La Caravane pour Auroville

Initially, I did not wish to speak or write about it. So far I have always refused to be interviewed on the subject. All my life I have never been keen on stirring up the past or dwelling on it too long. I tend to look forward, not back. And here we would be talking of something that happened not only many years ago, but many lives ago! How was I to restore a faded picture that has long lost for me its appeal, its shine? I said no.

But my brother Cristof insisted I share whatever survives of this ‘mythical’ episode with Alan and others. Words, sentences, images started trickling in... So here is my take on the 1969 Caravan to Auroville. An account necessarily subjective, partial and woefully incomplete, since I have only dim recollections, and no vivid memories, except for a couple of incidents, or accidents rather, and an overwhelming experience in the grounds of the Taj Mahal, which I do not care to relate here.

In retrospect, it was not the glorious Odyssey some would have liked it to be. Yes, when the convoy left Paris, it truly felt special : the name AUROVILLE written in big letters across the white vehicles, the emblematic pink Hibiscus flower painted next to it! The goal, the mission, the challenge! How proud we all were! Bystanders and motorists must have been wondering what this new ‘Auroville’ circus was about! The happy clowns, the deft acrobats, gradually lost their smile and balance in the dust of Afghanistan. What started off as a leisurely summer picnic turned into a grim race against time. A gruesome race against pain and fatigue. Sore backs, stiff necks, aching arms and shoulders, cramping legs. Bodies which felt so exhausted, so utterly drained, that our brains started to go numb, and our eyes glazed over.

We all did our bit, as best we could. Some were better at driving, some better at fixing up the battered vehicles, some better at dreaming up or thinking aloud. Some better at just trudging along.

Who then was the best or the most helpful camel in the lot? I cannot say. I personally loved driving, and was not too bad at it. I believe I did my share. I have always been fond of working backstage, unnoticed. After all, in 1969 I was coming out of a tough 2-year apprenticeship under Guy-Claude François, the talented stage designer working for Ariane Mnouchkine and her ‘Théâtre du Soleil’. This taught me, among other things, that for a human collectivity to survive, it must be founded on a shared vision, and not on any petty personal gain or selfish ambition.

Then there was M’zali. None of us knew really how M’zali got on the bus, but in the end we were all glad he did. The happy-going grinning Malian, the soon-to-be ‘Krishna’, had no driving experience, was no mechanic, yet proved a valuable cook. His strength never ceased to impress. He could lift up a truck’s wheel with one finger (say two), and push a car out of a hole almost single-handedly! He was, it seemed, no stranger to deserts. To me it looked like he had been secretly trained by Tuaregs to rescue sick camels fallen into dry wells.

Alain Monnier had a driving license and a keen sense of duty. A little older than the rest of us, the only officially married person in the group, the only one too with a real profession and an undepleted bank account, discipline in his eyes was the key to success. Bernard Delambre, alias BD, now our ‘homme de letters Janaka, was more willing to confront the leadership and promote his own ideas on all kind of topics, from cooking to tent pitching to road picking.

Like the outspoken Bernard, François Gautier never minded late night discussions, sharing with night birds his penchant for the occult or the unconventional. François loved bringing up lofty or weird other-worldly subjects during the conciliabule. Not many of his less cultured companions, Gérard excepted, could share his passion for surrealist poetry, ritual art and the supraphysical.

Vincenzo the boss, el Padrone, did not care much for the sightseeing exercise. Once we hit the road, he tensed up. He was no longer the charming companion, the laid-back hero who had won so many hearts at the ‘L’association pour Auroville’ headquarters in Paris. He realised that most of the money allotted to the project had already been spent on vehicle purchases and upgrades, on spares to keep us going till Aspiration and beyond (how childish day-dreamers we all were!), on tons of equipment for Auroville. We were on a mission, not on a holiday. We were nomads, migratory birds, tigers on the prowl, budding supermen.

The mission! The boss kept driving the message home time and again when our thoughts strayed too far from India.

Most of the rest showed some genuine aspiration or good will, but were quite ignorant of what Auroville was or wanted to be. Several had not read a word from Sri Aurobindo or the Mother. The group leaders, Vincenzo and Steven, were the only ones who had stayed in Auroville or Pondicherry. They had been seen by the Mother. So had I, in July 1967, when Cristof and myself decided to spend our summer vacations with our mother Svetlana who had joined the Ashram two years earlier. When we were about to take leave, the Mother told us “A bientôt !”

So this journey to India felt more like a home-coming than a thrilling expedition to some unknown earthly Paradise. That may explain why I was not too concerned with what was going on around me, which the rest of the gang probably mistook for aloofness or disdain. Like Vincenzo, I had my eyes, mind and heart fixed on the goal : India, Auroville, and, above all, to be once again part of the Mother’s atmosphere, to serve Her once more, in this life like in many others before it, to have once again the blessed opportunity to work for Sri Aurobindo.

Was La Caravane a success? Considering how ill-prepared we were for such a daunting challenge, both mentally and physically, I would be tempted to say we did not do too badly. With the help and protection of She who can only truly guide and save. For She had been told the madcaps were on their way! Without Her support it would have been an even more grueling experience.

Do we need a remake? Probably not. If attempted again, the journey would have been better documented for sure. The Afghanistan leg alone, had it been recorded on camera, could have easily been made into a thriller! Once we hit the sandy tracks down south, all but the lead vehicle had to be driven in a cloud of dust with visibility ahead reduced to 3 feet! Soon enough one of the cars missed a sharp turn to the left, bounced off the track and got stuck in the sand. Good we had a spare Hercules onboard!

Then came the climax, the part Vincenzo dreaded most : the “tôle ondulée”, or washboard road. To avoid being tossed up and down like pancakes, el Padrone told us we had to maintain a speed fast enough to sail over the hardened sand ripples... without losing grip!

Thanks for the tip! Before long, while slowing down on a curve, a van hit a nasty ridge, jumped in the air and fell flat on the road. Those trucks were so madly overloaded that ground clearance was down to a couple of inches. The bottom of the gearbox got punctured as it slammed in the sand. Oil started leaking out. We carried no spares for this. Anyway attempting to replace an old van’s transmission box in the middle of the desert would have proved futile. It took Steven and Vincenzo hours to plug the hole with Araldite.

We eventually made it to India. Getting into Delhi, one of the vans decided to throw in the towel, and collapsed. It had to be towed by a car all the way from the capital to Aspiration, on often narrow, snaky, bumpy roads.

At last, we reached Auroville. We crawled our way to the Aspiration huts. On arrival, or very soon after, the four vehicles died. But we lived on to discover a by now familiar landscape, a little redder only. The treacherous Afghan desert had prepared us well for the sunbaked plateau. We were ready to take on the Auroville canyons. A quelque chose malheur est bon!