Anitya: from vision to reality

Auroville Today: Impermanence, the decision to move on after five years, is an interesting concept for a community. How did the idea emerge?

Serena: At the time it was very difficult to get a new settlement in Aurovile, so we felt an experiment centred on temporary rather than permanent housing would hold more resonance for the planning groups. Impermanence is also very much linked with our ideals. We want to leave a soft footprint on the ground and also to serve Auroville, to be in a place that doesn’t belong to anybody in particular. We want to go back to the simplicity of the Dream.

Nikki: A few people are also very inspired by Vipassana and the spiritual aspect of impermanence.  So everybody connected in their own way to this concept of impermanence.

You have been on the land for two years now. What were the challenges you faced and how did you deal with them?

Mathilde: We had so many challenges that I don’t know where to start. One which I experienced strongly is that when it comes to the initial vision, everybody said they wanted to live in harmony with nature and have a simple life, but when you are on the ground, you soon learn that your basic needs might be very different from somebody else’s. So there is a need to find a balance.

We did this through communication, talking.  I’ve learned there is nothing we cannot solve if we are willing to talk about it.  For example, initially we all agreed we would only have a common bathroom and toilets.  But as I am pregnant now, I realised we will need to have separate facilities for the baby, so my partner and I brought this issue to the collective table and we talked it through. It helped me realise that now there’s nothing that we cannot bring to the table because we have such trust in each other and the process we use is so efficient. 

Nikki: When we came from vision to reality, we realized that the more time we spend together, the more important it is to also have our own personal time, otherwise community can drain you. And the only way to find a balance is to adapt and be flexible, otherwise we would be stuck to the idea rather than the needs of the current reality.  

Serena:  For example, we have a community kitchen but we also have a small kitchen in our house. We have community meetings four times a week and we often have dinner together, but it’s nice to have a choice:  to have openness for both and not to be forced into anything.

Nikki: But it’s taken us a long time to get to this point. It’s been 3 ½ years of communicating and working together, and this has helped us a lot in understanding our own needs and getting to know and accept each others’ needs. 

Regarding adaptation to the ground reality, have your self-sufficiency ideals been modified?  You have piped in electricity and water from a neighbouring community… 

Serena: This is because the grant we received for infrastructure specified that it had to be permanent, not able to be moved elsewhere. I think we might have done it differently if we had had a choice. However, we haven’t given up on self-sufficiency. Our house is on solar and we try for closed loop systems in the community.  The grey water from our kitchens goes to our vegetable garden, we plan to collect all the rainwater from our rooftops, and we have dry compost toilets. Hopefully in a year we will be growing enough vegetables to sustain ourselves with the help of the larger Auroville food ecosystem.

Nikki: Also we are not allowed to dig new wells any more in Auroville. This is why our neighbours, Sacred Groves, are providing us with water.  

You spent the first years very much engaged in building the physical community. What did you learn in this process?  

Mathilde: When you’re doing the physical work, you begin to understand that everybody works differently.  There were frustrations, resentments, because people have different values.  It was a huge learning about each other and how to accept each other. I can be angry with you because I came on three days to dig a trench and you only came one day, but then the question is how I deal with this. How can I connect more deeply with you and how can we grow together out of this? In this way, the physical work actually accelerated the inner, spiritual process.  

We have also developed some meeting tools that work best when each person is willing to look within. For example, we have deep sharings when we share something about ourselves to deepen connection, and we have the sharing circle inspired by restorative circles if there is a problem or an issue we need to resolve.  Since the beginning, we agreed that everybody has an equal vote in decision-making and that we are honest and transparent with each other.  

Serena: These are some of our core values.  Actually, the buildings are not a priority for us. I think the inner work and the sharing are number one. This is why we wanted to be in community. It is all about discovering ourselves through working and being together. 

Nikki: Some people have left this project, but it’s the ones who have resonated with this aspect of heartfelt receptivity who have stayed. 

Mathilde: We don’t have to be best friends because we are connected in another way – by the larger idea which we are trying to implement.  As long as the person is open to practicing the tools, to grow, it goes a long way. But this kind of commitment requires a lot of time and energy.  My partner says you have to be a little crazy to join this project!

How supportive has Auroville been?

Nikki: Part of challenge with the working groups has been explaining the project to them without knowing ourselves fully how it will evolve.  We’ve faced resistance from them, partly because everything has to be put in boxes now and we don’t fit into any of the existing boxes, and partly, I think, because of a suspicion of experiments. Of course, some in the past have not gone to plan, but it’s clear to us that Auroville is a place for experiments, and any experiment has to have room to grow or to fail, otherwise no real learning is happening 

In fact, I think it’s important to think of a project like this not in terms of success or failure but in terms of what there is to be learnt.  This is where our documentation of the process will be incredibly useful.  

Serena: Newcomers in particular are inspired by this project and would like to form communities, but they get stuck with the Auroville process.  Sometimes it feels like block after block after block.  The pioneering spirit in the beginning of Auroville was beautiful, so let us have a chance to experience it, too.  

And this project is something that Auroville needs – there’s still a lot of land that needs to be protected, and building a sense of community is important. In Auroville right now there is a sense of increasing disconnection, but if we can come together and solve problems within small groups, solving problems in the larger community would be so much easier.  

How is this project financed?

Mathilde: Our first idea was to do fundraising, but we were lucky to get a substantial grant of 30 lakh rupees which paid for all the infrastructure. We also got a small donation from Belgium to start an educational project with the local village. Also all of us also put in at least one lakh rupees each at the beginning.

Nikki: We have all invested something in the project, so we are asking new members to also invest something.  Part of that investment will be used to put a little bit aside for when we move on in five years.  Individually, you are asked to make a calculation of how much would be required to rebuild your house and to put that money aside before the five years are up.

Do you all share the expenses?

Mathilde: Two years ago during a retreat, the facilitator asked if we would have a common pot where all the expenses would be shared, but we all felt we were not ready for that.  Maybe in the future we will be. 

Nikki: At present we each look after the construction and maintenance of our individual living spaces, and we put in a certain amount of money every month to cover the maintenance of the collective spaces and salary of our workers. If a big expense comes up, we’ll discuss together how to cover it. 

Mathilde: In future, we want to make the community financially sustainable because we know grants may not happen again. We feel that running workshops and sharing what we have been able to learn could be a means to sustain ourselves.

We have already run some courses and the participants have been inspired by our process.  The videos we are making and the networks we are building now are the next step and will be crucial to fundraise on a larger level.

What about the village aspect?  You’re in a fairly tough place here because you are close to Edaiyanchavady village and there are often drinking parties in your vicinity… 

Nikki: It’s true that a lot of drinking has been happening around here, and it has increased over the last few months, and when we first moved here as two women living alone we didn’t feel very safe. We’ve had a few incidents with boys coming to the fence that haven’t been very nice. But in reality we haven’t had much trouble, just a couple of incidents and a few barrels stolen. I think the fact that the villagers have seen us as physically involved in the work has influenced their perception of us. But what was also very important was the relationships we built with the villagers. Babu and his sister Selvi, who live in the village and were associated with the Thamarai project there, have been particularly helpful in forging links.

Serena: Anitya is located on land that used to be a public toilet for the village ladies, and a busy footpath ran through it to the centre of Auroville, so we had to be particularly sensitive about fencing it off. We asked advice from friends in the village and others and, based on this, we began by simply erecting granite pillars to mark the boundary and allow people to get used to it.  Then there was no big reaction when slowly we started to fence the land.

At the beginning our ideology was do-it-yourself, but we discovered we couldn’t do it all ourselves and now we have a gardener from Edaiyanchavady. Actually, he is much more than a gardener; he teaches us about plants, he’s security, he talks to everybody who passes by. He’s a godsend because he has really strengthened our bond with the village. 

Nikki: We also have a lady from Edyanchavady who comes three or four times a week to cook community lunch for us. The two of them teach us so much. Even though I was brought up in a Tamil home, I lived in a city so there are many things I don’t know about culture.  And the villagers appreciate that we are employing local people.

Mathilde: We also have an educational bridge with the village, a project that came naturally together. The Thamarai project began in Edaiyanchavady, but when the centre had to shift to another village, this left the local children without evening schooling. Babu had been helping them to do their homework in front of his house, but it wasn’t an ideal space as there were dogs, drunks. So when we learned about this, we offered to hold the classes in Anitya. Normally the children do homework and have an English class, but on weekends they have games and artistic activities, and we have a project to develop a sports ground for them.

What are the main learnings that you take from this experience which could be applied elsewhere?  

Mathilde: One of them would be the need for humility, for not arriving in a place thinking you know what to do, especially if you are close to a village.  It is best to be humble, to observe, to connect with your neighbours, before building your fence and houses. 

Regarding the community itself, I think the most effective tools are creating a space where everybody has an equal voice and finding ways to resolve conflict.  The reason why most collective projects collapse is the ‘human factor’.  Most of us do not learn how to use breakdown to breakthrough, we don’t learn to transform because we see conflict only as a problem.  But here we use conflict as an opportunity to grow, to learn; this, for me, is one of the biggest learnings. 

Nikki: I also feel that we have somehow been able to channel something that is beyond one person or the group as a whole.  I’ve observed that in Auroville many communities are led or managed by a single individual, but this wouldn’t have worked here because we feel that this project is bigger than any one of us.  

Are you all prepared to move on after five years? Many people would feel attached to a place after putting so much energy into building it up from scratch. 

Nikki: We always said that the five years would start when the last person moves into the community, but it will probably start from January next year when the entire core group will be living here. 

After that, we will review where we are after every two years. I think it will be easier for some to surrender and leave than for others – for me it’s a constant process – but the essence of this project is its impermanent aspect and it’s a condition of joining that you embrace the willingness to move on.   After all, change is inevitable.

But impermanence could happen in so many different ways and we are open to all possibilities.  We have built our houses to be demountable, so all our houses could move, but maybe we will be the ones who move on to build something completely new elsewhere. 

Serena: Being willing to change is a sign of progress.  We have to move on so we can learn from our mistakes and do something different next time. Above all, we want to serve Auroville through trying to live by the core values of The Dream and the Charter.