Helping others to travel the world

Jearaj and Ganesh have worked at Inside India, Auroville’s travel agency, for the last six years. They both hail from semi-urban educated backgrounds, and consciously chose to shift from city jobs to working in Auroville. “Here it’s peaceful, there’s harmony, and not too much pushing,” says Jearaj. Ganesh cites Auroville’s innovation, team work, and the opportunity to learn “many things” as part of the appeal of working here. 

Before he applied for the job in Auroville, Jearaj worked “24x7” in a Chennai travel agency that serviced the corporate sector.  “There was no rest day,” he recounts of the job he did for seven years, in which he was expected to respond to client’s requests on Sundays. “There was really a lot of stress.” While holding down the Chennai job, Jearaj would travel back to his family home in Pondicherry every weekend, often reaching home at 2am Sunday morning. “That was horrible for my family. It was difficult to go and come back. When I saw the vacancy in Auroville, I thought it would be a good opportunity. So I shifted here.”

Ganesh was working at an Auroville e-commerce company, selling precious stones online. The job soon became boring. “I was only communicating with people through the computer, and there was no human communication.” He shifted to a job in a Pondicherry travel agency, and then heard about the vacancy at Inside India. “I’m very happy to work here because people want to go all over the world, and we have to find a solution according to their needs. And the interaction is good here.”

When Ganesh and Jearaj commenced working at Inside India, Auroville was not entirely new to them, as they’d both grown up in the bioregion. Jearaj grew up near Pondicherry and worked briefly as a tour guide for the Pondicherry Tourism Board, after completing his college studies in travel management. One of his tasks was to bring tourist groups to Auroville. “I didn’t have to explain much, because everything was explained at the Visitors Centre. We would tell them to sit and watch the video. Auroville made my job easy!” 

Ganesh grew up in a village about 25 km from Pondicherry, and came into contact with Auroville after completing high school, through an uncle who lived near Koot Road and who often spoke of Auroville. On his first visit, Ganesh was “surprised” to see the evening school at Ilaignarkal Education Centre. “This kind of school system was not there in my village. I admired the idea that you could learn something after work.” Ganesh started attending the evening classes, and continued to be involved with the centre as he undertook his biochemistry degree in Pondicherry. 

After graduation, Ganesh decided not to pursue a career in biochemistry. There were no job prospects for biochemists in Pondicherry, and he did not want to go to Bangalore or Hyderabad for work. “We [Tamil people] don’t like to go away from our hometown. I want to work around here.” So Ganesh started an administrative job at Ilaignarkal Education Centre, which included doing graphics work in the publishing section. After a couple of years, he took a job in Vijay’s e-commerce jewellery business at Fertile Windmill, where he stayed for six years before shifting to the Pondicherry travel industry job.  Throughout those years, he voluntarily taught computers to Aurovilian seniors in Kolam computer training centre, New Creation and to children at various Auroville outreach projects, such as Aikiyam school and Arulvazhi Education Centre in Morattandi village. He emphasises the value of having worked in many different environments over the years, and having “learned many things”. 

Both Ganesh and Jearaj juggle daily family responsibilities, dropping their children at school and their wives at work, before commuting 20 minutes to reach Auroville by 10am. “I hate the city,” confesses Ganesh, pointing out that he is compelled to live in Pondicherry because his wife has a nursing tutor job there. Jearaj commutes from Vanur, about 10 kilometres from Auroville, and drops his wife at Auroville Consulting, where she works in human resources. Their families appreciate the convenience of working in Auroville. “Here, we finish on time, and go home,” says Ganesh.”So I’m happy to work here.”

And what are the major differences they see between Auroville and ‘outside’?

Ganesh points out that when he first visited Auroville straight after high school, he was intrigued that the local women did jobs he had never seen them doing before. In his own village, women did agricultural work, and returned directly home after work. “When I came here, I saw all the village women coming to work in Auroville houses, and on the way home, they collected firewood. It was interesting to see they are independent here. They work and earn money, and do not depend on the men. I like that very much.”

Ganesh narrates with amusement his early impressions of the projects and courses run by people in Auroville, such as learning to draw kolam designs. “One foreigner did a ‘How to wear saree’ project. I thought, ‘This is crazy! Why are they doing this as a project? This is so simple!” Then only I realised that there are so many things in our culture that we can see as a subject! I came to know that this is valued. One man from Japan had an old black and white camera and was taking photos of windows all over the country.  He said it’s a project documenting windows! I thought, ‘They’re also doing windows!’”

Jearaj points to waste management as a significant difference between “clean” Auroville and his home place, which is an outer region of Pondicherry, where “a lot of people are throwing garbage outside”. While Jearaj and his neighbours have extracted a promise from the district collector for better sanitary measures, he emphasises the root of the problem: “People are not taking responsibility for themselves and do not have good awareness. It’s really affecting our social and cultural universe, and creating health issues.”

Ganesh points out that while villagers expect the panchayat and government “to do all these things”, he notes that in Auroville groups of people join together to complete projects such as waste management or social enterprises that repurpose waste into items that can be sold. “Village people come and learn these things, and then apply it in their own village and make a business.”

Jearaj emphasises that outside workplaces have “too much pushing”, which contrasts with the “peace and harmony” in Auroville. His former position in a Chennai travel agency involved many cancellations and last-minute changes, and the speed at which the staff were expected to work created too much scope to make mistakes. “There, the stress levels were a lot!,” he recounts.”Here, not at all! Here, mostly we do advance bookings. There is time to recheck, and time to analyse. In Chennai, if there’s a mistake, they scold us. Here, they don’t scold; they say, ‘Try to be aware next time’. They give us the time to analyse what happened.”

Jearaj and Ganesh agree on the three main challenges of their job. The first is the occasional difficulty when airlines change their flight schedules at the last minute. Clients may not receive the message, especially if they are tourists who are coming from abroad and are hard to contact. “People might miss their flight,” says Jearaj, “and they might quarrel with the check-in counter. We try to keep them informed of changes.” 

The second challenge is clients’ expectations that a travel agency should offer a better deal than internet flight prices. “They come and argue with us,” says Ganesh, “saying, ‘Why don’t you give me that price?’ But they see only the search page, and we show that when they click through to the payment page, extra fees are added.” Jearaj points out that some airlines do not always give sufficient incentives for agents to match the price. 

Ganesh cites a third main difficulty: when people buy tickets elsewhere using a credit card and then want to change the flight but cannot get through to the airline’s customer service. “It can be difficult. We’re ready to help them. Only then they realise the benefits of our service!”

Both of them see themselves working at Inside India for the long term. “I want to continue the same way in the future,” says Jearaj. “It’s going well with the company and I can develop here.” 

Jearaj says the high point of each year for him is the Sangaman – the annual event that brings 8000 people from the bioregion to celebrate with Aurovilians and visitors: “It was really nice to meet people and feel good.” Ganesh cites the visit of late former President Abdul Kalam to Auroville as a “big moment”, even though he could only see him at a distance. He points out that Kalam’s “inspiring” life journey has some parallels with his own. “He started from the small village. He always said positive things, how to overcome struggles. He is gone, but his words will remain. I was very happy [to see him]. He is an inspiration to me.”

While they each have participated in some Auroville seminars and visited Matrimandir, Ganesh points out that it’s not a simple matter for employees to arrange time for meditation in the inner chamber, which he has tried to do. Following their request for staff yoga classes, their workplace has arranged for a yoga teacher to hold classes in the office two evenings a week. As I was leaving their office following the interviews, Ganesh and Jearaj were rolling out their mats in preparation.  “We feel yoga is good for us,” says Ganesh, “so we’re very happy they organised it and that we can learn. I get some remedies for my back pain. And it makes us feel more relaxed.”