(Karma Sutra-Adventures of a Street Bum has been released by Harper Collins in 2012. The earlier version - Karma Sutra-Essays from the Margin - was brought out by Saga Books, Canada, in 2007. Apparently, Flicky, the St.Bernard who is not keeping very well, seems pleased as punch with both the books by his side. We wish him good karma!!!)    

     Excerpts from

               KARMA SUTRA

       Adventures Of A Street Bum

LOVING AND DELIVERANCE IN

             KAMATHIPURA

By Rajendar Menen

Tara is short, less than five feet, and petite. She is in an orange saree and blouse that wraps her like an Egyptian mummy. An orange bindi, orange bangles and flowing black curly hair complete the image of a fluorescent dervish. Tara always manages a lazy drawl even when she is in a hurry; she drags her feet when she walks, her chappals scrape the ground collecting the dust with them. It is an uncommon walking style. You can't miss it; you can even hear it. Her hands are wildly flayed and her posterior rolls in exaggeration. Her gait is expansive and requires a lot of space to accommodate it. There are flowers in her thick black hair. She has sparkling eyes and a large mouth that often finds the time to smile. She keeps giggling and gesticulating; it's her way. When she is in the vicinity, it gathers you in its turbulence.

Tara was married but her husband died of tuberculosis years ago. She looks after two young children back home in her village in Andhra Pradesh from her earnings as a sex worker in Kamathipura. Her father was a farmer and her mother, frail and blind, is still alive. Tara looks after her too. There are siblings but they have been separated from one another by the wiles of time and circumstance. Tara has memories of childhood but they don’t flow as easily as her laughter. She doesn’t know where the others are and doesn’t want to talk about the details of growing up, hungry and homeless most of the time, under the scorching southern sun. Maybe, she just doesn’t want to remember the pain.

Tara was gang raped several times, had repeated abortions and several venereal diseases long before she turned eighteen, and finally found deliverance in a brothel she was sold to by her family with the help of an agent. It is the destiny of many girls in her village. Middlemen habitually make the rounds. They know about the poverty that will always refuse to cuddle the girl child and the desperation of those tilling the land made barren by the heat and dust, repeated monsoon failures and over cropping. There are scars on her body, knife wounds and burn marks, but Tara refuses to stop smiling and offers me tea. "If you stay longer, I will cook for you," she says happily. "That's if you feel like eating with me."

Her cubicle is tiny, neatly kept, and lit by a tube light. An old ceiling fan, a trifle unsteady, whirs silently. There is a large cupboard in which she stocks up on cash, jewellery and some clothes: sarees, salwar kameezes and undergarments. She has a bank account with a nationalised bank and a passbook she is proud to show. She has eighteen thousand rupees in it. There is a chair, a small table with powder, lipstick and some make-up, a mirror, and pails of water under the cot. A thin brown rope stretches from one end of the room to the other with some clothes hanging on it. They are her clothes, washed, wrung and left to dry. She will iron them later, or the pressman on the ground floor will come to the brothel in the morning, collect all the girls' clothes and send them over in the evening, ironed and sorted out in neat bundles.

The room is small, clean, cool and intimate. It wears a good feeling probably reflecting the aura of the occupant. There are shadows lounging around and geckos are mating on the wall. They grab one another with little gurgles of ecstasy. Tara pours me tea in small stainless steel tumblers and we sit on her large bed and talk. The bed sheet is brown and clean and the pillowcase an ugly green. Her eyes shine like expensive diamonds, maybe that's why her parents called her tara or star, and she smiles all the time. I am speechless. I want to know what makes her so happy. I want to know how she is filled with so much love and how she can keep giving without being held back by the sorrow that could have turned into crust in her soul.

She lifts her saree and shows me her arms and legs. I can see knife and burn marks. She tells me that even her vagina has been cut up. One nipple has also been sliced off. She says all this in a matter-of-fact voice as though reading out a child's report card. There's no drama, no tears, no look-at-my-sorry state cry. "How's the tea?" she then asks smiling, trying to cheer me up. Tara is in her mid thirties and wants to live in the brothel till the last ebb of life. "I can't go anywhere now. This is my home. I go to my village whenever I want, send money every month for my children's education and hope they will do well in life. There is nothing else in my life. I am a prostitute. It is my job. The lowest job ever. I am like the garbage can. Born to be used. Anyway, forget all this, tell me about you, why are you here, are you married, do you have children, how does your wife look, must be beautiful, what are your children's names, where are they studying?"

Tara charges three hundred rupees for a session, which roughly translates to six dollars. A portion is handed to the madam. It is a few times that for the whole night. Sometimes, she is booked for the weekends too. She keeps the tips and the gifts she gets. "I have customers I have known for years. I have loved too but now I don’t love like that I think I have grown up. That mad, desperate love is over, thank God. My mind doesn’t connect to the body. It's just a job. Many customers just want to talk and tell me their problems. They pay me because I listen. No one listens to anyone in the big city. No one has time. Everyone has problems. When I hear them, I feel my problems are nothing. I am sure even you have problems. It is the human condition. We are all supposed to have problems and we are meant to solve them. It is karma. Then we will leave this body and take another form. And, maybe, take on some new problems." 

I ask her how she knows all this. "Is there any other reason? Look at my life. Is there any reason for all that has happened? What have I done? I haven't even had the chance to be a bad person. I was raped as a child. So there must be something I did in a previous life and this is my punishment. When I die my punishment will be over. My next life will be good. I have done nothing wrong this life. We have talked about this in the brothel. All the girls agree. There is no other explanation. You tell me. You are educated. If not for karma, why have we suffered like this? It is destiny, nothing else." I look for answers. The happy geckos are also not on the wall.

I ask her about God, religion, about her spirituality. Her room has several pictures of deities. Yes, she prays every day. All the girls pray. They have grown up praying to some God and the madam also insists that they pray together. "I am born a Hindu and I pray to all the Gods and Goddesses. I also celebrate all the festivals. Religion doesn’t matter to me. I don’t know too much about all this. I haven’t studied much, but there has to be some power that makes all of us so different. Even the girls in the brothel are so different from one another. How? Isn't that surprising? I feel happy when I pray. So I pray. I don’t know anything else. Maybe, there is no God. I don’t know. Maybe, He is not kind, maybe He is not just, may be He is. I don’t know all this. How can I know all this? I just pray to what, I feel, is responsible for creating life. Prayer makes me feel strong and secure and happy."

We have more tea. It is late at night, early morning really. The rooms are full. Business is good like it always is. The cubicle's door is shut and there is no noise intruding our space. A long triangular stretch of light seeps in from under the door. Some girls who have not been taken for the night sleep in the hall outside on charpoys laid on the ground. "Why don't you eat? It is not good to have so much tea. There is some rice and dal. I will heat it. Let's eat," she insists. We eat together in clean, separate plates. She gives me a spoon so that I don’t dirty my hands. Tara keeps talking and giggling like a schoolgirl. She is kind and loving and wants to pamper me. "This grain of rice has your name on it. So it is your karma to eat with me today. So eat as much as you can. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? We haven't seen it."  

Do you miss your kids? "I am a mother. Which mother won't? I am here for them. I want to live and work till they are settled. Both are boys. So I am not worried. If they are girls anything can happen to them. When I meet my mother I wonder what dreams she had for me? She must have had some dreams at least. Having become a mother, I understand my mother better. Luckily, she is blind and can't hear or speak too well. If she knew what I have gone through, her heart will pain."

She has pictures of the kids framed on the wall. Two little boys, short, thin, tanned, oiled hair and powdered up, in matching blue shirts with white stripes grinning away astride a red motorcycle. It is a studio shot taken in her village. Tara can read and write Telegu and watches a lot of television. She loves Hindi films and sees at least one a day. Sometimes, the girls go to the cinema close by. She likes action and romance and even the scary flicks. "I even saw Sunjay Dutt shooting," she says all excited. "He had come to Kamathipura."

What's her daily routine?  She normally wakes up late, but it depends on customer traffic. If the traffic is heavy, the brothel gets a life only at noon. Every girl gets about five customers a day on an average. There are love stories and special customers, and weekend and festival rush. So the numbers vary depending on several factors. Customers can walk in anytime, some even come to the brothel for breakfast. Some stay in the brothel for weeks on end. Customers can stay as long as they want if they pay. But the evenings and nights are always busy.

The madam, a former sex worker in the same brothel, wakes up early everyday and looks into the provisions and other details. The girls, who had an early night, help her. Everyone does something or the other; duties are assigned. Some cook, other clean up, and food is also ordered from the several hotels nearby. Customers may want to drink and smoke too. Biryani, tandoor dishes and kebabs can be ordered. On festive occasions the girls cook the dishes they are most fond of. They don’t entertain customers during their menstrual cycle but hang around and chat. It's holiday time then. They also eat out with customers. Vendors come to the brothel with fruits, vegetables, flowers, clothes, utensils, jewellery, with almost everything the girls and the brothel needs. So there is no need to shop unless they need the colours, smells and noises of the bazaar.

The brothel is spick and span. There are maids to clean up; normally they are retired sex workers. The two toilets and two bathing areas are kept spotlessly clean and disinfected, water collected in large cauldrons, floors swabbed several times a day, condoms are used always, and great stress is laid on post coital hygiene. The girls and their customers clean themselves thoroughly with water, lemon and soap. Lemon slices are always used as a natural disinfectant. It is used for everything: washing, cooking and eating. A doctor on the street below is always available. He lives above the clinic. Sometimes the girls fall sick, but Tara has never been unwell. "I have never fallen sick, never even had fever, I don’t know how. I am so lucky. Maybe, it's my prayers."

There is order and the brothel runs without murmur. Fights between the girls, though not uncommon, never last. There are some 20 girls in the brothel and Tara is one of the senior ones. The others listen to her without protest. They know why they are here. Tara helps them come to terms with the new circumstances and when the old ones get frayed at the ends. The girls fight over new clothes and lovers, but it's not serious. What's a little bit of ego bruising when they have been pulverised by life? 

Tara jokes and laughs till the tears trickle from her eyes. I simply can't fathom her and the others in the brothel. I need a constant yoga practice to still my mind and find fleeting happiness. How do Tara and the others keep laughing at life when it has always mocked them?       

The Buddha talked about clinging and non-clinging. If something good happens, you have a reflexive tendency to try to hold on to it, and if something bad happens, you have a tendency to push it away. This clinging response is inevitable if you believe yourself to be the same as or the "owner of" all the desires and fears that arise in you. You become trapped in an endless web of tension and contraction. For most people life is just this.

"He who understands clinging and non-clinging understands all the Dharma," said the Buddha. This is the Dharma of happiness. The alternative to the tyranny of clinging is to fully receive the experiences that arise in your life, knowing them to be pleasant when they are pleasant and unpleasant when they are unpleasant.  Life dances and you have to dance with it. Each moment is a fresh moment in the dance, and you have to be present for it.

Tara and the girls instinctively radiate the wisdom of the Buddha. I spent years with my yoga practice yet was unable to scratch out the images of burn and knife wounds on Tara's body, her dazzling eyes, the wisdom of her words and the smile that roped in all the joys of the world in its loving expanse in a badly lit cubicle of a brothel on the first floor of a building steadily falling apart in one of the most notorious flesh districts in the world.

Life is dancing, and Tara is dancing with it. It’s the last tango in Kamathipura. It’s her last dance of life.  

INDIA AND THE CHALLENGE OF HIV/AIDS

By Rajendar Menen

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

-- Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 - 1968)

In countries like India where food, clothing and shelter remain beyond the reach of most people and where old epidemics in new clothes revisit with uncanny regularity, the battle against AIDS can be lost even before the first slingshots are readied. As most of us who live in this part of the world know only too well, even our fire-fighting techniques are obsolete. But, surprisingly, despite habitually blocking up the attic with body and soul to sensitive issues that need urgent repair, the government of India has stretched itself this time. Systems have been readied and battle stations prepared. The immediacy of the situation has magically reached home.

India is a large country living in thousands of villages, towns and cities. Randomly throw pebbles from the sky and they could fall squarely on eighth or twenty-first century India overlapping each other without quarrel. Cultures, creeds, religions, beliefs, castes, languages and disparate socio-economic expression live in some argument but still in reasonable harmony with one another. It is another miracle. All this diversity has some unity. But if one were to prepare a national plan for action this diversity can get in the way. Every inch of strategy will have to be reworked in different metaphors and keeping several shades of nuances in mind. A variety of needs and emotions will have to be catered to.

Millions of Indians are illiterate and live in considerable material discomfort. All intervention campaigns have to work through the ignorance first before mailing a message of any import. Poverty and illiteracy share a peculiar intimacy. They live off each other. Get rid of one and the other will surely die. As the economy grows and wealth is more evenly distributed, the reach of information will get larger. But this can take time, and a killer disease needs immediate attention. There is little reaction time.

There are several other aspects: legal aid for the HIV-infected; medical help that includes indigenous systems of medicine; the legislation of prostitution as it is all pervasive and cannot be done away with; affordable and quality medical care for those testing HIV-positive; compassionate insurance schemes; professional and dignified testing and counselling services; assurance of employment; protracted and effective advertising campaigns; and the involvement not only of the government but the community as well.

The media has played a tremendous role. It has pounced on the big story with alacrity. International aid has poured in and celebrity fund-raising jamborees have ensured that money is not a constraint. In January 1998, the government of India announced the draft of a National AIDS Prevention and Control Policy. The prime objective was to get a stranglehold on the virus without wasting time. Women, children and other vulnerable and "high-risk" sections like truckers had to be protected from the onslaught of the virus. The policy also focused on improved healthcare for those affected and decided to adopt new research and approved templates to handle the virus.

All blood is now screened for HIV, professional blood donation has been disallowed by legislation, infected pregnant women have access to medicines, sex education has been introduced in schools, alternate sexuality is being viewed with less alarm, condoms are distributed free in the flesh districts, the female condom has been selectively introduced, hospices are being set up, and India has emerged as one of the largest manufacturers of the highly active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART) with a surplus that eyes foreign markets. It is also believed to be close to discovering a conventional and affordable treatment for AIDS with minimal side effects. No medico-social challenge in India has ever been addressed as seriously as AIDS has. It has rocked the front pages and hogged precious time on television and radio, and an entire generation of professionals is working overtime to get a fix on the problem. Indigenous vaccine initiatives have been launched, and with the advent of HIV a new era in medical jurisprudence has taken birth.

India still copes miserably with malaria, tuberculosis and several other strains of both old and new epidemics that take a heavy toll of human life. Add natural calamities, endemic corruption and widespread communal and political turbulence to the boil and you have a country that is bent double with trouble. AIDS only adds to the large burden on its back. It is predominantly a sexually transmitted disease and that makes it far more difficult to ambush in a country of so many people subsisting in such diverse cultural sub-texts. Conservative estimates place the number of those infected at close to six million. But those in the know believe that it could be more than double that.

Every effort is being made to stem its spread. There's a good chance that India won't spring another leak and allow HIV to blow up its innards like it has done in other parts of the world. It is certainly a situation that is worth watching with a magnifying glass.

****************************

A few months ago, I met up with John Frederick, the tall, bespectacled American who speaks and smiles gently in the most self-effacing fashion. He is the guru of the street. He knows more about prostitution and trafficking of women than entire governments. We have worked together in the past and decide to check out Kamathipura. We had heard that it was now living in fear after massive police crackdowns. John has come down from Nepal where he runs an NGO called Ray of Hope.

We meet up at his digs in Colaba and take a cab to Kamathipura. We check out old places together; we have known several sex workers in the area well and we have gifts and words of encouragement for them. We also talk to local doctors and exchange notes with other NGOs in the field. Then we walk into a little dimly lit bar with a lot of noise. It watches the street and so is a good observation post. We have beer, talk and watch.

John tells me about the situation in Nepal. With more guerilla groups attacking the government, the focus on sex work and HIV/AIDS is diluted now. With the increase in population, the numbers in prostitution everywhere, certainly in the developing world, have also grown over the years. "The government is in a mess, the NGOs are trying hard but they are under funded, have dismal conceptual clarity of the issues and are often donor driven," he says. He feels that the Nepali girls in the Mumbai brothels "probably get a better deal than local girls in their everyday slavery/trafficked situation. They appear to live okay. Our studies have shown that they stay in the trafficked/slavery/bondage situation three to five years longer than their Indian counterparts. Probably when they get older, their situation is the same as local girls. But, remember, the work situation differs in both countries. There are no brothel areas in Nepal. The sex industry is a floating population. It is a loose network. Whatever the system, HIV is on the rise everywhere. Our studies have also shown that the police raids in Mumbai have made the brothel communities very paranoid and so HIV/AIDS workers can't reach the women. We feel that AIDS is rising due to the pseudo rescues." 

Nepal has an old, informal network of female gharwalis (brothel owners), which is very different from the way girls are recruited to brothels in India. However, irrespective of the type of the organisation of prostitution, John believes that there is a "symbiotic relationship between the police and sex work everywhere. In most big cities, the Mafia too exerts some control over prostitution. Regarding political involvement, I think it depends on the politician."

Of all the intervention campaigns he has seen over the years, John rates the Durbar in Kolkata as the most effective. Sonagachi, Kolkata's legendary red-light area, has among the lowest levels of HIV in the subcontinent. The best way to clean up prostitution, he feels, is to "collect and organise the sex workers, give them power to regulate and clean up their own brothel communities with support from others including the government and the police. Strengthen sex worker collectives to reach out to others of their ilk in rural communities and smaller cities and towns. The street and bar sex workers should also be included so that they are all protected and supported at the same time." The bottom line is sex worker empowerment. It's a hard task considering the enormous gender inequity even in more compassionate settings.

We pay up and decide to walk around a bit. Pimps follow us with great hope. John is a 'white' man and I look like I have just walked out of a merchant vessel docked in Mumbai harbour. We are choice targets. The pimps surround us. Most of them are alcoholics and drug addicts and don’t believe that we are not flesh shoppers. Earlier, before legislation banned it, they were also professional blood donors. They look like ruins and fit in well with the decay all around. They don’t even understand our disinterest in what is on sale. They recommend different brothels, reel out rates and the virtues of all the girls who, they insist, are pristine pure, highly educated, very sexy, young, healthy, inexpensive and available for as long as we want. I am always amused when pimps everywhere never fail to mention that the girls "are from good families". It almost sounds like a marriage proposal. I tell them that we are from the government and are mapping an AIDS intervention drive. They are not interested and can't be shrugged off. It is irritating and funny too. They keep following us, sometimes tugging at our shirtsleeves. Finally, they blackmail us. "Give us money and we will go." 

Kamathipura has changed a lot from the early days. It has been badly kicked in the butt. First, HIV latched on, and now the police have become more aggressive spurred by various concerns of human rights organisations. Quite rightly, there is a watch on children and teenagers entering the profession. But now there are no customers either. They get mopped up in police raids and don’t want to take a chance. As a result, prices have fallen and the women are more desperate. There is talk of leaving the area and moving to other places. New red-light areas are mushrooming all over the city.

We talk to Jaya, in her twenties, thin, tall and acne marked, nervously standing on the road, close to a police outpost, looking for clients. She is a 'floater'. She doesn’t belong to a brothel but has visiting rights. If she picks up a customer, she can take him to a brothel she has struck a deal with. She pays for bed space and time wrenching it off the customer's bill.

Jaya hasn't had a customer for days. She is worried. There is no money for the family and she doesn’t know what to do or where to go. She also has a lot of competition and there are hundreds like her on the street not protected by the collective economics of a brothel. Her rates are rock bottom now, and she is not standing here, in the noise of traffic and pollution, warding off disease and destitution with all her prayers, for free sex.

We continue walking through the maze of lanes and head back. There is nothing to say. Harsh walls of silence accompany us on the journey home.     

Random Notes

AUROVILLE, DIVINE ANARCHY AND BEYOND...

By Rajendar Menen

"Auroville wants to be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realise human unity."

Then the Charter:

1. Auroville belongs to nobody in particular. Auroville belongs to humanity as a whole. But to live in Auroville, one must be the willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness.

2. Auroville will be the place of an unending education, of constant progress, and a youth that never ages.

3. Auroville wants to be the bridge between the past and the future. Taking advantage of all discoveries from without and from within, Auroville will boldly spring towards future realisations.

4. Auroville will be a site of material and spiritual researches for a living embodiment of an actual Human Unity.

I was in my late teens when I read this. I read it over and over again. It was quite different from acne and girlfriends and hockey matches. I was doing my post-graduation at Madras University. The large Gothic library where I did most of my reading faced the Bay of Bengal. It lay calm, unruffled, a lazy blue then; a long way from the turmoil it would unleash from its breast in the form of a tsunami several decades later. Old ceiling fans tried to wipe away the humidity dripping from my face and clenched my shirtsleeves in a stranglehold. The sun swarmed all over, seeping into every crevice of this large, ancient building built by the British, leaving it threadbare of secrets. 

I continued reading.

Then came the Mother’s words: Let your highest aspiration organise your life.    

The call had come. I had to go.

That evening I took the four-hour bus journey to Pondicherry with a slim bag clutching my shoulders. Buses left every half hour from the terminus next to the Madras central station. The picturesque East Coast Road, which makes the commute quicker and far more exciting these days, wasn't ready then. But the bus ride, packed with an assortment of seekers, had its own distractions.

I booked into an ashram guesthouse without trouble and spent the next few weeks exploring Pondicherry and Auroville, 14 kms into the heart of wilderness.

It was tough, the sun blared angrily, the long cycle rides over burnt road were both strenuous and dangerous. Large buses and lorries hurtled past, the dust got into your eyes, and primordial India swept past on bullock carts and colourful sarees with pots of water on black, heavily oiled heads.

The wide, impassive road leading to Tamil Nadu from Pondicherry turned left into a dirt track and wandered along a while before Auroville finally arrived. It was then a barren infinity, although work on Mother's vision had already begun. Vast stretches of inhospitable red clay zealously guarded several promises for the future. I searched the horizon in dismay. All that I could see were clumps of dry bush, a stray hut, cattle, street dogs, burning firewood, and its smoke slipping into the distance and beyond. There was nothing more. If this was divinity, it was so commonplace.

But I thought I could see the waking of a dream. It was unreal. I could feel it in my bones. The vibrations were powerful. They were different, at least. My young mind was still uncluttered and I knew in my soul that this journey was the first of several that I would make in a peripatetic existence spanning continents. I also knew then that this small town and the surrounding villages in this southern tip of India would be the lodestar of all my future wanderings. I would always return, possibly even to stay.

There was not much to distinguish Pondicherry from the rest of India. The Aurobindo ashram and the ‘white’ enclave were Spartan. The town was well designed and clean. Road names were French, they met at right angles and the tiny shops that kissed street corners were overflowing with goodies from all over India. Occasionally, beautiful women rode bicycles and school kids trooped out in their house colours. But walk away from all that and the poverty of India hit you in the face. The rest of Pondicherry was materially poor. The roads were jammed with pedestrian and two-wheeler traffic and disease and dismay habitually consorted with one another. A lot hasn't changed today. Parts of Pondicherry are still visibly decrepit with all the problems of an ancient civilisation coming to grips with the seemingly inaccessible mix of spirituality and modernity.

Long kilometres away, Auroville had taken birth. Red dry earth, happy scorpions and large Tamil settlements with perennial water problems stared you in the eye. Matri Mandir, the most visible symbol of the new consciousness, to be adorned with the world's largest crystal on completion, was still emerging from the earth. If this was the embryo of the dream that had plans for mankind, I was disappointed. My little mind saw nothing special.

The Mother had said that the new world would begin from here. Several people, most of them foreigners then, got down to shorts and T-shirts and started digging. The new world would begin from under the red earth. It would sprout like the green grass, they said.

I cycled back to town in a pool of sweat and grime, had a bath, swamped a few beers and slept with many dreams. I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my eyes and all is born again, said Sylvia Plath, the poet. I was smitten. Was it the red earth, a scorpion bite or the dream of Auroville?

I wandered the labyrinths of Pondicherry the next few weeks. I shyly sought the red earth of Auroville again and again. Maybe, I had missed something. Possibly, in the fist of the void that I couldn’t unveil, was the secret dream.  Finally, empty-handed but not disappointed, I went back to my studies in (now) Chennai. But I returned countless times in my thoughts, in my spirit and in my soul to the haunting image of dry, red earth spreading across the border from Pondicherry into Tamil Nadu without care, still hiding the seed of promise along with the pebbles and shoots of grass that gathered on its back. Bullock carts trampled all over it and cobras and scorpions raised families in the large crevices that had forever escaped the benevolence of the monsoon. Yes, without doubt, I was too young and immature to grasp the enormity of it all. But the magic of the unknown remained and I doodled with it.

**********************  

A few details for the uninitiated:

* Auroville is a universal township in the making for a population of up to 50,000 people from around the world.

* The concept of Auroville - an ideal township devoted to an experiment in human unity - came to the Mother as early as the 1930s. In the mid 1960s the Sri Aurobindo Society in Pondicherry proposed to Her that such a township should be started. She gave her blessings. The concept was then put before the Govt. of India, who gave their backing and took it to the General Assembly of UNESCO. In 1966 UNESCO passed a unanimous resolution commending it as a project of importance to the future of humanity, thereby giving their full encouragement.

* The purpose of Auroville is to realise human unity – in diversity. Today Auroville is recognised as the first and only internationally endorsed ongoing experiment in human unity and transformation of consciousness, also concerned with - and practically researching into - sustainable living and the future cultural, environmental, social and spiritual needs of mankind.

* On 28th February 1968 some 5,000 people assembled near the banyan tree at the centre of the future township for an inauguration ceremony attended by representatives of 124 nations, including all the States of India. The representatives brought with them some soil from their homeland, to be mixed in a white marble- clad, lotus-shaped urn, now sited at the focal point of the Amphitheatre. At the same time the Mother gave Auroville its 4-point Charter.

* Auroville is located in south India, mostly in the State of Tamil Nadu (some parts are in the State of Pondicherry), a few kilometres inland from the Coromandel Coast, approx 160 kms south of Chennai (previously Madras) and 1 0 kms north of the town of Pondicherry.

* Aurovilians  come from some 35 nations, from all age groups (from infancy to over eighty, averaging around 30), from all social classes, backgrounds and cultures, representing humanity as a whole. The population of the township is constantly growing, but currently stands at around 1,700 people, of whom approximately one-third are Indian.

* The Divison of Auroville

Peace Area

At the centre of the township lies the Peace Area, comprising the Matrimandir and its gardens, the amphitheatre with the Urn of Human Unity that contains the soil of 121 nations and 23 Indian states, and a lake to help create an atmosphere of calm and serenity and to serve as a groundwater recharge area.

Industrial Zone

A 109-hectare area to the north of the Peace Area, the Industrial Zone, a zone for "green" industries, is focused on Auroville's efforts towards a self-supporting township. It will contain small and medium-scale industries, training centres, arts and crafts, and the city's administration.

Residential Zone

The largest of the four city zones, comprising of 189 hectares, the Residential Zone is bordered by parks on the north, south and west. Main access to the zone will be through the crown road with further traffic distribution via five radial roads that divide the zone into sectors of increasing densities. This zone wants to provide a well-adjusted habitat between individual and collective living. 55% of the area will be green and only 45% built surface, thereby creating an urban density balanced by nature.

International Zone

The International Zone, a zone of 74 hectares to the west of the Peace Area, will host national and cultural pavilions, grouped by continents. Its central focus is to create a living demonstration of human unity in diversity through the expression of the genius and contribution of each nation to humanity

Cultural Zone

Planned on a 93-hectare area, situated to the east of the Peace Area, the Cultural Zone will be a site for applied research in education and artistic expression. Facilities for cultural, educational, art and sports activities will be located in this zone.

Green Belt

The city area with a radius of 1.25 km. will be surrounded by a Green Belt of 1.25 km width. As a zone for organic farms, dairies, orchards, forests, and wildlife areas, this belt will act as a barrier against urban encroachment, provide a variety of habitats for wildlife, and serve as a source for food, timber, medicines etc. and as a place for recreation.

Presently an area of 405 hectares, the Green Belt - though incomplete - stands as an example of successful transformation of wasteland into a vibrant eco-system. Its further planned extension with an additional 800 hectares will make it into a remarkable demonstration site for soil and water conservation, ground water recharge, and environmental restoration. As lungs for the entire township, it will complete the healing process that Auroville started several decades ago.

***************

I visited Auroville again recently. It was bustling with people and activity. The red earth was now a green belt. Hundreds of thousands of plants, and birds and animals woke up at daybreak in a cacophony of joy and ran home at twilight satiated by the stirrings of new discovery. Exquisite guesthouses and residences had spawned. Small-scale industry had taken root, healing centres had sprung up and a visible prosperity had visited the land. Two-wheelers roared through the undergrowth and what Mother called the "divine anarchy" of Auroville was in ecstatic bloom. The Matri Mandir shone resplendent in its gold casing on the exterior and a silence that even blocked out the hush of the breeze within it.   

I had made several visits in the interim and so the flowering of Auroville wasn't entirely unexpected. I met with scores of people over the years, and am recounting a few of my encounters in no particular chronology or order of importance. Those I talk about don’t represent the core group of Auroville. Neither do they fashion its agenda. But they live in the smatter of its wilderness and are privy to the joys and sorrows of a vision that is unfolding under the patter of their unknown feet.     

****************

I am at Fertile, one of the several imaginatively named settlements in Auroville. It is December, the winter sun is soft on the skin and, whenever it chooses, a raging breeze hollows through the forest. It is an unusual setting. The forest is vast, thick and wild and in a clearing, in the heart of the green, is a log cabin embroidered by thatching standing on long stilts. It is strategically placed like a lookout tower. From inside, I can see the forest stretching into the cloudless blue sky.

The hut on stilts, about 20 square feet, has no doors or windows. The sun wanders in from several corners, even shyly through the delicate thatching, picks up an item to spotlight, and wanders off. Luit Hoffman, tall, thin, almost gaunt, bare bodied, barring a tiny blue shorts, pulls up a chair for me, settles comfortably on the matting, and tells me why he is in Auroville thousands of miles away from home in Amsterdam in the sun and the humidity and in blue shorts sweating away, chasing away the flies, mosquitoes and termites that seem to love his faint, freckled skin. The breeze comes in unannounced, rustles a sheaf of papers, and crawls away with much noise. 

"I am a travelling person," he tells me in a strange accent with some Tamil thrown in. "At one time I didn’t feel like travelling anymore. I just wanted to stay somewhere in the tropics. I found India a convenient place to be."

It wasn't as simple as that though.

"In Amsterdam, as a journalist, I had the perfect bad life. Women, drugs, booze… can't do all that all one's life, can you? I was planning to get away to Egypt. A friend mentioned Auroville. I had a look on the map, read a bit about it, and here I am."

Luit has been in Auroville for four-and-a-half years. He works part time for the Forest Group. From his log cabin, he is responsible for the preservation of the forest. The forest has to be saved. That's his agenda. Auroville has to breathe and the forest is the lung. So Luit has a very responsible job. "I have come to good terms with the village people," he says happily. "They don’t cut trees any more. They understand what I am talking."

Luit continues talking. There aren't many people in the forest and in the surrounding villages he can talk to and this is a bonus: someone who knows English hanging on to every word of his, even taking copious notes.  "I was married to a woman from Paris, then to another from Finland. I had to communicate with my wives in English. So my cupboard is filled with English dictionaries." I tell him that his diction is clear and I can understand every word. Encouraged, he refuses to stop.

"I thought life in Europe was crazy. Unecological and unlogical. The west is spending too much on ecologically defeating items. I wanted to do something with my life and not just do the same things like everybody else. My life is so different here. No meat, no beer, no sex. I live a solitary, introspective life with nature. I eat fruits and vegetables and some rice and chappati and vegetable curry. That’s all. It's a healthy diet. I think I have automatically detoxed my western lifestyle. It is also very cheap to live here and so I can stay on without having to look for paying jobs."

Luit lives in sepulchral isolation. He owns nothing. The hut is bare. He is removed from all social contact and spends his time reading and writing. "I came here with almost nothing," he says juggling his pockets. I look for holes in them! "Then I decided to do something. I had brought eight books and a typewriter with me. Three of the books were on China, a pure coincidence. So I decided to study Chinese thought." He is researching the I Ching and is planning to write a book as soon as he gets a publisher. "Chinese philosophy has a deep respect for nature while the western way of life is wrecking the human being."

Luit Hoffman, in his forties, has packed his life with experiences and has, for now, chosen to live in the shade of Auroville. As far as the Mother's dream for Auroville is concerned, Luit may be a marginal devotee. He is not privy to the Agenda or the thoughts of Sri Aurobindo that have spent themselves into tomes. But he has an instinctive feel for the "divine anarchy" that Auroville pulses with. 

***************

Ever since Auroville was conceived, the main thrust has been to prepare a vital, breathing ecosystem. A barren, red earth plateau once, it is now densely forested with a large sampling of plant and animal life. The magic of the forest, by day or night, is always mesmeric.

Nergis Pesikaka lives in Certitude, lost, like the other settlements, in the most awe inspiring sights and sounds nature can offer. Nergis is in her seventies, a Zoroastrian from Bombay, frail and voluble, with an unusual zest for life. Once she starts talking, she doesn’t care if you are around, or listening. Most of the people I met in Auroville either kept talking or didn't utter a word. Such extremes!

"I didn't know about Aurobindo or anything," says Nergis. "In a way, it was quite an accident. After my husband died in 1959, I was in Madras, and then I just came to Pondy. It was just another tourist spot for me.

"I remember it was February 21, 1972. It was Mother's birthday. A week later it was to be Auroville's birthday. There was a ceremony at Matrimandir and we were all given pebbles as a symbolic gesture. I went back and returned to Pondicherry a few times after that, then again in 1974.

"When I saw the Mother it changed my life. You see, I am a hairdresser by profession. I take in the hairstyle, hands, feet, the entire appearance of the person. This time there was nothing of that sort. Mother's eyes and face simply overwhelmed me. And her fingers were exquisite.

"Then I saw Auroville. It was very beautiful. I read the Charter and knew that this was the place for me. I returned to Bombay and slowly, part by part, transported my things here."

Nergis is an extraordinary person. She lives alone in the wild, has had numerous accidents but isn't daunted by it all. She takes me to her beautiful home surrounded by flowers and greenery and birds chirping away under the sunlight. Her home is painstakingly done up. She has a gym, trains with machines, does yoga, and loves gardening, trekking and music. 

"It is a very hard life here," she continues. "Everything seems to go against you. There are termites, snakes, mosquitoes and great poverty in the villages nearby. But, how strange, despite all this, when I came here I realised that this is what I have always wanted to do. This is where I have always wanted to live.    

"I first came to Utility. It was pure and lovely. I stayed there for four years and then moved to Camp for two-and-a-half years before building this house in Certitude. You may wonder how I live alone in the wilderness at this age, but I never feel lonely. I love my company and can do whatever I want here. No one interferes."  Nergis has had a number of jobs including the backbreaking concreting of Matrimandir. Now she works in Information and provides literature on Auroville to those keen on knowing more.  

***************

"I came here finally after a long, long journey," says Prabahdevi in English that has a lot of Italian in it. We are at Quiet, a settlement on the fringes of Auroville, bang on the beach. It is a clear night sky. A slice of the moon sidesteps an onrushing cloud and a sliver of light crashes into the ripples below. Quiet is bathed in the shimmer of a gently woken moon and the muted strains of a flute coasting from nearby. Huts of fishermen scatter the beach sands. Their boats, nets and fatigue drone gently in the cool night breeze.

Prabha is Italian. The quintessential seeker, she overdosed on life, married, broke up and found Krishna. With it began the long journey to India. The search continued. Finally, several journeys and 'incarnations' later, she found Pondicherry and peace.

“I will never leave,” she tells me. “There is magic here. Just look at it. Look at the moon and the sea and the miles of beautiful land. I am blessed.” Prabha lives in a large tastefully done up hut built on two levels. From her bedroom, the sea is visible in its various moods. Sometimes, it calls out to her and at other times pretends to be in slumber. The sea has many faces, and Prabha has seen them all.

She has three cats who meow relentlessly for food and walk restlessly around the refrigerator. Surya, the smallest and most pampered, sharing its colours with the sun, is always coaxing her for more. Sometimes, large black snakes slither in and hide, once even the thatching collapsed in the monsoon. “But all this is nothing if you look at the larger picture,” she tells me. 

Prabha is beautiful and petite. Her long golden hair falls to her waist. Every day, she gets on her Luna and rides to Pondicherry for yoga and Reiki classes, does seva in the ashram batik department, visits the Mother’s samadhi and returns home in the evening to a simple vegetarian meal. Friends drop in, the classes go on, the heat and the rain pound the land and, sometimes, when she feels like it, even at midnight, she skinny dips in the beautiful blue waters kissing her home.

It is a life of peace and contentment. A long journey has come to an end and another, much more significant one, has begun.

Prabha gives me another cup of delectable cha. I soon find out that she is also an excellent cook, a great host and a wonderful companion. She can also talk to snakes. While I shudder in fear at the sight of them, she looks them in the eye and tells them that it is not a good idea to share digs with her. They listen, hoods raised, and quietly slip away into the bush without argument.

***************

Not far away from Prabha, also in Quiet, is Amba Shankar's house. It is still being constructed. The walls are not complete and bags of red bricks and cement lie around. It is another soulful night in Auroville.

Amba is in his sixties, tall, tanned and powerfully built like a leading man in a Biblical epic. His clean shaved handsome face with its deep lines seems chiseled from granite and when he smiles, which is often, dimples and two rows of shining teeth light the visage of a rake now slowly being done in by the passage of time. But, despite the years, Amba still remains a striking figure.

Amba has been in Auroville and Pondicherry all his life. "I am from the border of Northern Karnataka and Southern Maharashtra, he says slowly. "My father was a big landlord with no interest in worldly matters. He was a true seeker. When he found Mother and Sri Aurobindo, his questions were answered. He realised that they were the divine incarnate on earth."

Amba came to Pondicherry when he was four years old. He returned to his village to complete his studies and came back to the ashram as a strapping young man. He wasn't to know then that in the years to come his endless stamina and great physical prowess would whip controversy and legend in the same breath. Everyone in Pondicherry knows him. Mention the word Amba and you hear a gasp of recognition. He has straddled generations.        

"The early years were fabulous," says Amba. "Mother was the centre of everything. We were always filled with peace, harmony and energy. The mood continued till the Mother passed away. And then Auroville plunged into its darkest period. Power struggles and petty squabbles depleted the vision. Then the central government intervened and all was set right."  Those were dreary days when the sun had set for a while on the City of Dawn.

Amba has done it all. "I was first involved in laying the green belt, then digging the foundation for Matrimandir. But the Play School was my baby. All the children and a few adults met every evening after five. We played, talked, ate and drank milk. We didn't teach anything specific. It was informal schooling. We planted trees, built a gymnasium and a road and recreated Mother's spirit with discipline and love. I have also been to several parts of the world with those who came here to discover Auroville."

The last few years for Amba Shankar have been as calm as the early years have been fiery. He poured his energies to realise Mother's call, and with what was left of it nurtured the land he now owns. "I am very happy with the life I have spent here. There are no regrets. I have one fundamental quest in life: to do whatever Mother and Sri Aurobindo wanted me to do.

Amba goes to the kitchen and gets us large mugs of delicious tea. He sits barefoot on his haunches on the incomplete parapet of his house and scans the horizon deep in thought. In a few hours, it will be daybreak. Then the lanterns will be switched off, morning sounds will take over the silence of the night, and the tide will surge closer to the shore

****************

Pitanga and Dana are two of several settlements in Auroville. The road is long, narrow and lonely. It is a moonless night and I ride heavily on luck to get around. The wind is heavy with raindrops. I lift my scooty to full throttle and search the landscape for a route with headlights that sear the night sky. A large scorpion, or is it a twig, goes crunch under the tyres.

Celestin is tall, dark and slim with thick shoulder length curly hair. She is in a white shirt and blue shorts. Ordinary canvas shoes encase her feet. We met at a music concert and she pillion rode with me to her home in Bliss, another   settlement not too far away. It is at the foot of a 45-acre settlement of forest.

Celestin lives with two cats in a tree house so fragile that I lose several heartbeats stepping into it. She hardly eats anything, munching most of the time on raw salads and whatever else the forest drops on her dining table. It is an offbeat and reclusive existence. But she loves it, and has the guts to walk into the darkness without even a lantern.

"I am from Jaffna in Sri Lanka," she tells me. "I came away before the trouble started. I have spent my entire life searching for meaning. J.Krishnamurti influenced me. He came to Sri Lanka for a lecture series. I hung on to every word. I was obsessed. After listening to him I lost all fear. I just changed from inside."

At night the forest is filled with eerie sounds. You see nothing, but you hear a lot even at elbow range. You look around frantically, but no human or animal form is visible. The night has its distinct language. Wild cats jump on the table and lap up the spilt tea, then get distracted by a wandering mongoose and decide to chase it. Snakes, owls, rodents and foxes swish through the dark undergrowth. It is a beautiful night. The air is pregnant with rain, tree leaves carry droplets, and the earth, wet, fertile and caressed, is as coquettish as a newly wed bride.

The bush is thick. Tiny paths cut a swathe through it. For one unused to the secrets of the night or of the bush, every step can be a frightening experience. But for Celestin, frail and vulnerable and all trusting, the forest and the darkness and its mysterious ways are good friends. "I always wanted to be enlightened. That’s all I ever wanted," she tells me. "Now I am free of that need. This realisation was sudden. Maybe, now I am enlightened. I feel the liberation from inside me."

Celestin has been living in Auroville for years. She taught in a school in Isaiambalam and then moved through a number of settlements. She loves the forest. "We are planting more and more trees," she says. Celestin doesn’t want to return to Sri Lanka. That bit of her life is over. "There are dangers here too," she says. "Assaults, burglary, thefts, even rape. No place in the world is ideal. You have to work at peace from within yourself. In fact, there are more challenges here. I do yoga, meditate, and have no fear. I am happy."

***************

Arpit Aggarwal is tall, dark and slim. When I met him, during one of my first visits several years ago, he had passed out of the Ashram school and studied a bit more before deciding to work in a boutique in Pondicherry. He had just entered adulthood and had decided to live in Auroville.

"You could say I was a problem child all along," he says quite happily. "I didn’t study too much. But the Ashram school is probably the best in the world. It has an informal atmosphere that is conducive to learning. Nothing is forced on you.  So you learnt a lot even if you have been a difficult kid like me. Everything is taught with the high principles of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo in mind. This is simply the highest consciousness. There are loads of extra-curricular activities and no examinations. But the education is complete. All the kids from the school have done so well in life."  That's a valuable point. I have been to the school and interacted with the kids. The quality of instruction is exemplary. There is also great input from the outside world; from visitors and travellers who come to seek themselves in Pondicherry. The genius of visiting skills rubs off on them. There is sport, drama, dance, elocution, spirituality, guest lectures and innumerable outlets for other interests. Education at the Ashram school cannot be more complete.   

Why Auroville, I ask? Why not stay in Pondicherry or anywhere else in the world. Kids from the Ashram school have settled all over. "It is the brainchild of the highest consciousness on earth, a place the world definitely needs," says Arpit gravely. "I feel very proud being a part of it. Despite everything, it is still the best place to stay. I wouldn't exchange this for anything else."

Arpit works in Aurosarjan, a boutique that exhibits and sells garments made in Auroville. The garments are also exported all over the world. He lives in Bharat Nivas student's hostel and commutes to work on a red motorcycle. "I do have the desire to make it big in life, to make money and do something substantial with my life. But all that is on hold now. The desire to stay in Auroville is slightly stronger than any other need now.  I don’t know when the scales will tilt. But right now, this is my life. Every moment here is a challenge. The main difference is that those living here are working with a positive and higher consciousness."

The boutique is large and airy with beautiful clothes hanging in clusters. Business is good and Arpit has a never-ending stream of squealing females asking him to help out. He loves every moment of it. I buy two fine white cotton full-sleeved shirts and leave.

Life in Auroville is hard. Apart from snakes and scorpions and the intense heat and humidity, even basic provisions have to be procured from the town. "It’s like the wild west," says Arpit.  "I am like John Wayne on a mobike. Every moment is a challenge. It's so exciting."          

In the evening, after shutting shop, Arpit will meet with his class fellows for a bit of bonhomie, have dinner and gear his motorbike for the long journey home.  At the start of the dirt track that turns left to Auroville from the main road leading to Chennai, he will pause, looks around for lurking danger, and move ahead full throttle headlights blazing. There are not enough road lights, and buses and lorries are driven by demons. There is also a steady stream of pedestrians and rickshaws to add to the disarray on the road. Of late, to add to the woes of navigation, Aurovilians have also been attacked by drunk villagers. The outlying villages are poor and it is difficult for them to understand the great physical and spiritual renaissance happening in Auroville, right under their noses. But for Arpit and the others who use the road such matters are trivial when compared to the demands of a greater call.      

***************

S.Martin, in his sixties, is a big, fair, expansive German. He is over six- and- a- half feet tall and is several hundred pounds. He is in a pink T-shirt, blue shorts and large brown trekking boots and white stockings. I bump into him at a café. He is trying out everything Indian. I try to be as polite as I can for obvious reasons.

"I read Aurobindo at 18 when I was at boarding school," he tells me with a smile in his eyes that are forever dancing like fireflies. "You know…looking for the truth and all that." Martin has a deep sonorous voice and energy restlessly oozing from every pore. He grabs a paper masala dosa, which is almost a foot long, like a hapless fly and plonks the whole thing into his mouth along with coconut chutni and sambhar. Before I can blink an eyelid politely, he continues, "I went through a lot…the Christain mystics ..Jakob Poehme, the Protestant mystic of 17th century Germany, influenced me. I accidentally saw a German translation of Sri Aurobindo in the Kal Yuga and relaised that this was what I was looking for. In 1964 I wrote to Mother saying I wanted to join the Ashram. I wasn't sure about myself and so I wanted Mother to command me to come. She replied that I would have to make my own decision."

Martin gestures wildly, punctuating every sentence with a hearty laugh. "I worked as a librarian for 11 years, broke up with my girlfriend and decided that it was Auroville now or never. And here I am." He laughs and slaps me on the back in friendship. I could have died.

"I will drop you," he says. He has a tiny bicycle on hire and I sit behind. Somewhere along the way I hop off and he makes his way silently through the bush. His hearty laugh travels with the breeze caressing the decision he could finally make after so much thought.

***************

Christain Jacquss from France works in the Auroville printing press adjacent to the Medical Health Centre. He lives in Dana and commutes the distance from residence to office and back everyday on time and in clean clothes like a good office-goer. Christain is fair, slim and bubbly. He also has a distinct nervous temperament. "I came here for the Mother. I don’t believe in the future city and all that. I just came here for the Mother," he says breathless.

It is a few moments before sunset and Christian has returned home after work. I am also staying at Dana and so I don’t have to go out of my way to chat awhile. He prepares tea and feed me organically grown brown bread with a splash of peanut butter. It is trademark Aurovilian hospitality. We sit in easy chairs, in his comfortable home, watching the plants and trees, and discuss Auroville.

"I have been here ten years," he says. "I also returned to France for two years but left disenchanted as life was useless there. I can't live there any longer. It is over. After Auroville, most of the world becomes unlivable." Christian is in his thirties, has straddled many worlds, and is here to stay. "Here I get energised. I live every moment. I feel Mother's dream will be realised in Auroville."

Introverted and uncommunicative until rustled from his corner, Christian locks himself in his room every evening after work and listens to music. He doesn’t socialise or get out too much. He works, returns home, listens to music and meditates for hours. Every morning he jumps onto his motorcycle and hacks the same path to work like one possessed. For him there can be no other way.

*****************

A representative of urbane India is the stocky and balding sophisticate Sanjeev Aggarwal. "I was a lawyer in Delhi but was dissatisfied with the legal profession. I was searching for something all along. I came to Auroville, saw it, read about Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and realised that this was exactly what I wanted to do," he says with clarity.

Sanjeev is in his early forties. He has already spent over a decade in Auroville. "It has been a exciting period," he says in impeccable English. "I have learnt a lot and imbibed a deep spiritual knowledge. But we still haven’t touched the fringes of the Mother's message. There's a long way yet. Sanjeev is involved in the educational aspects of Auroville. "There are almost 20 schools here of all sorts. It is a very different type of education from what is imparted in the outside world." 

Sanjeev lives in style in a beautiful bungalow surrounded by fragrant flowers. It is a good life. He attends to the legal aspects of Auroville, travels when required and is committed to meeting the great challenges that lie ahead. "We have undertaken to create a place that is the best in the world. There is no question of leaving and going anywhere else now."

We share a few beers and then Sanjeev has visitors who don’t want to be quoted or mentioned in passing. I break free, kick my motorbike alive and hit the track that snakes through Auroville. I can see that my journey is also going to be long one. 

*****************

La Boutique D’Auroville. in  the busiest thoroughfare of Pondicherry, is the window to Auroville. Tastefully decorated, it exhibits and sells at reasonable rates everything that is manufactured in Auroville. It is a shopper’s paradise and the general sentiment is one of dismay when the entire shop can’t be purchased. So enticing are the offerings on display!

Managing the boutique is C.Bhoominathan, a Tamilian who lives in Aspiration in Auroville. Dark, with large eyes and a slim moustache, Bhoomi sports bright, colourful shirts over dark trousers. "I am from Kuilapalayam village," he tells me. "My mother used to work in Auroville. One day she asked me if I would like to study in the Auroville school. I said yes and joined up. I must have been five or six years old then." Other village children joined Bhoomi and they lived together in a sort of campus hostel. Two Americans, a husband and wife team, supervised their work and play.

"We stayed in a big house called Udayam. It was great fun," recalls Bhoomi.  "But in 1975 there were problems between Auroville and the Sri Aurobindo Society (SAS) and the school shut down. In 1984 the Last School was started and a different type of education began --- more informal, more fun. We had no degrees or diplomas. We studied only to acquire knowledge."

Bhoomi slowly integrated into mainstream Auroville. He travelled overseas for conferences and was touched with the winds of different lands. His education was, in a way, now complete. From an ordinary Tamil settlement, he had become a true representative of the cosmopolitan entity of the universal dream.

***************

Francois Gautier, the well know writer, lives in Auromodel on an enchanting slice of property. Tall, slim and pleasant, he is a journalist, jogger and environmentalist. Auroville is his base. He travels extensively and is a correspondent for several journals.

"I have been here for decades," he tells me. "I just love it. Besides, Auroville is an experiment which should be applauded when the whole world is going to the dogs." Francois is a widely read professional writer. "But what do I write about Auroville?" he asks pleading, very French, his hands in the air. "Words will never be able to capture the spirit of Auroville. We are growing, evolving, experimenting all the time. The moment anyone tries to define it, it may change course and move into another direction."

***************

Auroville is packed to the brim with stories. Every line can be canned for posterity, every whiff turned into a blockbuster. Every person here has an interesting tale to tell. Even the dogs, cats, birds and fish wear attitude. Auroville is well into its third decade of life on earth. It is thirty-seven. Yet, it is beyond definition and simply impossible to pin down. The moment you even attempt to cajole it into some shape, it slips out of your grasp. It is a working human experiment, constantly evolving and, miraculously, still moving in the direction it was meant to. There have been dark moments when all that was ever attempted precariously perched on the brink of disaster. There were moments of darkness in the City of Dawn. But at every crisis, Auroville rallied to triumph.

Like with every other alternate lifestyle commune, Auroville too attracts the most brilliant and offbeat minds. Thrown against a backdrop of such wild, incalculable beauty and a purpose that is constantly crystallising, it is anarchy at is best. A divine anarchy, Aurovilians concede, that may some day show the world where it floundered.

(Book on Pondicherry and Auroville in progress)