Auroville

 

 

 

 

 

Why build an “intentional community” in Tamil Nadu, where ancient temple towns already abound, faith is as natural as breathing and boundaries blur between mythology and reality? 

 

Although the state has been chock-a-block with spiritual paths for millennia, Auroville’s founders saw the need for one more. Guided by the vision of a seeker turned guru known as “the Mother,” they broke ground next to Pondicherry in 1968. Auroville was to be a community where artists, healers, craftspersons and others worked for work’s sake, lived in service to others and collectively brought humanity closer to a state of divine consciousness.

 

The Mother

 

Over the years, scandals, financial crises, food shortages and bickering have slowed progress in Auroville, named by the Mother after her own guru, Sri Aurobindo. She envisioned a community of 50,000. As of last week, Auroville residents numbered 2,607, according to one long-time resident. 

 

On a quick visit to Auroville four years ago with my family, I felt like we had stumbled upon a lost hippie colony where tie-dye never died. Balding white men with wispy pony tails and entire families in their Haight/Ashbury best whizzed by on motorbikes. The road leading to Auroville was lined with pizza joints and boutiques as well as small Tamil businesses. From the visitors center, a booming tourist destination in its own right, we ran/walked before viewing hours ended to get a glimpse of the Matrimandir. Resembling  a World’s Fair pavilion circa 1960s, it is the enormous golden orb where Aurovillians come to meditate.

 

The Matrimandir

 

Returning to Auroville two weeks ago, I rented a bicycle and explored beyond the retail shops, cafes and information center. A volunteer there tried her best to discourage me from venturing out into Auroville proper. Although I didn’t get much closer to understanding Auroville, it was fun to pedal past places with names with names Luminosity, Creativity and Realization, stop for a salad at an outdoor café, come across a peacock in the road, weave around cows and wander into sundry workshops and settlements. Wish I had found a potter or two. Always reading about Auroville potters in The Hindu and New Indian Express.

 

 My bicycle!

                                                                                                

 

 

Home-grown deity

 

 

The Butterfly Barn

 

Wood shop

 

 

 

All roads lead to wellbeing

    

Perpetual quest for comfort in our own skin

 

Even in Auroville, the feminine has to assert herself.

 

Things to do in Auroville

  Finding Svaram, a workshop that produces musical instruments tuned to healing scales, was a highlight. There I met Sundaram, an artisan who invited me to try out his prototype for a musical healing bed constructed of red cedar over a series of steel pipes. When he struck the pipes with a wooden mallet, the cosmic tones of the diatonic scale thrummed through my body.  

 Sundaram

        Restorative musical instruments filled the workshop, a "sound garden" outside and a neighboring shop:   

   

       

           Two days weren’t enough to crack the mystery of Auroville. I didn’t hear the Om Choir, get a massage, take a tree climbing class or attend the monthly full moon gathering. But I did get to go inside the Matrimandir with a group of other visitors. After watching a mandatory video, we jumped on a shuttle to the site of the orb.  

 

 

The chamber inside the Matrimandir

Escorted inside, we pulled on white socks and ascended, then descended into the chamber, a towering, white space with wall-to-wall handloom white carpet and awesome acoustics. Someone’s coughing ricocheted around the space like an explosion. A shaft of sunlight from above illuminated the crystal. When a cloud passed overhead the crystal grew dark, as if it were filled with a storm. An oddly pleasant and solemn experience. After 15 minutes, the lights flashed. Time to go.