Finding oneself in community

An event in review — Written by Peter

The Auroville ‘Youth Center’s’ (YC) annual gathering, themed this year as the ‘Find Yourself Festival’, took place on 16-18 December. The community was invited ‘to come together to celebrate in a safe, joyful, and playful space for the realization of human unity.’ The event lived up to its billing with fun offerings for all ages.

There were children running around, shooting basketball hoops, balancing on the flying wire, playing cards, drawing, serving and enjoying food, getting face masks made, playing with balloons, horse and pony riding, acting in the performance, savouring ice cream and simply enjoying themselves. The YC were trading ‘Realisations’ as a unique (Find Yourself) Festival currency sitting in the original renovated 1972 caravan.

Adults too enjoyed the celebrations, relaxing to sound baths, playing capoeira, jamming with Sargam percussion rhythms, belly dancing performances and kolam making. There was also lots of live music, as well as stalls and activities from many enterprises and individuals including Ecofemme, TLC (The Learning Community), the Auroville Dog Shelter (cute puppies for adoption), and craft offerings. Friday night saw a YC Documentary by Cheenu capturing some of the last two years evolution.

In the deeper forested reaches of the YC, visitors took part in games, testing their balance across a slackline, or via a Lava obstacle course. These activities allowed individuals to win ‘Enlightenments‘ in exchange for their ‘Realisations‘ which were exchangeable for gifts donated by Auroville units.

All enjoyed the food stalls, having to choose among the YC’s legendary pizzas, humus pitta breads, healthy snacks, cakes from TLC, ice creams, French brioche - all examples of the international cuisine offerings we are lucky to enjoy here. The event was well organized over the three days with a full programme, and caring touches, with flower petals and colourful flags delineating the paths to walk on.

There was an abundance of joy, that simple barometer of goodwill, and the rejuvenating Auroville communal spirit; creative, original and energetic. It was a gathering of Aurovilians; the young (including the youth that never ages), different nationalities and genders all mixed into an Aurovilian sambar.

A festival highlight in the spirit of pantomime was when Johnny and Jesse narrated and created a play, ‘Get Lost, Like Hansel and Gretel.’ In the working forest home of Pa and his off-spring Hansel and Gretel, arrives a new landlady from the city, Fluenza, with her accompanying crow, ‘Murder’, and a taste for eating children. After arranging for trees to be cut down, Fluenza kicks them out of their home, and they are banished to the darkest forest corners where, instead of struggling, they build a tree house and – of course – a pizza oven. Later disguised (as a hippy ‘Floozy’) Fluenza tries to force the children into the oven but falls instead into the ‘sludge of humility’ and transforms into someone telling the truth. Vibrantly sung and acted by youth and Lili as the witchy antagonist, it offered an enjoyable respite from the politics of the day.

Startingly at times, though somehow easy to forget, the festival took place in the centre point of our current communal division, with the road gash through Bliss forest separating the YC entrance and caravan from the festival itself. This strange juxtaposition of colourful, vital and diverse activities next to the monoculture of a road to be, showed that Auroville life, like nature herself, keeps vibrantly growing even in the midst of challenge.