“We came for the City”

Anandi and her partner, Joseba, joined Auroville in the early 1990s. Since then she has been actively involved in various planning and economy groups. She has also managed for many years the Pour Tous Distribution Centre.

Beginnings

Joseba and I first saw the Galaxy Plan in an alternative magazine in Spain. It was a special issue about communities in the world, and there was an article about Auroville, and the Galaxy image was on the front page.

We were already reading Sri Aurobindo at that time. We had been part of yoga groups in Spain where the emphasis was very personal, upon discovering oneself, but when we read Sri Aurobindo it was very ‘expanding’ because here was somebody who was transforming the future of the earth. It changed our lives.

But we hadn’t heard of Auroville. So when we read this article, we thought this was fantastic. What could be better than a city based upon Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, for the article presented Auroville as having a dimension as vast as Sri Aurobindo himself, and the Galaxy image represented something of that movement, a dynamism which embraced the whole world. Then there were all these mind-blowing things like no police, no money…

I was born in a small village, and was demonised when I was a teenager by the small village gossip. I was horrified by this atmosphere. Later, we lived in Pamplona, which, although a small city, allowed me to breathe more easily because there was more of a feeling of diversity. But we loved going to Paris and walking around, because it was cosmopolitan and lots of interesting things were happening there.

We had always thought that cities were very beautiful inventions. Joseba used to read a lot about cities, and the impact that cities like Athens and Venice have had on humanity. Unfortunately, modern cities have also become very horrible places, and that’s why people are so afraid of them. But I think cities deserve to be saved, to become bringers of beauty and peace again.

That’s why Auroville could be such an interesting experiment in rediscovering the marvel of cities. For I don’t think that living in small communities in the countryside is the dimension that humanity needs at this time.

Where is the city?

In 1988 we visited Auroville for the first time. It was a shock. The article in the magazine had suggested that the city was already finished, and that’s why we had come, but there was nothing. We couldn’t find the city anywhere! Only the Matrimandir was under construction, and that’s where we went to work. Polishing marble pieces for hour after hour, we connected with the centre. But as for the rest…some of it was jungle, and whenever we went there, we got lost.

However, we met Sharanam, who was the only Spanish person living in Auroville at that time, and she made a big impact on us. She was working in the Laboratory of Evolution, where they had made compilations of what Mother had written and said about the city and about Auroville.

We took copies of these back to Spain with us, where we also started reading The Agenda. All this had a very strong impact upon us, for even though the city was not yet realised, we understood we could collaborate in manifesting it on different levels.

We came back the next year with the intention to stay. But we met Aurovilian Prema who convinced us to open a shop in Spain to sell Auroville products. So we went back and put all our money into it, and it was a disaster because the quality of the products we received from Auroville was poor. We found ourselves with a big debt. So we decided to pay it off, save some money and then go to live in Auroville.

It took us more than three years, which was really a wonderful exercise in detachment. All this time we had a photo of the Galaxy in our home, and we would look at it every day because it was our dream to see it manifested.

Opposition

We had come to Auroville for the city, to help manifest the city. But what was painful was that very soon we realised that some people were against the city. We had a friend, a long-term Aurovilian, who asked us to accompany her to an interview. The journalist asked her about the plans for the city and she explained that The Mother at that time was an old lady, who couldn’t see or speak much. And when an architect presented his city plan to her, she accepted it because she was so nice and she would have said ‘yes’ to anything then. But, continued our friend, this city plan has nothing to do with what we are doing here.

We were so shocked we couldn’t speak. We went to see Luigi in Aurofuture for an explanation and he said that some people were very attached to a ‘green’ Auroville and saw the city as a threat. So we agreed to work with him, Roger and Jacqueline in Aurofuture to help manifest the Galaxy plan.

We worked there for ten years and learned a lot about the city. Roger had received a lot of detailed information about it from The Mother. However, he didn’t know all the details, and we had to make many calculations regarding densities as this would influence circulation etc. Roger was very flexible, but there were certain things that were absolutes, non-negotiables. These included the Crown, the outer ring road, the Greenbelt, the Lines of Force, and, of course, the central area. The rest was open for research.

I began to imagine daily how the city could be. I felt the whole movement, dynamism, of the city could be beautiful, taking our minds into a different space. I imagined getting into my electric vehicle and driving along the avenues and through the parks. And I always dreamed that the Lines of Force would be like mountains that I could walk up and down, experiencing different vistas.

During this time, our enthusiasm for the city grew more and more. Moreover, our conviction that this was what Mother wanted for Auroville was confirmed when a friend of ours in the Ashram told us a story. When he was young, he was on the staircase to Mother’s room when Roger came with a big model of the Galaxy which he was about to present to Mother. Roger asked this young boy to help carry it into Mother’s room. So this boy went into Mother’s room for the first time and stayed there quietly in the background. And he reported that when Roger presented the Galaxy model to her, Mother was so happy. She said, “This is fantastic, this is wonderful”.

But in Auroville we kept encountering opposition to the city. We had presented a plan for the first Line of Force, which we wanted to live in, because for us the joy of our life is to start something, to get the city moving. But a hundred Aurovilians signed a petition against it, so we were forced to make only three apartments rather than the fourteen we had planned for the first stage, and our architect, Dominic, left Auroville in disgust.

People didn’t want to see a big building, but I think the larger fear is the fear of losing a paradise. More and more people seem to be coming here attracted by the greenery, the peace, by workshops and nice things for the kids. But how are we going to build the city of the future if people only want a peaceful life, a place they can retire to?

I’m not looking for a comfortable place to live. I want to participate in building something big, something that has the dimension, that ‘breathes’, The Mother and Sri Aurobindo and their work for humanity. I don’t mind if I have to live in a hut. I’m much more interested in the larger work we can do together.

How can we change the present mindset? I think it can only happen by removing the importance we give to individuals’ choices about how they want to live, and giving importance to the larger mission instead. We have lost the ability to think big. If we had to start building Matrimandir now, we would never manage it because there would be endless meetings and discussions.

I don’t know why the city is planned in this way, and I don’t want to know. I know She saw it and indicated how it should be, so let me do it. If it is a mistake, it will be The Mother’s mistake, not mine!

A last opportunity?

Perhaps now we have another chance to build the city. The fact there will be money to build the infrastructure for the city means we can establish a base. However, in the present climate I do not know if it will succeed.

But I don’t think it’s accidental that the present disruption has happened in Sri Aurobindo’s anniversary year because Auroville needed a bit of a shake-up. Perhaps She’s given us the last opportunity to demonstrate that we are serious about what we want to do here. If this fails, who knows what will happen?

Actually, I realise we actually have no idea about what is going on. I know The Mother is behind it because She would not allow all this just to happen, but what this is going to provoke we will only see after some years. Only then will we realise what happened, and why it had to happen like this.