The hoola-hype of Auroville…

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no, not the hype.... it’s the real thing!!

It’s a wish we wish daily. How I wish I could smell the earth in my backyard, go home to a radiant moon, sleep underneath the shimmering sky. But you want tap water and reliable power and network to give you your daily whiff of online news. “Idhar range nahi sahab,” is a big turn off. Often in India, the closer you get towards becoming one with nature the farther you go from energy and water certainties. But at Auroville you get both, and lots of surprises thrown in too…

To get to Auroville’s Matramandir, which is its spiritual as well as its geographical center, you have to get off the main road connecting Chennai to Pondi at the ‘Auroville’ stop…that is, I suppose you have taken the ‘ECR’ Pondi bus at Chennai. A bus that comes with no doors. Tell the conductor to inform you in advance so that you can wade through the janata in the bus and get to the door in time. Oh sorry, there’s no door, just the exit. So unless you want to be flung out of the bus every time the driver applies his breaks, stay clear from the exit as you stand in the gangway. The ECR bus route takes around three and a half hours to get to the ‘Auroville bus stop’, which is around 7 kms before the destination of the bus, Pondi. It is best to start the journey in the late afternoon so you can catch the sun sinking in the bay of Bengal. When you alight at Auroville, take the road going to Quilapaliyam; this road being perpendicular to the ECR road. In case you have decided to stay on the beach (Repo's Guest House or some other), it's a short walk of 2 min in the other direction.

Progress by the dirt track

A signboard on the Quilapaliyam-Edyanchiwadi road directed me when to get off the tar road, and take my moped on a dusty, muddy road leading to Matramandir, Townhall, and Visitor Center – the institutions that attract the most attention for visitors. A dirt track! Where am I heading for? It takes some time to realize that progress at Auroville is not measured by the amount of roads tarred or by the number of neon light fixtures. There are none of the later, but also very few street lights. Even on the stretch between Solar Kitchen and Visitor’s Center, the most-frequented route, the lights are a hundred meters or so apart so that when you leave the light cast by one, you have to walk through a few moments of darkness before you come into the gaze of the next.

I found that one’s experience at Auroville depends so much on the type of accommodation one takes up, and, of course, on the activity one pursues. Sapney Farm (situated on the outskirts of Auroville) and Mitra Hostel were to be the shelters for me.

Farm Lessons…

I had reached Sapney Farm in the middle of a hot day. In the dorm, a hut supported on stilts, it wasn’t so hot and a pleasant breeze blew from in between the thatched side walls. The Farm’s kitchen is looked after by a Caretaker, an elderly man from Gujarat. He cooked some tasty Gujarati khichdi and we got into a conversation on food. At the farm I made friends with a Bangalore-based programmer Sushant and with Aina and Jairo, a Spanish couple who told us of their tales from the places they had travelled. Sushant had just realized how valuable land could be when his family had lost a case and had to forego a lot of land. After the sentence, Sushant had resolved to turn into a farmer. Sapney Farm was to give him his first lessons…

I missed the ‘farming workshop’ at Sapney which is held on Sunday mornings. After speaking to Snehal Trivedi, the brain behind the Sapney Farm concept, I gathered the following: Volunteers who register for the workshop spend half a day understanding the nutritional value of the soil and the crops that are suitable for growing and help the residents of the locality make vegetable beds. When the vegetables ripen, the locals find a ready market in Sapney Farm to sell their produce, though they are under no obligation to do so. (Snehal also runs a coffee joint called ‘Koffee Bar’ in addition to the Sapney Farm).

Dig-a-dig dig-a-dig dig-a-dig my man,
Dig me a hole as fast as you can,
Let me grow our rice, the tomatoes n veggies,
Together we will sing songs n eat the cherries

A new trick everyday…

Choose from yoga, tai-chi and meditation.
There’s also hoola-hoops, but no playstation.
They say if you can keep the hoop up for a while,
You can win your girl’s heart in style

So, no doubt, it’s hoola-hoop that I go to learn. It was at the meditation dome-shaped hall of Verite’, one of the guest houses. Our instructor, Anne, told us there were two ways to keep the hoop up – shaking the hips side to side or forward and backward. I tried both alternately, and then I tried and tried, but just couldn’t keep it up. Anne was telling me… “now that was better” with each successive try for it seemed that the hoop stayed up longer but in reality it was just the momentum of the hoop that kept it up as I swung the hoop around me with a greater force each time. The others around me – a teenage girl from the US project ‘living roots’ and a German lady who was a mother of two kids were now walking with their hoops. It was only in the dying minutes of the class… that, yes, I got it 😊 I realized no one can tell you the trick… your hips and the hoop have to just understand each other’s language.

Hostel with a character

Tring a ling… tring a ling tring.. I am moving into the entrance lounge of Mitra Hostel and no one stops my singing! Why should anyone? This lobby was made for singing and whistling as you get in! Two sides of this reception area are fed by natural daylight, a mosaic made from inlaid cut tiles adorns one wall and on the other is a noticeboard talking about the various events in Auroville. No notice with ‘warnings’ and ‘rules’, as is typical of student hostels in India, to put the fear of the warden in you…

The ‘complimentary’ breakfast was bread, un-buttered on both sides, super-thinly spread with jam and tea. But the breakfast tables, made of concrete, were in a sit-out overlooking the garden so you drank of the sunshine and the smell of fresh air served as appetiser. Moreover, when I stayed, the hostel was overrun by fresh, just-out-of-undergraduate-school architects who peppered breakfast times with their merry chats. After the breakfast discussions subsided, I would realize that I had hardly eaten and make my way to Morgan, the café attached to Town Hall, a stone’s throw away from Mitra.

The hostel rooms had cross-ventilation so the air could blow through the rooms. And the building had a water treatment system that was operational. No jokes, really operational! (We had some water treatment engineers visit the facility while I was there). Connecting all the rooms was a long passage that overlooked the garden. The staircase leading up was open to the sky on one side, so you could sing with the birds as you walked up. The toilets and bathrooms have tiles which are anti-skid and the floor of the Indian toilet cubicle is sloped so that the water slides in the direction of the sink. The toilets are common to occupants of both gender which, I think, is a good thing. It prods the boys to leave them cleaner out of consideration for their female friends 😱 At least that was the effect on me.

Such an interesting layout for a hostel building was rare in India. The garden too is well looked after. At its far end are a few benches with a rock in their midst. I would come here to practice with my hoop, my gaze lingering on the flowers in the garden. I would read the inscription on the rock which spelt out Auroville’s charter… “Auroville belongs to nobody in particular. Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole…”

There was an inquisitive girl as inquisitive could be,
She asked a hundred questions and then she asked more three,
The engineer, his name was Dan, answered them cheerfully,
On how waste water was filtered, but could be treated only partially.

“O but what about my herbal lotions,” Anita did ask
“Himalayas’ shampoos - treating them an easy task?”

Out spake Dan, but less cheerfully,
“Herbal’s a worry, as far as I can see,
Though all the brands say they are natural n chemical free
That’s far from true; to tell thee is my duty.”
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Photos

Whetting ur appetite @Solar Kitchen
If you are not hungry enough at lunch time, you can always go outside Solar Kitchen and play on these blocks. These boys, though, were playing right after their lunch.

Fun at the Farm
Jairo and Aina share a lighter moment after toiling at Sapney Farm

Whoop…Two hoops and more to go
Galina, my instructor at the hoola-hoop workshop, in action

Little Master
Johnathan shows off his painting skills at a workshop at Svedham, one of the activity centers at Auroville. Johnathan’s parents have settled at Auroville.

Punch but no touch
Capoeira fighters demonstrating the Brazilian-origin martial art during the evening party at Svedham. One fighter’s kicks swept over his adversary’s time and again, and the rebuttal from the other was equally close and as deadly, but, to their great skill, they never once made actual physical contact. Mid-fight, a dog came and slept in the middle of their dirt ring, making things even more difficult for the two! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capoeira

Young Turks
Mansi and Aurindam, fresh architects, out to design the cities of tomorrow. Mansi was just back from a post graduate degree at Milan and had taken time off to explore Auroville.

Talking about Water...
Anita enquiring with the water system engineers about the water treatment facility when they came to inspect the treatment facility at the Mitra Hostel campus. A common treatment plant can actually serve two or three buildings, one of the enginneer said, but, due to lack of proper planning it’s not happening yet.

Feasting on a pineapple
These diet conscious young ladies from Mitra, Marisa and Komal, eat fruits for their breakfast. God bless them!