Life of Pi is a visual feast & a real heart-warming treat, not to mention a film which more than justifies the introduction of 3D. It’s a beautiful story of a young Indian boy called Pi, who must overcome the hardest of challenges as he’s left floating across the ocean in a life raft with a Bengal Tiger. The feelings & thoughts of Pi alongside the colours, sounds & wonderful animals throughout made this the most touching film I’ve seen for while. The story also has more than a few similarities to Hemingway’s Old Man & The Sea. The film also opens in lush green Pondicherry & with the references to it’s French colonial past, I wanted to discover more about the history of this town in Tamil Nadu, Southern India.

Pondicherry formed part of French India, which covered a great stretch of the Eastern coast of India from the 17th century right up until 1956. Ports were built here by the French East India Company in order to compete with their well established British & Dutch rivals in shipping silk, spices & sugar back to Europe. Nowadays, according to Matt Gross (Pondicherry’s French Connection, 2008), Pondicherry ‘is like India seen through a French lens……you see tile roofs and wooden shutters, balconies and colonnades, wide brick streets and pastel Catholic churches’. There’s even boules, baguettes & the Tricolor! And you can learn & see more from Rick Stein’s fascinating travels to the city here, 38 minutes in….