Charlie and the Aurogreen Farm

Charlie first learned about Auroville through Kireet Joshi’s brother Prabodh, who showed up as a visitor to his family home in the USA. (Charlie’s Indian stepmother knew the family from her early years in India.) He arrived in Auroville as a young man, on the last day of 1970.

In 1974 Charlie was living at Success and working on the land: bunding, planting trees, keeping them alive. He started his first vegetable garden where he experimented with rain-fed crops.

Because of the abundance of Palmyra's in Forecomers, he and others decided to try processing palm jaggery (unrefined palm sugar). A special team of tappers was hired to prepare the trees, a lengthy process. The Palmyra sap was boiled down in large clay pots. The jaggery was sold to other Aurovilians to help support the Forecomers community. It was used in tea and cakes, and also mixed with cocoa to make fudge. This was a very popular luxury item at the time, selling for a hefty 75 paisa a piece!

By that time, Charlie already aspired to start a large organic farm for Auroville. Everyone – which was only a couple hundred people at the time – encouraged him to go ahead. The idea was to find a 50 acre piece of land, but in 1974 no one was very clear which fields belonged to whom. In fact, Forecomers residents grew crops on fields that belonged to villagers. The Auroville town planning office offered Center Field on the condition that when the city grew the farm would have to move. It didn’t seem wise to invest all that energy into a farm that would later be overtaken by urban development, so Charlie searched for outlying land.

Finally it was land brokers associated with the Sri Aurobindo Society who located some plots near several existing pieces of Auroville land on the northeast edge of the Greenbelt, near a community that Rose and Boris had just started. They had already built a hut and planted a small mango orchard. Three attempts at digging failed to secure a well good enough for agriculture. Charlie, now joined by Jurgen, offered to dig a deep well on the 30 acres being acquired through the land brokers, so they all agreed to join forces. The land was secured in January 1975, and the name Aurogreen was proposed by Shamsundar.

Laying out the roads, bunds, and hedges

Initially the land was nothing but sandy fields and palmyras. Experienced agriculturalists at AuroOrchard and AuroBrindavan helped Charlie decide on a grid pattern of roads and fields so that it would be relatively easy to install sprinkler irrigation later. A Harvester tractor was purchased from abroad with project money. This was used to help level the land, build bunds and carve trenches, but without JCB extractors, almost all land contour work was done with manual labour. It took months to complete even with Govindaswamy’s team of around 100 men.

The trenches were filled with 50,000 Acacia farnesiana – “supramental knowledge” hedge plants, which had been grown in the Success nursery. But there was still no well, so Charlie and Jurgen spent their days driving the tractor back and forth to the Matrimandir where they filled barrels with water for the seedlings. This went on for two years.

The first house at Aurogreen

With support from Johnny in Fertile, Charlie began planning and building a house in Aurogreen that would be large enough to serve as a collective community space. Johnny and Charlie worked out the floor plan together. Then Ramu and his ‘kheet team’ were called, and Johnny directed the erection of the wood roof frame. Some time later, thatch was added on top of the initial kheet roofing. The team of carpenters (including Kumaraswamy, who later opened a carpentry workshop in the area) made the roof frame, doors, windows, tables, everything! At that time, “fresh” Indian wood was plentiful and cheap. Mango wood at Rs.14/cubic foot was used for the floor of the upper room. A mason and his helper were called for the brick work and the black cement floor of the “big” room. When it was finished in November 1975, the house was much more spacious than other houses constructed at the time. For twenty years, it was the site of the community’s kitchen.

The big well

In order to do serious agriculture for Auroville, it was understood that a great deal of water, and so a deep well, was needed. At that time there were only two or three rigs in all of India that were capable of going as deep as 300 meters. These were all under the umbrella of the Central Government Hydrological Survey, which was in the process of conducting research on the sub-continent. It had been decided to dig several deep test wells a certain distance apart in the area: at Kalapet, near JIPMER, by the Lake Estate, and at Aurogreen.

In each location there were to be three wells, with the first an observation well. At Aurogreen, this well was drilled to 390 meters, with casing all the way down. Bentonite (a very fine clay) was used as a sealant to prevent water flowing into the well from the top two aquifers. In this way, data could be collected on the third aquifer alone. The second well was drilled down to the bedrock granite basement at 500 metres, with all the aquifers above sealed. The third well was to be like the second, but with all aquifers above left open.

The Hydrological Survey sent a 60-man crew to dig the wells. They camped on-site and worked in shifts of 20 men at a time in order to keep the rig working 24 hours a day. The water in the observation well was found to be potable and also fit for agricultural use, though it had a rotten egg smell due to sulphur gas. The second well had a much higher yield, but could only be used for agriculture. And the third well was not dug at all once it was determined that the water in the deepest aquifer was unsuitable for use.

The government officials intended to remove the casing from both of the drilled wells. Charlie wanted to keep the first well, but was told it was not possible to purchase a well intended for observation. The government offered to sell the second well, which didn’t serve the farm’s purposes, so no agreement was reached. Finally it was agreed that Auroville could buy both wells, but Charlie didn’t actually have access to enough money for that, so the wells remained closed.

Months later, the Governor of Pondicherry called Charlie into town for a reckoning. He asked if Charlie had not signed a paper agreeing to buy both the wells. Charlie replied that he couldn’t recall. Next the Governor reached into a drawer, pulled out a paper and asked Charlie if the signature on it was his. Charlie admitted that it was and said that he must have put his signature on the paper in a moment of stress. He then explained the on-the-ground situation: that all the money had been spent on bunding, planting, setting up the rest of the infrastructure that would be needed to start a large organic farm, and that he had not put aside funds for two very costly wells. Luckily the Governor understood and let him go.

In the next chapter of this saga, Chamanlal of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram played a prominent role. As he was about to board a domestic Indian flight, he saw the Chairman of the South Indian Hydrological Board. Although Chamanlal did not know the Chairman personally, they were both aware of each other’s work as members of the Indian scientific community. Chamanlal arranged to be seated next to the Chairman and was able to explain the whole story over the course of the flight.

This Chairman then issued orders that further studies were needed on the Aurogreen wells. He arranged for the casing to be left in both wells and sent the remaining crew and equipment away. Once the crew had left, the casing was sawed off the observation well, and the farm finally had its well. Years later, the Central Government, with the help of their accountants, shifted the project costs elsewhere in order to clear their books and the matter was officially considered closed. Once the well was opened, it became an important resource not just for agriculture in Aurogreen but also to help establish nearby forests. Almost daily, bullock carts from the neighbouring Greenbelt communities would be lined up at the well to fill barrels and tanks with water for hundreds of new saplings.

Charlie and Aurogreen today

Today cashew, jackfruit, chikkoo, mango and tamarind are grown under dryland conditions in the Aurogreen orchards. The 1.5 acres of irrigated land yield quite a variety of produce: papaya, lime, lemon, orange and pomelos; tomatoes, aubergine, long beans; lettuce, basil and other aromatic plants. Water is pumped from the well and to the drip irrigation and micro sprinkler systems using solar energy.

With the 5 cows in the small but growing dairy, Aurogreen supplies milk and varieties of fresh, middle-aged and grated Parmesan-style cheese to Auroville outlets. The cows are raised on green fodder grown on the farm. There is also forest land, with timber trees inter-planted around the farm and in a number of separate plots.

Charlie, with his pioneering vision, ingenuity, steadfastness, and intensive work has made extraordinary contributions to Auroville. His house stands in all its beauty, the fields continue to yield, the water flows from the well, and life continues in Aurogreen for the coming generations.