(Matri Mandir, Aruoville)
(A shelter for walkers at Auroville)
(JML)
There are several places that one must visit in his/her life
time. There are some places where one must visit only in imagination. If you
ask me to rate Auroville in Pondicherry, I would say that it is one place that
one should visit only in imagination. If you go there in person there are all
chances of getting disappointed. Reason is simple. You have a lot of
expectations about a place that you have been waiting to visit for a long time.
When the place does not come up to your expectations you get disappointed. One
of the famous columnists in Malayalam, late M.Krishnan Nair used to write
repeatedly that one should not personally meet the writers and artists that one
likes very much. When you read someone you create an idea about the writer.
That is the real poetic justice. You willingly suspend the disbelief about the
person who writes things that you really admire. When you meet him/her in
person, there are all the possibilities of you facing disappointment. You may
meet a person who is just ordinary looking and perhaps even complaining about
the loans that he has taken from a bank to buy a car or house. You don’t expect
that from ‘your’ writer. He is beyond all those worldly worries, you think. But
things are different.
(Walkway to Auroville)
Before I set out for Auroville, in my mind I had this idea
about the place: it is a place where you could sit in contemplation for hours
together. It is a place where you could lose yourself and merge with nature.
This is one place you might witness certain changes happening in your life. So
early morning itself, after uploading my Pondicherry Diary in the blog, I get
ready with my family. I share the enthusiasm of the kids. I wish I were like my
kids or like any kids who are excited at the prospectus of travelling provided
they are with their parents. If they are with their parents they could face any
hardships without realizing that they are hardships. If they are ready for a
journey, they get really enthusiastic because they like the unknown and
unexpected. Grown up people like us don’t like the unknown and unexpected. We
often prefer to travel by the chartered routes and are ready to witness the
known or the things let known to us by others. In fact, when I get into the car
I lose my age and become a child. I rediscover the child in me and prepare
myself for the unknown and the unexpected. And I deliberately push out what I
know about Auroville.
(The grand old banyan tree at Auroville)
Our car takes a left turn from the main highway and enters
into a village kind of place. I feel for a moment that I am in Goa. In Goa you
see the foreigners moving around in motor bikes and bikes. Or they must be
spending their time in shacks sipping beer or coffee. It is at the vicinity of
Auroville, a divine place hence the chance of people sipping beer or liquor is
ruled out. People sip spirituality with the crumbs of Indian-ness. The moment I
think about Goa, I get back to my older self again. And I realize that I have
lost my childhood permanently. As the car passes through the village road where
hardly a vehicle could pass, I see so many coconut trees cut down. There are
cashew nut trees groves on the either side of the road. Driver, Prabhakar,
tells us that there was a storm in 2010 and most of the trees were felled by
that storm. It was one of the worst calamities in the area. I speak to him about
Tsunami. He tells him about the rehabilitation works that he had done during
that time.
Suddenly a car park appears before us. We are at the gate of
the Auroville. Hoards of foreign visitors get down from their vehicles and move
in groups. We also start our walking towards the township. At the information
centre you are asked to watch a ten minutes long video about Auroville. Once
you finish watching it you are given a free pass. If you are disabled, hurt or
unable to walk, you can avail a shuttle service. If not you can walk for one
kilometre to Matri Mandir, the dome of/for contemplation and meditation and
watch it from a distance. The video says that if you are really serious then
only you are allowed to go inside and meditate. I feel sting inside me. I see
the video. Auroville was started by the Mother, the spiritual collaborator of
Aurobindo in 1968. That means the place is forty four years old. The work for
the township, which is conceived as a university of humanity, was started in
the beginning of 1970s and it went on for another three decades and the final
shape of Matri Mandir was established in 2004.
(Matri Mandir model)
I feel some sort of dejection in me while watching the film
because the film says that anybody who has left their religious beliefs could
meditate here. The township is run by a Trust but the donations come from
people who willingly donate. There is no fund raising program for the running
of Auroville. But then the question is why everyone is not allowed inside the
meditation tomb? May be meditation is not meant for everyone; that it is the
only answer that I could think of. Common people do not have enough time and
mind to meditate. Osho Rajneesh, in all his irreverence says that meditation is
not meant for poor people. Poor people are worried about their daily bread. But
the rich has the time and space for thinking about spiritual elevation. In fact
there is a lot of truth in Osho’s words. A tourist is a poor man. He is poor
not because he lacks money but because he lacks space in his mind. He comes
there with a lot of worries. If you are worried there is no space for
meditation in your mind. You just want to experience the place and go. That
must be the reason why Auroville authorities ask the visitors only to visit the
Matri Mandir from a distance. If you are really serious you can come back for
meditation. I am sure majority is not going to come back, not because they are
not serious but because they are poor in their daily worries.
(This is how the meditation room looks like, they say)
I walk one kilometre. The grand old banyan tree is the
centre of the Auroville estate though Matri Mandir is considered to be the
centre. There are stone benches around it. And I sit in one of them. I look
around and feel the ambience. Suddenly I feel that I have felt it before. This
ambience there in every kaavu in Kerala, where I had spent my formative years.
In my village there were at least three kaavu (a small forest like area near
the temples). I used to spend a lot of time there with my friends. One of the
largest Kaavus was in Varkala where Shibu used to live. We two used to spend
hours together there. Sitting inside a kaavu itself was a rejuvenating
experience. Then the same ambience I had felt in Sivagiri, Varkala where the
Samadhi of Sree Narayana Guru is located. Also in the Gurukulam established by Nataraja Guru. As a Pre-degree student in 1985 I spent a lot of
time in Sivagiri, sitting under the mango trees at the Sarada Devi temple at
the foot of Sivagiri. I could spend many hours reading or just looking at
things happening around. It never occurred in the context of meditation or
contemplation. It was kind of spending time in tranquillity.
(Aesthetically subtle donation box)
Hence, Auroville does not give me anything new. I walk
further and finally reach the golden dome of the Matri Mandir. Visitors could
see it from a distance which is not less than two hundred meters. People
generally take photographs. And meditation is the last thing that comes to your
mind when you stand there and look at the golden sheen of the dome. Somehow I
remember Subodh Gupta. I think at some point he could lay claim on this
structure as the cover of the dome looks like large golden plates. After
spending around fifteen minutes there, absolutely dejected we walk back to the
main information centre. I know that there is a township in Auroville, where there
is a library, residential estate, art workshops, school and so on. It would
take a lot of time to see all those things. I have the number of a resident,
who is an artist. But I decide not to call her as I think that there is not
much to experience from here. We go into the boutiques and book stalls. The
place looks like a mall. Everything related to Auroville is made into
merchandise here. Somehow I am put off by all these. May be I was expecting too
much when I was coming here, I tell myself.
I think of my own Ashram where I want to live with books,
music and people. This would be an absolute research centre of arts and
culture, where people could come and stay, do their research and go. I want to
establish and live in an ashram where there will not be any merchandise or
souvenir to take home. There will not be a shop. I am sure such an ashram would
eventually get institutionalized and all what is peculiar to institutions would
come in place. But couldn’t there be an ashram which would later become a research
centre when the purpose of the initiator is done and he is gone. It should go
to the people in some way. The best way is through a university, which is
serious enough to promote research on art and culture. And it would be a place
where a foreigner is treated as a national and a national is treated as a
foreigner. And together they would treat each other as world citizens. No
language will be superior in this ashram. I am on my way to create that ashram.
I know I don’t have the resources. But when you are blessed enough to do your
work resources would appear before you in abundance. I welcome you to that
place where you would cook for yourself and share a portion of it with me. You
would bring a book for others before you pick up one to read. You would sing a
song for others before you listen one from them. And this would be a place
where none initiates other into sex in the name of art or culture because to do
sex you don’t need to go to a place like my ashram. You could do it elsewhere.
Mine is a place for knowledge and awareness.
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