AS colonies go, Pondicherry was not exactly a success story. Almost immediately after the French set up this lovely nugget on the Bay of Bengal in 1674, it was captured by the Dutch, retaken by its founders, then sacked and destroyed by the British. And though the French kept rebuilding it, Pondicherry never became more than a stopover on the way to Indochina. Even after Pondy, as it is nicknamed, rejoined India — late, in 1956 — it languished, out of step with the rest of the nation. In other words, for most of its history, Pondicherry was a backwater, in decline.
No more. Today, Puducherry, as it is officially known but rarely called, is capitalizing on a glammed-up version of that history, and emerging as an artsy, design-savvy destination with a quasi-Gallic approach to eating, drinking, shopping and relaxing. It's like India seen through a French lens, or maybe vice versa.
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