Auroville changes people...

I left Auroville because I wanted to study and find out how life is elsewhere on this planet. I would love to come back for visits but don’t know if I’ll be coming back for good. There are several reasons, one being that as a woman I don’t really feel safe in Auroville. There is a lot of tension between the Auroville lifestyle and the local one, especially the young people (me included, when I was in my teens) have views that are so radically different from their surrounding that it creates tension. I don’t want to blame anyone though – I think there are legitimate reasons for this and the fact that they reserve these views is respectable in its own way. But there is a lack of respect from different sides (locals, Aurovilians, tourists, police, the government officials, etc.) and this essentially creates the problem.

Again, I am not blaming anyone here. Auroville has a very complex social situation which even long-term residents don’t have an overview over, and navigating within it without creating tension can be difficult. Studying intercultural communication in my minor made me realize some things I didn’t think of as problems before. Auroville needs people who have knowledge about these things to work on its integration, because the tension must be reduced in my view. And I don’t mean Aurovilians going to the villages and explaining what Auroville is about and that we have no bad intentions and so forth, though that is in essence good, but there has to be learning from both sides – integrated learning.

In the end, that is what Auroville is about. I know that this is kind of a taboo topic in Auroville, but I believe if people don’t talk about it it will be difficult to tackle. We as foreigners should try to understand and respect the local culture. We should work together with the surrounding villages to create more intercultural sensitivity.

Going abroad made me realize how special Auroville is – people who’ve been in contact with Auroville seem to have a deeper understanding of the world and the friendships made in Auroville are really lifetime friendships, which is less common abroad. There is something palpable but unexplainable about Auroville that profoundly changes the people living there for life and in a positive way. I feel that Auroville is my home and that it always will be.