The guardian of the Banyan

“It’s a great shame that people don’t know about or have forgotten my grandmother,” says Jayamoorthy, long-time printer of the Auroville News and Notes.

Andhayee ‘Ammal’ was born in Edayanchavady. In a love marriage, she married a man from a higher caste, a temple builder from Naidu caste, but this was not acceptable to either family and they were sent out of the village. They moved to Kottakarai, where they had four children.

When her husband died, Andhayee went to live alone in a small hut about ten metres away from the Banyan tree. She chose this spot, explains Jayamoorthy, because it was poromboke land and therefore not cultivated by the local farmers.

She became the protector of the tree, guarding it against goats and people who wanted to cut the branches for firewood. As it was also the only tree in the area and at the intersection of two dirt tracks, people who were walking to the local villages or to Pondicherry and back would put down their loads there and eat their food in the shade of its branches. She would provide water for them and so the tree came to be called the tannipandalalamaram, meaning the ‘tree where water would be given’.

She would also watch over the farmers’ fields of crops during cultivation time. In return, they would give her a portion of the harvested crop.

The local people believed she had special powers. Jayamoorthy says she could foretell when rain was coming. David Salmon, an early Aurovilian, recalls in a recent book (What is the Matrimandir? The most mysterious monument of modern times) that she would do a daily puja under the Banyan, and the local people would ask her to do a puja for the rain to come or to bless their crops. “She was a very powerful woman, she had a divine power,” says Jayamoorthy. Perhaps this is why she also came to be known as Andaiamma, a name of the Divine Mother.

The Banyan had been identified in 1967 as the centre of Auroville. As Gilles Guigan of the Auroville Archives points out, it was important to locate this because this is where the Inauguration ceremony would take place. In a 1996 interview, Roger describes going to Mother with a map and asking her, “Where shall the centre of the town be? At that time, I did not know. I asked her to point to where the centre should be. So she pointed to it. We made a mark there and went to identify the place with a jeep.

“There was no road. There was nothing. The land was vacant. The only place where there was a bit of greenery was the Banyan and that’s where she placed the centre.”

It’s not clear whether Andhayee was living there at the time. Roger didn’t mention her and Gilles points out that her hut does not appear on photos taken during the Inauguration ceremony. Furthermore, Gilles notes that there was no water connection to the Banyan prior to the Inauguration, so if she was to provide water she would have had to bring it from Kottakarai village some kilometres away.

What is clear is that she and the hut were there when a dedication ceremony for Matrimandir was held on 14th August, 1970. Alain Grancolas, the organizer, remembers her hut being located close to the tree, where the pond for the Life Garden is situated at present. It must have been around this time, when the first people came to ascertain exactly where the future Matrimandir would be, that an extraordinary encounter took place. According to Jayamoorthy, his grandmother came up to them and said, “So, you have finally come to build the temple”. She said she had been waiting for this for some time. They, of course, were astonished.

On February 21st, 1971, the excavation for the Matrimandir began. On February 21st, 1972 the concreting of the foundations began. In the following years, the structure took shape. “My grandmother did not want to move the hut,” says Jayamoorthy, “but this was unpopular with some people who wanted to develop the area. In late 1975, when my grandmother went to Pondicherry to purchase some food, somebody set fire to her hut. When she returned the hut and all her belongings had been destroyed.”

“She ran round the Matrimandir chanting, obviously very upset, chanting and calling the Divine Shakti, beating herself,” remembers David Salmon. “This felt to me the opposite of what Mother would have wanted. How could anyone treat an old woman possessing almost nothing like that?”

Afterwards, she went to live in a small keet house on a piece of land near Kottakarai, where the Auroville community, Equality, is today. Jayamoorthy remembers as a young boy collecting bread from Otto at the old Auroville bakery and taking it to her. A few years later she died. She was between 85-90 years old.

The Aurovilians may have forgotten her or know nothing about her but the older villagers still remember her as a special woman with special powers. Perhaps the Banyan remembers her too...