Vikram’s journey

When I was 17 or 18, I was already a successful professional cricketer in Tamil Nadu. I was travelling all over India, but the money and the lifestyle did not excite me. In fact, while I dressed in Armani, inside I was pathetic; my inner being was in chaos.

I didn’t have any answers, only questions. I needed something to cling on to, so I started voraciously reading religious and philosophical books, but nothing touched me. All I did was skim the surface and then run back into chaos.

But then I came on a trip to Pondicherry with a friend of mine. I don’t remember much of that visit except that we went to the Samadhi, but something must have touched me, some pull was there, because after that, whenever I got a break from cricket, I would revisit. I would work in the Ashram dining room, happily cleaning dishes.

At that time, I knew nothing about Sri Aurobindo and Mother. Later, I remember reading The Sunlit Path and The Adventure of Consciousness, and extracts from Savitri and Letters on Yoga.

But the carrot of cricket remained so juicy because I was getting better at it by the day, so I kept getting pulled back into that other world. I had developed a particular persona. I was aloof all the time and I could be incredibly rude because of the pain, the chaos, inside me. In the cricketing world, I was looked at as one of the bugs in the system who is not pretty but who does the job well! That system never had any control over me. I was free to come and go as I wished.

I made my first visit to Auroville when I was 24. I don’t remember much of that visit, but something must have clicked because I began to return regularly. I volunteered at CSR and Matrimandir, and then I joined the Youth Centre team. I would still go out for a couple of months to make money playing cricket – it was very easy for me, I could play ten matches and that would set me up for a year – but my life was becoming more centred here.

I felt I needed Mother to save my being.

I remember, one day in Auroville I had no money for food and no belongings: all my things had been washed away in the cyclone that destroyed the house where I had been staying in Quiet. And I thought, “Man, what a relief. Mother has given me this perfect liberation.”

I moved to a hut in the Youth Centre and I felt free.

One day, my friend, Jyothi, who works in Nandanam kindergarten, asked me to come dressed as Santa Claus for the kids at Christmas. I thought, “Really, a black Santa Claus?” But I went and spent some time with the kids. Then she asked me to join them as a kindergarten teacher.

I told her, she must be kidding. “I’m big, I’m heavily tattooed, the kids are going to be terrified of me!” But I dived into that thing and it changed my life forever. Mother gave me the exact work that I needed at that time. A tenderness came into me. My hands became looser, my soul became looser, my spirit gave up this big urge to search for things and it settled down into helping these new beings.

And Nandanam was where I met my partner, Maya. Her kid was in my class and we had a good connection.

Although I already felt like an Aurovilian inside, I was still a volunteer so, at one point, Jyothi said I should get my ‘license’ for living in Auroville. I told her I had no need of a label of any kind, I didn’t need to officially be part of anything.

In fact, I had applied to the Entry Service before and been rejected. And they were quite right. The entry filter was put in place exactly for people like me because I was not ready then. The being has to come to a place where it has to consciously dive into this adventure.

But now I felt ready, I had received an inner indication that I was ready for the adventure, both inner and outer. And I knew I would not return to that other world. This was maybe four or five years ago.

A lot of my time in Auroville is spent with young people. They know me very well, not only because I was part of the Youth Centre and, later, connected with Kailash and Future School, but also because of the way I relate to them. I don’t talk to them from the first floor. I talk to them from the ground floor, on an equal footing.

I tell them I know exactly why they are doing certain things because I’ve been there myself. I know how many things in my inner closet I needed to clean at that age. I needed to be given the space and freedom to make mistakes and learn from them, and Mother gave me that space.

The Youth Centre team suggested we should involve the young Aurovilians in learning multiple life skills. So we decided to look into the possibility of having carpentry, metalwork classes etc. at the Centre where young people who had finished school could come and learn a skill.

I did the rounds of Auroville units to see who would be willing to offer trainings to young people, and this was the beginning of the vocational training programme in Future School.

The underlying idea was that the youth are our future, and their future attitudes will be very much formed by how they grew up. If there have a lot of negative experiences, if they don’t feel trusted by adults, this baggage may still be carried by them when they are 45 or 50. So I felt that now is the time to invest in them, to give them the best possible foundation for serving Auroville.

At the same time, I am certain of one thing. Those who have been born here and who have grown up in this environment have a spirit that is naturally unifying: they always see each other is in terms of unity. They have their squabbles, but they don’t deeply disharmonise.

And when I see the fresh arrivals, the seven or eight-year-olds, I’m amazed. It is not just their vital; the mental is booming. Now seven-year-olds pull me aside and tell me they need to talk about different topics. And, in The Learning Community, the kids are learning different skills related to deep listening, conflict resolution and shared decision making.

This means that special beings are coming to Auroville now, and we are here just to hold this space harmoniously and with sincerity, and to collaborate with them so that it can be passed on nicely to them.

At one moment, a major shift happened inside me. I’d always been drawn to create harmony, but now any sense of division, of people being fundamentally different from each other, started to disappear. I couldn’t understand anymore the meaning of terms like ‘local Aurovilian’ or ‘Westerners’, terms that we commonly use but are divisive. So I told myself I have to be super conscious about what comes out of my mouth.

As I became more conscious about communication, I began to understand what lay behind words – people’s unexpressed needs and concerns – and this helped me empathise with them. I became so used to doing this, I was naturally attracted to experiments like Restorative Circles and Non-Violent Communication. I also started working with Koodam, the conflict resolution umbrella.

I told them I’m just there to help them out, I won’t be involved in mediation because I do not have the competence. In fact, from time to time I myself feel a need for inner mediation.

It was very enriching to learn about these tools and to realise that almost every situation is an opportunity to practice them. I began to see everything as potential building blocks for my progress and for bringing greater harmony.

Another direct outcome of my training in restorative circles and mediation is that I attend council meetings as a silent listener. It is not always easy to be inwardly silent, but Monica Sharma [a former UN Director of Leadership and Capacity Development who has offered stewardship and leadership workshops in Auroville eds.] helped me find ways to shut out the background noise, to eliminate my personal judgements. Now I can sit silently through intense meetings, sensing the meaning behind the words while inwardly trying to hold for the group a space of peace, consciousness and harmony. This discipline of being a silent listener has been life-changing for me.

In fact, I feel in Auroville we are slowly creating a platform for something new. For example, during the recent three-day process to choose new members of the Working Committee, FAMC and Council, something important was happening. Sure, there were still a lot of cobwebs, and not complete harmony among all participants. But the fact that people entered into dialogue and tried to understand rather than confront each other was a huge step. Something fundamental was shifting.

What I understood from this process and experience is that it is the spirit on which you stand and with which you communicate and function that is important. If I’m shocked by something that has been said or done, I should not respond from my ego or on the basis of some story from the past. I should take my stand on compassion, truth and integrity and say or do what I need to from there.

Gym is another opportunity to promote greater harmony. I’ve been managing the gym in Dehashakti since it opened and, as a professional sportsman, I know how to train myself and I can help train others. I believe the community should promote and maintain physical consciousness, so I open it up to everyone – Aurovilians, Newcomers and workers – free of cost.

What’s interesting is that workers from the units have started to come and it has become a great platform for building bridges. I feel we need to invest more in common activities like this because if they feel welcome and are treated in a nice way, the gratitude will flow out in immeasurable ways.

But I truly feel that to achieve harmony all age groups, attitudes, visions, peoples and cultures have to collaborate, not compete. Competence and efficiency have to collaborate with beauty, vision, practicality, teamwork and vision to reach true unity.

As for the future, it’s very difficult for me to think about it: I’ve always been a fan of being in the now. In fact, this is the first time in many years I have spoken about my journey.

Some time ago, I was struggling inside, trying to clean my inner closet. I felt something was missing in my life; I needed some inspiration because I was not moving forward. I asked Mother, what should I do? The next morning, I opened Auronet and saw that Annemarie had posted an article. It answered exactly to my predicament. She was quoting something from Eckhart Tolle, and I understood that inspiration will come if you can be in the now of evolution. As you take baby steps in the now, one’s purpose will define itself.

I am very grateful to all the people and experiences Auroville has brought me which have helped me reach where I am today. But I know that without Mother, I have no chance of moving forward. Everything has to begin and end with Her and Sri Aurobindo.