The Solar Kitchen journey

The Solar Kitchen opened in December 1997 and since then has been operating uninterruptedly under different managers. The first were Jaya and Shyama, who were joined shortly after by Andrea. After a few months, the task of organizing almost the whole kitchen fell upon her and she felt overwhelmed. So she asked Angelika to help her. Angelika started by doing the vegetable coordination, together with Sumathi from the Farm Group.

In 2002, for a variety of reasons, Andrea left the Solar Kitchen and Angelika, Thushitha and Gilles Guigan became executives. The decision to become an executive was not an easy decision for Angelika, who decided to have a conversation about it with Sri Aurobindo.

“I told him I did not come here for that, that I wanted to serve, to help provide Aurovilians with basic needs, but I was afraid that if I became an executive it would bring me into trouble. I received a very dry response: ‘Don’t take titles so seriously’. So I felt I had to do it…”

Since then, Angelika and Thushita with the professional assistance of Mrs. Vijayakumari, the accountant, have been organizing the entire work. This includes not only managing the large team of 27 employees and 19 Aurovilians but also purchasing and food acquisition, cooking, maintenance of machinery, finances etc. In addition, the Solar Kitchen team is responsible for the running and maintenance of the entire infrastructure – including overhead and underground tanks, wastewater, waste disposal etc. – of the Prosperity Compound in which the Solar Kitchen, La Terrace, Foodlink, Nandini, Freestore and PTDC are situated. 

Originally, the Solar Kitchen was providing roughly 400 lunches a day between Monday and Saturday. Today it provides 1100 meals a day, catering to a variety of tastes and supplying the schools, as well as those who come to eat in the Solar Kitchen or take away their meal in tiffins (see data box).  The Auroville farms have also increased their production and particularly in January and February, the Kitchen receives plenty of fresh salads and other products from them. 

In other words, today the Kitchen is running smoothly and is much appreciated by those who use it. It is fulfilling what Mother said: that large-scale collective kitchens were essential in Auroville because they save the residents time and energy spent in food preparation and cooking so that they can be devoted to other work. 

But all this was not achieved without a struggle.   

Angelika notes that it has been an ongoing learning process in regard to the general organization and specifically in how the team members relate to each other, to the work itself and to other Aurovilians. “After 18 years of working together a lot of experiences have been gathered, both good and bad, encouraging and frustrating. We know now fairly well what we can expect from each other and what not. Nevertheless, surprises are always possible…”

In the initial years, a lot of different dishes were tried out with often unhappy results. On one occasion, the Solar Kitchen team was very unhappy when a school sent back a delicious North-Indian style dhal. Today, after a long process of trial and error, the Kitchen has arrived at a menu which provides a choice for many different tastes – south Indian, Western, spiced, non-spiced, vegan, non-vegan etc. While it is challenging to change people’s eating habits, the team is encouraged to see some people experimenting with food they would not normally eat at home. 

Angelika and Thushitha had always wanted Auroville to be self-sustaining in food, which is why they prioritised using Auroville farm produce in the kitchen. Another reason is the subtle quality of food grown on Auroville land, which is under the special grace of the Mother. After all Auroville is Her project and laboratory. The present fixed menu helps the farmers decide what they are going to grow, and when. 

Yet there have been changes to the menu over the years. These were partly in response to requests but they were also responses to concerns about health. Today, many Aurovilians are diabetic or pre-diabetic, which means that one of the foods they need to avoid is white rice. So the kitchen introduced other varieties, like brown and red rice, as well as grains like varagu. For those who continue to prefer the white rice, they are serving a healthier, parboiled variety. 

Health is also an issue for older members of the Kitchen team. They receive regular medical support from Auroville doctors and therapists, including annual check-ups and massage treatments in Quiet and Pitanga, something which is much appreciated by them. 

Hygiene procedures have also been constantly upgraded with the help of different professionals, including Dr. Ajith.  He studied public hygiene and helped them introduce, in 2013/14, the new FSSAI Food Safety guidelines. He also helped create an exhaust system for the kitchen proper, which sucks out the oily cooking-steam and replaces it with fresh air during the cooking process. “Now, at last, you can go into the kitchen and breathe,” says Angelika.

Of course, when people think of food being cooked in the solar kitchen, they think of it being cooked by the solar bowl rather than by a diesel boiler. However, the solar bowl only produces steam from 10 a.m. onwards on a sunny day, so while it continues to perform an important role in cooking and cleaning, the diesel boilers are necessary back-ups.  

Actually, the famous solar bowl also had its difficulties. Initially, the solar bowl heated a special liquid which circulated in pipes to cook the food. However, very soon the pipes started leaking and all the team members became sick from the poisonous fumes. So the system had to be changed into one where water is turned into the steam that does the cooking.  

A lot of other equipment, like wet grinders, chopping machines, fridges and cool room as well as the steam cabinet and steam pipe system, need to be regularly cleaned and maintained. Every summer, when most of the team goes on their annual tour, the machines that require it are repaired and the kitchen surfaces repainted.

While the kitchen has kept well for 20 years, a full revamp would be good, says Angelika, including tiling everything white and replacing with stainless steel the cutting and preparation tables and the entire dishwashing area. However, this would require not only a lot of money but also a lot of time, and it’s difficult to see how the kitchen could be closed for the three months or so that would be necessary. 

But perhaps the biggest challenge the Solar Kitchen management has had to face was a financial one.  The Solar Kitchen usually suggested an 8 – 10% increase annually in its budget to be able to meet the unpredictable vagaries of vegetable prices (a very heavy or a poor monsoon will send the prices sky-high for weeks). However, the Budget Coordination Committee (BCC) would only allow an increase that was too little to cover such unpredictable expenses. Consequently, the Solar Kitchen account went into minus.  

This happened for several years until the BCC agreed to the management’s requested yearly increment. “This kind of happening has been a repeated experience with the ruling groups in Auroville,” observes Angelika, “who, despite lack of expertise and detailed knowledge, have sometimes had an unhealthy eagerness to interfere in the Solar Kitchen’s finances and internal processes”. 

In spite of all this, the team says they have always felt the constant guiding and supporting hand of The Mother. One material example of this was the spontaneous donation 15 years ago of 20 lakhs by a devotee of the Mother, Mrs. Kokilaben, for a much needed, bigger boiler.

“Mother inspires every day my work in the Kitchen,” concludes Angelika. “I have a core team with whom I can work well and this is very precious to me. Mother always said it doesn’t matter what you do, what’s important is the consciousness with which you are doing it.  The Solar Kitchen has been a big lesson for me in developing this and I’m very grateful for being able to work here.”

(Based upon a conversation and further inputs from Angelika)

Box:

Provides 1,100 meals a day of which roughly 550 are for schools, 300 for the Dining Hall, 200 for tiffins and 50 for the SK staff.

Daily requirements: 50 kg white rice, 15 kg brown rice, 8 kg varagu, 120 kg potatoes, 30 kg tomatoes, 25 kg onions, 30 kg cucumber, 40 kg salad leaves, 40 nos coconut, 35 nos. cauliflower.

Rough monthly purchases from Auroville farms: 2 lakhs vegetables, 2 lakhs milk, half lakh rice/grains

Monthly turnover: 20 lakh rupees.