Things began to get very real about the point that I reached Auroville. Surrounded by the sprawling urban life of Pondicherry or ‘Pondi’ for short, in the state of Tamil Nadu, Auroville sprouts outwards from a central meditation temple called the Matrimandir like a fractal. It is hear that other seekers have come, seeking unity and spirituality without empty ritual. Once a barren wasteland of red earth and a few sparse oil palms, once could stare east and see the Bay of Bengal from five kilometers inland. I hadn’t been in India yet for a full turning of the moon, and I felt like the country was holding back a bit, that I had not sunk my teeth in. I had heard from forlorn travelers that India was the place where you fell in love. I suppose I was still stuck in the dating stage, getting to know the maiden before making sweet love.
Auroville carried an air of joy, richness, and temperance. It was here I started to see many more cultures and faces riding the cobblestone roads; Africans, French, Italians, Germans, Muslim, Iranian, Tibetans, Nepalese. Being an international city, where concepts of caste, race and religion were not seen as dividing points among men, it is a sort of mecca for the peaceful gathering and co-existence of the worlds people. In every nook and corner, down every dirt road, goat path, and walking trail, life was alive, and thriving.
I met Shanmugam late at night after the long haul from Mysore, as he was passing over the cattle grate that exited the farm. He was on his way to a wedding function, but he turned his scooter around, on which sat his wife and two daughters as well. It is often families travel on two wheeler together in this fashion. Hee showed me to my hut in the jungle and his wife Magesh brought me a tiffen of rice and sambar. I met the other landholders Charlie and Suzie, and we supped together in the community kitchen. The first night of nocturnal formalities was rather brief, and I easily let my bones adjust themselves to my new bed. I would become quite comfortable here during the coming weeks.
Aurogreen is a farm that grows some of the native fruit crops and vegetables for the food link distributing point in Auroville. Everyday the Solar Kitchen in the village center accepts produce, fresh fruit and veg for pandering out to local businesses, restaurants and the ‘Pour Tous’ purchasing service. I learned that Auroville operated mostly cashless, and I would need a special Aurocard to buy some things in the market, while ordinary shops accepted rupees.
In the morning I tried milking one of the cows, and was impressed at how challenging it was to regain the hand gripping movements that I had once knew from milking the cows of England, seven years ago. I was able to get a few litres, and this was satisfactory for this particular cow. For a few days I allowed myself to fall into the farm routine, as I intended to stay for a spell and wanted to feel familiar to the local Tamil workers, and my surroundings. I took almost no pictures in the first week, just a few ruminant captures of one young calf named Leah, others of my jungle hut, and the cow pen, which was spartan and simple, but always kept clean. Shanmugam and I planted broad beans, and harvested custard apples, and papaya with a long pole from around the topes on the property. The papayas were fresh and ready to eat, the custard apples would ripen in a couple days, and I had grown accustomed to their sweetness.
On the weekend I took the bike out on a foray. I knew the sea was closeby, and I poked through Pondicherry looking for a clean beach to swim. This was harder than I thought, while the cool calm roads of Auroville rarely displayed as much as a banana peel, the populated shore town of Pondi was like most others I had come through on my way from Maharasthra. It was stupefying to see so much garbage generated in the vicinity of such beauty. The beach was trashed with broken glass, plastic bottles, broken fishing net, sandals cigarette boxes, rotting food, more sandals, consumer trash, clothing, and more sandals. I walked the shore for awhile, and it was the same picture all the way down, while the waves were brown with the sediment it churned up, the undertow was too strong for a pleasurable time. It was a bit depressing, having rode nearly 1000 km from the other side of India to the Bay of Bengal connecting both oceans. This would have felt like a landmark, but the unsightliness of the beach made it all feel quite overshot. I took an obligatory picture of my bike in front of the waves at an angle that would not show the trash in the picture, but I could not see the point, and I simply had a languor in that moment, wondering why no one would clean up the mess.
A few nights later when the darkness blanketed me, I went for a jaunt around the neighborhood to find someone who might like to accompany me to the Unity Pavillion for a full moon gathering I had heard of. For me it held relevance of several other important life events that have either changed my course in the year or brought out the wolfish tendencies deep in my spirit. I alternated between mystical loneliness, and the in-satiating passion for experience. This night I held a fairly reserved energy, but the air was ripe with potential, and I could smell it like the wafting pheromones of a wild woman. It turned out that I was joined by a young Italian girl my age, so she rode pillion as we carefully navigated the muddy roads with my high beams into the heart of Auroville. We were still in monsoon season, and the conditions were so that the red earth became slick and filled with puddles that never really dried out, while the brush threatened to overgrow the path. Each day in and out from the jungle hut on a narrow trail, the flowers and thorns reached closer as the fell from their stems or tried to prick me.
The full moon was like a pregnant goddess, and it seemed tonight her affect on me would be acute yet just on time. It constantly impressed me how the passing lunations usually carried the feminine energy and presence into my life as well, and I sort of became attuned to expecting it. I often felt more reposed, intuitive, and empathic, and it felt like a retreat into a safe space of my soul where no one could harm me, where me and this flickering illusion of life felt no need to confront one another, and I could enjoy the repose.
Over the next few nights, the presence of this woman’s friendship in my life really dawned on me, and the whole thing started to play out like an Indian epic. Most of the time we shared the idle hours of the evening riding in the dark with the motor at a low rumble seeking engagements. I had passion in spades, but with her my energy was always balanced. We listened mesmerized to a Baul singer, crooning the poems of Kabir over a two stringed instrument one night, then saw her again singing devotional music in the forest. Sometimes we talked late; about relationships, Malaysia, tropical culture, her flower garden at home, or made attempts of sharing stories of our past. We enjoyed each others company visiting Sri Ma beach, a much tidier stretch of sand closer by, where she taught me acro yoga. Other times we did nothing much of anything, meditating under a giant banyan tree, shopping for lungis in the pondicherry market place, sipping cold brew coffee from wine glasses, or sharing thali and some Tamil sweets. Threaded through all of this was a kind of story being woven, and the greater textile was yet unknown to me.
The nephew of Shanmugam offered to take me to an ancient petrified forest one day, so I took him up on the offer, I figured I would follow him on the bike, but when he stood beside mine waiting to get on, I realized he was intending on pillion. We rode south of Pondicherry to reach a few mineral towns that looked fairly industrious, with goats in the street to remind one that people still eked a living of the land here. A potholed broken road led us to a yet more un-driveable path that escaped the traffic and opened to a meadow of rock cap, rough vegetation, and the multicolored dust of erosion. Here and there were pieces of the fossilized tree strewn about like flint, and once in a while we would come across a full stump or trunk. Monish said people would come in the night and haul away truckloads of the petrified wood for the tourist market, which was a pretty hefty crime. I hesitatingly retrieved a small piece, about the size of a potato chip, and offered a bit of my hair in return, thankful for the memory of the land. This was not a hundred kilo slab of ancient forest, so I thought it would be okay if this one piece went missing. After all, there were millions of shards lying about and I had no intention to carry around a bunch of heavy rocks trying to make business.
Life on the farm settled in, as my bike did too. I took it out for errands and the tank held petrol longer than I had become used to. The short distance travel through the jungle roads were some of the finest moments I have yet experienced in India, and the world. I even started to know some of the locals on a first name basis, there was Yrimilai, Shiva-Raja, Raju and Valiadum, Buvenishwari and Ambika, the local tamil workers, Babu and Magesh who made my sandals, and Prabhu, a security officer by night, rice and sugarcane farmer by day, who served in Tamil Nadu and Delhi.
One of my favorite things to do had become getting a shave. In India, it used to be that the barber would just be squatting beside the road, then you would just squat down beside him, and he would shave you. Now most of them have shops, but they still used straight razors and do a damn fine job of it. One of the men I saw, gave me a rather intense full head massage with some cooling ayurvedic plant oils, something I will never forget.
I learned to use a mutti and a cutty, the former being a sort of square head flat shavel blade mounted inversely on a short wooden stick, for use in digging at close quarters, the second being a heavy handled sickle that could also cut bamboo or softwoods efficiently like a modern iron hatchet. I listened to the sounds of the jungle when no one was around to make noise; civid cats, jackals, peacocks, songbirds, crickets, and frogs, along with some unknown acoustics that I have yet to find out the owner of such sounds.
It’s almost christmas, and if it were not for the modest attempt at festivity put on by the ‘pour tous’ food point, with their pint sized tree and decorations, I would not have known the difference. Some of the local shrines and temples have lights strung on them in yule fashion, but the swaying coconut palms, jackfruit, and chikoo just doesn’t remind me of this nordic holiday.
The presence of temples and holy images everywhere is affirming, as it reminds one to stay in their higher self. Being surrounded by the likeness of the Hindu Gods tended to comfort me on my explorations here in Auroville. I left offerings at all the Ganesh statues I came across, bits of sweet bread or rupee coins, interested in the many depictions he sat in, and started a little shrine in front of the small Shiva and Parvati statue on the farm, where I dried cashews in the sun. The fateful lovers, somehow symbolic of the archetype that India imbued on me. I would just have to learn the dance. I am happy as the new year approaches knowing all that has come and gone, ready and willing for the turning of the karmic wheel.
the motorcycle mantras 