Auvillar is a town of 926 people. The population swells in May, at the peak of the pilgrimage through the Santiago-de-Compostela. When I find myself here in July, I do not expect to meet anyone who looks like me. This is the countryside of France, a waystation for Catholic pilgrims, a town that past students have cautioned me against for its racial homogeneity. After four years sans d’américains due to the pandemic, I am not surprised by the town’s curiosity.
The bar owner affectionately known as Lol for his infectious laughter, the opera singer’s wife who lets us tour their home, the Bulgarian boys who scroll through TikTok by the town outlook — all have greeted me with one resounding question: “You Indian?”
I am in Auvillar this summer for a writing course about place. We’ve discussed the pitfalls of exoticism, the many shades of New York, the utility of the sense of smell. We’ve read James Baldwin’s “Stranger in the Village.” I look at my surroundings — the cobblestoned streets, the stately crosses scattered between picnic benches, the clay gnomes with their gruff beards guarding every rooftop — and I cannot shake the notion that I am a splotch on a postcard. This is what we discussed — breaks in the story, interruptions to flow, the moments that take you out of place.
But there, tucked into an archway of sanded beige concrete, right next to Vival, the corner store we’ve been frequenting for crates of eggs and gallons of rosé, a window with letters swirled in green and orange: La Petite Inde. The Little India.
I press my face to the glass. Clay idols of Ganesha, a long table, a poster of the Tamil alphabet hanging off a fridge. I want to rage at the Frenchman cooking Indian food in this village where I am a rarity, this white guy who thinks he knows me.
But when I finally work up the nerve to knock a week later, it is not a white man that greets me: it is Lakshmi.
When she reaches out her hand to greet me, five bangles jingle on her wrist. She dons a kurta and a golden stud on her nose. Even my mother in suburban Georgia has assimilated to Western attire — jeans and blouses. But here Lakshmi is, in a town where her clothing marks her so starkly as different. And yet she doesn’t flinch.
She’s lived in France for twenty years now, but she is still an Indian citizen. “I have the chance to get French citizenship, but I didn’t. It has to come from here,” she says, placing her hand over her heart, “not just on the paper.”
Lakshmi was twenty when she got married, only a year older than I am right now. It was the age that transformed her life. Over the course of two-hour daily lessons for two years, she became so fluent in French that she sounds like a native speaker, apoint of pride for her husband and teacher, Ivan. “It is hard,” he says, “For the Indian people. To speak without an accent.” Lakshmi laughs, recounting how when she first came to France, she ordered a bowl of spaghetti at a restaurant and began eating with her hands. Ivan taught her how to use a fork and knife. “Everything I am,” she tells me “is because of him.”
When he first ventured to India, Ivan had been a chef on the transatlantic cruise ship Queen Elizabeth II. For three nights, the ship dotted across the nation’s ports. “When I walked on the streets in Mumbai and Chennai,” Ivan tells me, putting dough through a press for tonight’s pilgrim dinner, “something strange happened. India is India. You cannot stay insensible. I said, I’ve got to come back to this place. That’s what I did, a few years later.”
In Chennai, he found a volunteer position with a Jesuit priest. One day, while playing the tabla at a Carnatic music concert, he ran into his future mother-in-law. She invited him to her home, and over the course of many visits, he eventually proposed the idea of marrying her daughter: Lakshmi.
For years, Ivan and Lakshmi shuttled back and forth between India and France. They ran a homeschool for their children in Tiruvannamalai, the town where Lakshmi grew up. After they married, Ivan inherited his grandfather’s farm in Prima Rette, which, together, they turned into a thriving goat cheesery that occasionally housed pilgrims. When they relocated to Auvillar, a more central location on the Camino, many pilgrims came back to visit, asking if Lakshmi remembered them. Often, she did not. She sees hundreds over the course of the year. But for the pilgrims who pass through — La Petite Inde is a place that lasts in memory.
Once, in kindergarten, my classmates were all staring at a globe, pointing out where their families were from. I saw their thumbs flit across state lines — Ohio, Kansas, Missouri. When it was my turn, I spun and spun till my gaze grew blurry. “India,” I gesticulated. I tried to point to my mother’s city, its name stumbling on my tongue — “Hida- Hyd- Heda” (Hyderabad, it was called) — but I couldn’t find it. While my classmates watched in innocent fascination, I felt a cavern open up deep inside my stomach.
Staring at the world map in La Petite Inde, a home where you cannot escape India no matter what corner you hide in, the country balloons in size. My gaze is drawn to the shape of the nation, its triangular edges, the part at the bottom that hooks like a nose. The rest of the map blurs till all I can see is the green peeling house my mother grew up in, the endless street, the dosa cart, my grandmother singing in Telugu. Is this what it’s like to emerge from the margins— to find yourself at the center of the world? How comforting, I think, for Lakshmi’s children, to know how to point out their history on a map. It’s easy to see why. On the first day I come to visit, Lakshmi gives me a tour of the hostel. It is a psychedelic experience. Every spare corner of the house is plastered with India paraphernalia— clay idols of Buddha, a flag of India, tapestries of Shiva, photos of sari-clad women sorting through bundles of vegetables. Lakshmi opens the door to a bathroom, where a poster of Lord Ganesha hangs above the toilet. “Poor Ganesha,” she says, casting me an apologetic glance, “I am sorry. It’s my husband.” Ivan shows me his old car hood, which also has a painting of Ganesha on it, and now hangs above the dining room table. “It’s unique, masterpiece,” he professes proudly, “you won’t find that anywhere in the world, but Little India. That’s why pilgrims come here, to see that Ganapati.”
It’s true. Back in Prima Rette, pilgrims were always disheartened when they were served a continental breakfast. “Why don’t you serve Indian food?” they asked, eyeing Lakshmi. So when time came to set up the gité in Auvillar, they decided to do exactly that. Amid all the posters and the idols and the car hoods, there is Lakshmi herself. The clothes she wears, the golden rings that caught my eye, the brown skin beneath it— all of it, she tells me, are part of the image. But I press. Surely she’s wearing them for herself— to hold tightly to her culture. She shakes her head, gesturing to her bindi, explaining that when pilgrims knock on their door and she’s the face that greets them, they know they’ve arrived: this is Little India.
Once, in kindergarten, my classmates were all staring at a globe, pointing out where their families were from. I saw their thumbs flit across state lines — Ohio, Kansas, Missouri. When it was my turn, I spun and spun till my gaze grew blurry. “India,” I gesticulated. I tried to point to my mother’s city, its name stumbling on my tongue — “Hida- Hyd- Heda” (Hyderabad, it was called) — but I couldn’t find it. While my classmates watched in innocent fascination, I felt a cavern open up deep inside my stomach.
Staring at the world map in La Petite Inde, a home where you cannot escape India no matter what corner you hide in, the country balloons in size. My gaze is drawn to the shape of the nation, its triangular edges, the part at the bottom that hooks like a nose. The rest of the map blurs till all I can see is the green peeling house my mother grew up in, the endless street, the dosa cart, my grandmother singing in Telugu. Is this what it’s like to emerge from the margins— to find yourself at the center of the world? How comforting, I think, for Lakshmi’s children, to know how to point out their history on a map.
The pilgrims I speak with tell me that the India theme is a draw for many reasons— yoga, zen, calm. This, after all, is what many of them are seeking: not a Catholic devotional, but a spiritual reflection. Compared to the Middle Ages, when pilgrims walked in faith of St. Jacques, today only 30% of pilgrims walked for purely religious regions.
“We never ask them for what purpose they are here,” Ivan tells me. “For most, just hiking. Small part because facing difficulties in life, lost people or kids or someone close. For very small part of them, they walk for God.”
“There is no more spirituality,” Lakshmi chimes in. “Perhaps some of them they hide themselves, don’t show they believe. It’s difficult in Europe, to say they believe in God. Christianity is collapsing because of too many narrow-minded people.”
This is the problem Lakshmi finds with the church in Auvillar. “There is no love,” she groans, exasperated, “only sadness. Need to be open and smile. We say to the priest in French, pray as Papa, as dad, so more people will join. We have to give joy, so people catch the spirituality.”
Lakshmi herself is still Hindu. We discuss the conspicuous absence of a temple in Auvillar, but Lakshmi says it’s not so great a tragedy: “I go to the church. For me, Shiva or Jesus, no matter. What’s important is God. I like to feel better with them. I find something I cannot find in the house,” she says, gesturing to the Hindu shrine she keeps above the cupboard, “Calm. Echo. Vibration. In church, I go and it is there.”
It’s the kind of spirituality many of the pilgrims who stay at La Petite Inde are searching for. One pilgrim from Germany, Salome, describes how she quit the Church, fed up by its taxes, scammers, and commerciality. Then she went to India and reconnected with her spirituality. When she came back, she became Christian again.
But many do not make the journey back. “I see people come to India, and change their religion, and they fly. I see the people go to ashram, and they become crazy. Oh my god, ‘Amma, Amma!’ They think they found religion and Gods, but it’s not real. For me, why I have to give up my religion if it’s good? We were Hindu or Christian, we were born like that. We shouldn’t change everything.”
To Lakshmi, it is not about the religion you follow so much as the way you practice it. She enjoys Auvillar’s masses when the African priest is in town. “[When he preaches,] you can smile and get joy. [Pilgrims] laugh and spend half an hour only, but they are happy.” It is the same inexplicable energy that’s drawn Ivan and countless white pilgrims to India. “He tells the same things, but with smile, as in Indian gods stories. When someone is telling Indian god stories, they bring joy. [That’s why] some pilgrims come to India and then they return to their religion.”
Even now, Lakshmi grapples with the blurring of Indian and French culture in her spirituality. She tells me about the time she went to the Sanctuaire de Notre-Dame in Lourdes — a refuge for handicapped people. She was walking, and a man came up to her in the street and hugged her. She was shocked. It was not a thing people did in India. A man touching a woman. A stranger no less. “But I felt that God gave me this hug, God say something to me. Lots of people around. Why me? He wants to give this love.”
I’m eighteen, and I am a sinner. I have hurt people, wreaked havoc. So here I am, in the prayer room, adopting a squatting stance, arms crossed over chest, fingers clasped around opposite ears. Gunjullu are a full-body form of apology.
Sai Baba, the 18th-century saint, stares down at me from his golden frame. His face is coiled in tender understanding, brows pulled taut as if by an invisible string. I wonder what force stretches his muscles in sympathy, if it’s the same one I encounter months later, in the concert-hall-turned-church on Chapel Street.
It is Easter, and I do not want to be alone. Let me rephrase. I am lonely, and it happens to be Easter. My friend invites me to church with her. The pastor talks about how his wife ordered a build-your-own Peloton for their anniversary. One of the pedals wouldn’t fit in its slot. Come to find: he had been reading the manual wrong. That was his life before Christianity. Constantly trying to make screws fit without the right instructions.
I half-want to laugh at his metaphor, the way he speaks like an announcer at an auction. In fact, the whole show — and it is a show — seems altogether too theatrical. Backup singers sway on stage with strobe lights. The crowd sings Jesus’ hymns from a megascreen, like it’s Saturday night at the karaoke bar instead of Sunday morning mass. But for a moment, he pauses.
“Now, I don’t know what pain you’re carrying. I don’t know who hurt you or who you’ve hurt. But today, we gather to celebrate one truth: Jesus died for your sins. He died to give you a second chance. You are forgiven.”
And even in that makeshift church, I felt it. The ache that started in a low squat a year earlier, after a splintered friendship that left me heavy with shame, finally wormed its way out. I had done a thousand gunjullu in front of Sai Baba, circled the idols at temple till my mind grew dizzy, all in search of the three words this pastor tossed at my feet like an alm.pastor tossed at my feet like an alm.
You are forgiven.
For a long while, it terrified me: Jesus forgave while Sai Baba sat in his frame and watched. What solace could I find in Christianity — the religion they shoved down my ancestors’ throats? What to do with the prayers preserved in my mother tongue? Did I dare uproot my history?
So when it came time to pack for a month’s stay in Auvillar, all my qualms unanswered, I tucked a photo of Lord Venkateswara in my carry-on and You are forgiven in the hollow of my right cheek. It is only now, talking to Lakshmi, that I realize I didn’t have to choose one or the other.
“What’s important is God. I like to feel better with them.”
La Petite Inde is a bed, breakfast, and dinner. Pilgrims usually hike from Moissac, an urban center 20 kilometers away, home to the Saint-Pierre Abbey, and begin filtering in around 3 p.m. They are tired and weary. Lakshmi offers them cake and juice. They rest. Some go to mass. Then they come back for dinner at 7:30 p.m., where Lakshmi cooks an array of Indian food. On the night I come to visit, the spread is mouthwatering— tandoori chicken, carrot curry, daal, raitha, and the daily staple, rice. Then dessert at 10 p.m., which is when Ivan takes over— a chocolate cake ringed with pan-seared pineapple.
Tonight, it’s a full house. Eight pilgrims sit around the table, along with Lakshmi, Ivan, and her kids. On nights like this, the two of them might not eat, to make sure the pilgrims have enough food. One pilgrim, Lionel, chats the whole night with Lakshmi, asking about India, about me and my studies. When I ask him the taboo question I can’t help but pose everyone on the Camino — Why? — he says many things: Exercise. Fresh air. The spirit.
Lionel is the only pilgrim staying with Lol. On days when Lol is over, dinners stumble into the weary hours, induced by wine and laughter. For all the deep mirth pooling in his eyes, Lol, Lakshmi tells me, is a lonely man. No wife. Kids grown up and gone. He lets a few pilgrims stay with him, visits the townsfolk merrily for dinner until they jostle with drunkenness. Perhaps it is easier, to speak with the senses dulled. To ask not to be seen too clearly.
But I can tell that Lakshmi sees him. That is why, even when he keeps her up till 3 a.m., even when she is tired and has plates to clean, she lets him stay, lets him melt into the dinner bench, lets him swing his arm around her shoulder and insist she drink, though she never does.
This is what life is about, another hostel-goer, Giome, tells me, gesturing to the merriment around the table. He is a businessman, but that is not who he is. The word he identifies most with is pilgrim. Life is the time spent on the road, meeting new people you will never see again, the moments you share with strangers.
Giome tells Lakshmi she is très belle — very beautiful. She blushes, accepting the comment gracefully. She is tres belle, she is the tresest belle I have ever seen, with the evening coloring the pilgrims’ cheeks pink, a yellow haze cast over the dining room, bellies full from the food she has made.
At nineteen, I’m the youngest at the table, save for Lakshmi’s kids, who have disappeared into the shadows with their gadgets. Still, it speaks to me, the journey these people are undertaking. I’ve felt restless all through my freshman year of college, uncertain about what I want out of life. I look around the table now — this connection crafted in a single evening’s knowing — and I know what I want, twenty years in the future, when I’m Lakshmi’s age: this.
In their bedroom, a black-and-white photo hangs of Ivan and Lakshmi in India from the day they got married, standing in front of a temple in Tiruvannamalai. Ivan wears a dhoti and Lakshmi a sari. Her face is unwrinkled by time. She is so young.
“In India, it’s not so easy. At that time when I left, my parents didn’t have so much money . . . I carried water on my head, at least fifty meters with water on my head, and we have to go to cut the wood in the forest for food. No electricity. Wash and cook and everything by hand.”
Her family was part of the Dhobi caste, a people who make their living washing clothes. Traditionally, only the highest castes in India, Brahmins, are vegetarians, but for her family, fish and eggs were too expensive to afford, so Lakshmi never ate meat growing up. Now, in France, even with delis around every corner, she still hasn’t been able to shake her distaste.
She was happy when she got married, she tells me, but it did not feel good, wedding a white man. She had been set to marry her cousins, but they were alcoholics. Her mother wanted better for her, and Ivan was better, even if it estranged her family from the rest of town, even now, twenty years later. She had no qualms with Ivan but had heard about white people and their divorces. It would not do in her community. He promised he would never leave her. She only had one other question: “Do you have running water in your house?”
He said yes, and so did she.
In the end, it was not a love story. But not a hate story, either.
“When he came, just he came. He was a foreigner. From somewhere else. Even I didn’t know it was France. Thought he was American. White guy. He gave us some chocolate. He’s a good comedian. When he came all the street ladies are laughing, laughing, laughing. I get attracted by that. But I don’t know. I didn’t fell in love.”
Love, Ivan says, was never something he expected. “How could it have happened? Lakshmi couldn’t have said ‘of course I am in love with him’ . . . Just imagine the neighbors. I told her to try to stay a bit away from me, because if someone sees me, maybe they will say something, what did she do with that foreigner, she’s a prostitute. That’s India. That you don’t live it in America. Even if your parents are Indian, you don’t have it. That pressure, that societal pressure. You don’t have.”
All this time, I’ve been listening to Lakshmi’s story, wondering, wondering: Couldn’t she hear it? A white man who came to India and found a wife. The “strange feeling” in the streets of Chennai he can’t quite describe. He taught her how to use a fork and knife. The pails of water she could not carry. All she asked him was whether there was running water and electricity. “That’s India.” Her family estranged from the community.
“You know,” he says, as if sensing my judgment, “you are from America, you are born in America. You look like an Indian, but you are an American. Even if you speak the language, this and that, you are mainly American. This is not a reproach, this is a fact. Tell me if I’m wrong, but you are more American than Indian.”
It’s not something I’ve ever considered. In America, my Indianhood has always been my identity, the first thing people see, the first thing I’m searching for in a crowded room. But here, in France, I suppose it’s true — my accent, my clothes, my classmates — I’m American.
“For you the cards you have are not the Indian ones, or not the fully Indian ones. Lakshmi was not this kind of girl as you are. She was not as free as you are. She would not wear the same dress as you do. She was a full Indian young lady from a remote village.”
All this time, I was so thrilled to find the only other Indian woman in Auvillar, because on the streets of this small, remote town in the south of France, she could be my mother, me her daughter. But we’re not the same.
At the dinner table, the night is coming to an end, swirling to the gauzy hues of a Picasso painting. I help Lakshmi clean up. While we’re stacking dishes, I spot a jar of mango pickle in the kitchen and swoon. “It’s been weeks since I’ve had this,” I tell her, more passionate than I’ve ever been when eating it at home, a renewed sense of novelty instilled by 5,000 miles. “I didn’t think I’d find it in France.”
Lakshmi beams at my recognition. She’d told me there were no other Indians in Auvillar, save the few passing pilgrims that stopped by for a day. I wonder how many years it’s been since someone’s walked into her home and known the words for things — pachadi, deepam, daal. The dish I’ve been dying to taste all week is a cup of chai, but when I ask her if she makes it for the pilgrims, Lakshmi chuckles as if I’ve asked her to cut me a slice of the moon. If a pilgrim ever asks for chai, she says, that means they’ve visited India. No one asks. She mostly serves coffee.
As the pilgrims start climbing the stairs for the night, I bid Lakshmi farewell. At the doorstep, we hesitate — Should I wave? How many more Merci beaucoups? Why does it feel like the chasm is widening? What do we really know of each other?— but she’s leaning in, and I realize that I am too. There is nothing more to say. We hug.
Once, at the kitchen table, Ivan had joked: “Aanika, Lakshmi and I have talked, and we’ve decided to adopt you.” A smile cracked across my face, yolk spilling across the horizon as I let myself imagine it for a second: Growing up here, in Auvillar, this postcard town with parents as warm as Lakshmi and Ivan, with my Bonjours to the bookkeeper and the beekeeper, with my first kiss by the outlook gazing over the Tarn-et-Garonne bridge, with my restlessness and my ache to leave and discover the big city, with the war in my heart because I could never leave La Petite Inde, the place where my parents taught me how to point out my history on a map.
How easily she let me into her home that day. Me, an Indian girl, a stranger — all I did was knock. Tomorrow more pilgrims will come. Would she have done it for anyone?