Take things as they come, leave them as they go

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I’ve been back on the land for two weeks and all kinds of things have happened since, but let me use this post to explain the few weeks I spent at Auroville.

After a few more days with the Auroville guys, I left with Ilango and Vikram in the Bolero with all their gear and we drove to Auroville in 10 hours. The trip was mostly uneventful as we listened to a broken Bob Marley cd with the two main highlights being another twister passing us on the road and a very, very tight descent down the mountains with 27 needle pin bends.

We arrived at the AV youth centre in the evening. The first few days there were kind of boring to me but then I decided to go out and explore on my own. Mostaba let me use his bicycle the entire time (thanks so much!) so I was able to go out whenever I wanted. I checked out the visitors centre first and got a very different impression of the place than I’d had from just being in the YC the first few days

In brief, Auroville is a town of over 2000 people that was started in 1968, based upon the idea of human unity, as described by two somewhat mysterious (or perhaps mythical) persons generally referred to as ‘The Mother’ and Sri Aurobindo. As such, there are a lot of people from all over the world (especially many Europeans) who have contributed to the place and have basically built a life for themselves. At the centre of Auroville there is a huge golden globe, called The Matrimandir, which is the symbol of Auroville and is a place used for tourguides and meditation. I guess occasionally ceremonies and things of such nature are held in or around as well, though I didn’t get to see any. Inside the matrimandir it looks and feels like a 70’s sci-fi movie. You have to wear white socks in order to keep the carpeted spiral walkway up to the inner chamber pristinely white. Inside the inner chamber is a huge crystal ball, and underneath the entire thing is a smaller crystal ball, surrounded by marble slabs with water flowing over them. I found it all both beautiful and absurd.

I actually kinda knew about a lot of this before coming to India as I had been referred to AV as a potential place for my placement, but the impression I’d gotten through various online sources made me think it was either a tourist destination or a place for seriously floaty people. Plus they didn’t reply to my second email... At any rate, I can say that my assumptions were misplaced and I’m very glad to have been able to go there for a short while anyway. In fact, I highly recommend anyone to visit and learn about an alternative way to life (it is apparently the world’s largest eco-village) and I think I would have really enjoyed interning at one of their permaculture/reforestation projects. There are literally all kinds of people there, including many volunteers and travellers passing through, even outside of the tourist season.

The first two weeks I still hung out mostly at the youth centre. It’s actually one of the most unlikely parts of AV. Although mostly inhabited and visited by Aurovillan teenagers, there were 3 other visitors staying there at the same time I was. The rent is cheap (200 rps plus some volunteer work per day) and so I worked a bit now and then on digging a pool, building a treehouse and a gameroom, together with various of the AV gang, as well as some European travellers (Aemon, Alex & Mihael). Every Saturday they have a Farmer’s Market and a Pizza Night at YC which attract all kinds of people. The first time I met some people volunteering at Buddha Garden who invited me to join them the following Monday. I also met some Norwegian students who study at a Norwegian university in Pondicherry and eventually went with them to a party there.

At Buddha Garden I met several of the people who had invited me, but I also met quite a few others. These people seemed far more interested in sharing stories with me and as time went on at AV the group seemed to grow larger as people mingled with one another and got more familiar with the area. I felt relieved to have found people who were in a somewhat similar place as me and could therefore connect with. I spent some days hanging out with various crowds, doing some work at the youth centre, exploring the area, visiting a permaculture farm called Solitude (where they host concerts and offer meals cooked with a lot of their own vegetables), the Matrimandir and so on. There was also a big meeting (about 200 attendees) I attended where people discussed the issue of building a road through a place called Pony Farm. Basically there is a masterplan for Auroville’s development, which doesn’t seem to take into account the community of people already living there. It was very interesting to see how the whole meeting was set up and I thought the facilitator did a great job of giving everyone a chance to talk. Unfortunately I was unable to visit Pony Farm.

Then on Friday I met up with Lev and Lucie to go to the Pebble Garden tour. Since I was the only one on a bicycle I quickly had to learn how to drive a TVS (a small scooter with no gears) which was no problem. The tour was really great! Basically Pebble Garden is one of several reforestation projects that have been going on at and around Auroville in the past 20-30 years. The main person, Bernard, is a very excited storyteller and explained the history of the place before we went out to have a look around. They use an interesting technique for their garden beds, mimicking the behaviour of termites to create nutrient-rich soil. I also learnt that the entire area used to be a forests, before the British and French cut down all the trees and the topsoil was washed away into the Bay of Bengal, turning the area into a desert. Thanks to the efforts of people like Bernard, Auroville is now a very forested area with lots of shade. The weather is a bit different than at Swayyam. It’s very humid and quite exhausting, especially with having to use a bicycle most of the time.

The next day I met up with some Buddha Garden people at one of the lodging areas, called Reve and met an American girl named Madi and everything changed. We went to a lake and things clicked so we hung out at the pizza night at the youth centre. After that we hung out every day and had amazing times together. I drove her TVS all over the place which was awesome until one night when we had way too many problems with getting several TVS’s to start. After that night I couldn’t help but feel sad at the thought that it would all be over soon, but this prompted me to make the most of our last few days and change my attitude. We drove to Pondicherry the next day and had a great time, taking rickshaws and walking around the Botanical Gardens (featured briefly in The Life Of Pi) before getting my busticket for the coming Saturday. It’s really helpful to have someone around who’s more familiar with the way things work in India (haggling with the rickshaw drivers especially).

The next Friday I visited Pebble Garden again to get some seeds from Bernard for Malvikaa and after that I went with Paul (a German guy I met) to the Sadhana Forest tour. Sadhana Forest is an all-vegan reforestation/restoration project with over 1000 volunteers per year. I didn't like the tour as much as Bernard’s but it was still good to see everything and afterwards there were several videos explaining their projects (also in Kenya, Haiti and another location in India) and then we watched the first part of a documentary on all kinds of issues mankind is experiencing nowadays. It was inspiring but tiring. Afterwards we went to Brother’s Pizza place where we met up with Madi and Cris.



The last day I hung out with Madi before the taxi showed up at the Youth Centre to take me away to the Pondicherry bus station. Reluctantly I got in after saying my goodbyes. The bus left at 11pm to arrive at Bangalore around 6am the next day. It was a bumpy ride and the guy next to me kept nodding off on my shoulder. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep much. When I got to Bangalore I tried to get a rickshaw driver to take me to the train station so I could get to Mysore the way Madi had advised, but instead he argued I should take a taxi. I was tired and in no mood to argue so I figured I would check out how much it would be. 150 rupees to get to Mysore is not a whole lot of money so I took the taxi (which fit 10 people) and got to Mysore about 3 hours later. I thought of doing some sight-seeing in Mysore but touristing with my house on my back and lack of sleep didn’t seem like a fun idea so instead I went to a hotel where they had wifi and I could charge my laptop and phone. They treated me like a special customer, even going so far as to tell the guy who was on the toilet to hurry up since I needed to go. I got to the bus station and then took a bus to Gundlupet and then to Yelachatti where I arrived around 4.30pm, feeling very alone. The land had gotten very green and beautiful though and it was clear I was in for the next stage of my stay in India.

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