The shop is near one of the temples and there was lots of loud bell ringing, drumming and trumpeting in the air nearby.   Walking over to see what the commotion was I found a throng of people following a cart carrying a statue of one of the gods.   There was a young brahmin on the cart dressed only in a dhoti.  He was accepting offerings from the crowd and them handing them a brass plate that had a flame burning in the center of it.  People would gather their hands together through the smoke and flame of this fire and then bring their hands together in front of their face.   It was impressive to see this whole event happening without any real sense of civic coordination.  The people knew what to do, as if this event had been held regularly for 1000+ years, which it probably has.  

I followed this slow moving procession for a while, before noticing a similar procession heading down a side street.  As I briskly walked through the streets I found about 10 different processions, all making their way through the city in a seemingly random route.

I am not sure which god these are, maybe one of you can tell me.  

The whole evening was pretty surreal.  The air had a certain electricity to it, the crowds were even more friendly than usual and there was no annoying people trying to get me to buy trinkets anywhere near these processions.   I had missed the part where the dip the statues in the ocean, but watching these events gave me another dimension to my understanding of the Hindu faith.

The processions winding down, I realized that I was pretty hungry, and had wanted to try out one of the nicer restaurants in town on my last night.   It was on the far side of town, so after a long march through the empty streets of the French Quarter I arrived at Seagulls for a surprisingly lacklustre dinner.   But the view of the ocean at moonrise made up for the food.

Short time lapse of the moon over the Bay of Bengal.

I was on the opposite side of the city from my hotel, it was nearing 10 PM.   I started the long walk back and stopped at a store selling sweets that was jammed with nearly 100 people.  As I walked in the store another customer motioned for the manager to greet me.  He walked me down the length of the counter offering samples of different sweets.  At one point he described how a fruit cake would last for up to 90 days.  I contemplated trying to explain how the fact that not even bacteria would take to fruit cake was not a desirable feature, and that this "delicacy" has a bad reputation in America, but in the end I bought a small piece.  I figured I could use it if anyone asked for a gift from India.

I left the sweet shop with 450 rupee worth of sweets at about 10:30 PM.  The first of the cookies I ate reminded me again of the sweet snack I had been given on the ride up to Gangtok.  It didn't taste bad, but it wasn't the best tasting.  Walking up Nehru Street I was accosted for about the 10th time by a little boy who had asked me daily for money.   I have a strict policy about not giving money to kids, but I did reward his persistence with a cookie.   I think at that moment the gods, newly refreshed in the ocean on the auspicous night of the full moon decided that I needed an entirely different perspective on India.  I thought I was 10 minutes from calling it a day, but little did I know that one strongest experiences in India was just around the corner on Anna Salai Street.  More on that later.