Well, I'm glad you enjoyed living on my native island. The lake you refer to is Grand Bassin, alias Ganga Talab, or Talao - see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganga_Talao.
The Wiki entry does no justice to the magnificence of the sacred spot, and that's a gross understatement, but it does convey some vague idea about it to people who know nothing about the place. It's actually geographically located in south central Mauritius, not quite near the centre of the country, as you mention. There are about 4 times as many north Indian Hindus than there are Tamils in Mauritius, with, additionally, small but still demographically significant Telugu and Marathi minorities. There are also Gujaratis and Punjabis, in yet smaller numbers.
As for the 'northerners,' they do not constitute a monolithic bloc either, since their forebears hailed from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Bengal, and to a nigh-negligible extent, even Odisha. I myself am of mixed UPite, Bihari and Bengali heritage.
On the whole, Mauritius is substantially more Westernised and liberal than most parts of India, and there are indeed shopping malls and supermarkets galore, but that's not too much at variance with the situation in the large Indian cities. Modern shopping centres (often considerably larger than the ones in Mauritius) are aplenty in the Indian metropolises, and in several Tier-II and Tier-III cities as well.
Anyway, I fully concur that the island is pretty convenient if you're Hindu. The comparatively high sanitary and low pollution levels (not that Mauritius doesn't have areas that could certainly do with better environmental controls, then again, it reputedly has the best air quality in all of Africa) and pleasantly temperate climate also render visits to temples and other types of shrines less physically challenging than it sometimes can be in the subcontinent.
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