“I haven’t anything spectacular to say”

I was born and grew up in Newfoundland, an island off the east coast of Canada. I went to university in Nova Scotia and then moved to Toronto. In 1967 I left my job as a social worker in a psychiatric hospital and got myself an around the world ticket. I toured Japan, then came to India, a country I had been longing to visit all my life. I was 26 years old. I landed in Calcutta in December 1967, traveled around for several months and came to Pondicherry in June 1968, a few months after the inauguration ceremony of Auroville.

I knew nothing about Auroville or Pondicherry. On the first day of my arrival, I visited the Auroville office, located opposite the post office of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, where I met Alice, the late wife of Navoditte. I had met both of them a few months earlier in a ryokan (Japanese inn) in Kyoto. She said that I had to see the Mother. I asked ‘who is the Mother?’ She smiled and arranged a visit through American Arindam, who, in turn, talked to Udar. I met the Mother around ten days later.

That one silent meeting, where she just looked at me and smiled, changed my life, although I did not know it at the time. I noticed after a few months that my plan to return to Canada had disappeared from my mind. I stayed because of her, and I stayed in Pondicherry. But I had no idea about yoga, or about Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s teachings. I started attending classes with Arindam Basu, and in the afternoons was reading Sri Aurobindo’s books in the Ashram library. In the morning, I would be hanging out in the Indian Coffee House on Nehru Street, together with some early Aurovilians, such as Gene Maslow, Francis, Frederick, and Arindam. But this hanging around didn’t seem right, and I asked Udar if I couldn’t have a job. He asked Mother, and she told him that I could start working for the Senteur perfume unit of the Ashram.

Moving to Auroville

Just before I was to begin work, Gene asked me to come to Auroville and help him build his house in what is now known as Sincerity – this was the name the Mother had given Gene for his house. I came on the daily Land Rover service to Auroville and worked all day. But that evening the Land Rover didn’t show up to take us back to Pondy, so I had to spend the night in one of the huts left over from the inauguration ceremony. I returned to Pondicherry to ask Udar to ask Mother if I could go to Auroville instead of joining Senteurs, and she said, ‘Yes. Blessings.’

At that time, there were only five other non-Tamil people living near the centre of Auroville. Bob and Deborah, and Gary Miller were living in Forecomers and Gene and Arindam were staying at the Centre, which Mother later named Peace. There were others living further away near Morattandi. Gerard was at Auro Orchard and Piero and Gloria and a few others were in Promesse. Aspiration did not yet exist. After a few weeks, other people started to arrive, such as Francis, Rod and Constance. As we could not all live in one hut, we each started to build our own huts .With $100 I built myself a small one-room hut near a mango tree, which later became part of the Matrimandir Nursery. The Mother named it ‘Joy’. Later Constance built a hut close by, although there was a piece of village land between our huts.

A blank sheet

What I loved the most about those days was the empty barren land, which held so much promise. It felt like we were being handed a blank sheet where no mistakes had been made, and the ideals of the Charter seemed like something that were easily attainable. I found the Tamil people to be so open, simple and always smiling. We had a lot of contact with them because they were the only human beings around. One main contact was with the children who minded the endless herds of goats that roamed everywhere. The goats would eat the trees we had so carefully planted and watered, and the children would laugh at our irritation and frustration, and tease us by letting more goats inside the fence.

They were extremely poor and malnourished. Most of the men were even shorter than I am. They lived a life that seemed no different from what they would have lived a thousand years ago. The only things they had that came from the modern world were the occasional bicycle and wristwatch. One or two people had a transistor radio. The nearest bus stop was at Koot Road, so many people had never been as far as Pondy, and there was no electricity or running water. People drew their water from the village well with a bucket. I always felt completely safe, even though there was no one else around, and I never felt they regarded me as a woman or a sexual object.

Meeting Mother

I must have met Mother six or seven times, besides the regular darshans. I always met her on my birthday, then when I built my first house in Auroville, and again when I left in 1970 for Canada and when I came back to Auroville. Those meetings were usually in absolute silence, but once she asked me if I could speak French, and I felt blessed and protected every time I left that room. That sense of protection has never left me.

I stayed in Auroville for two years, then went back to Canada to try to persuade my father to support me in Auroville. It cost so little to live here in those days that it would have been no problem for him. He was quite upset that I had decided to live in India and put my life in the hands of an ‘old woman’. When I explained things to him in person he remained unsympathetic so I had no choice but to get a job and earn some money before returning.

Return to Auroville

When I came back in 1972, there had been a small population explosion. When I left there were around 100 people, and when I returned, there were about 300! As my house was occupied by someone else, I stayed in Pondicherry for a few months. Then ‘Lady Jean’ (Jean Finney), a dancer who had built a house in Centre Field, asked me to be caretaker while she was out. It was a simple hut, but made very beautifully. Jean never came back. I transferred the name Mother had given to my first hut to my new home in Centre Field. I stayed there until 2008, when I moved to Arati and my daughter L’aura Joy took over the house and its name.

There was no Matrimandir when I left Auroville in 1970, but when I returned in 1972, work was in full swing. I cycled every day from Pondicherry to paint pipes for the scaffolding, which I continued to do after moving back to Auroville. The all night concretings were particularly memorable. The feelings of joy and human unity were very strong as chetties of cement were passed along from person to person – Ashramites, Aurovilians, villagers, guests. It seemed like all of humanity was represented.

In 1973, I started teaching village women from Alankuppam and Pettai how to crochet. I would cycle to Pettai every day, and sit on the porch of one of the ladies and distribute the work, which I got from Lisa, mother of Aurora and founder of Aurocreation. They had never done anything like this before, and their first attempts were pretty awful, but they learned very quickly, and soon the work was good enough to sell in Aurocreation Boutique in Pondy. In addition to earning money, it was an opportunity for the ladies to do something different from their normal routine, which included rising very early, getting water from the village well, starting the fire and cooking.

Mother’s passing

I was in Auroville when news reached us of the Mother’s passing. I was in my hut, and someone came to my door. Someone had phoned from the Ashram to the one phone we had in the Matrimandir Camp. We went to Pondicherry as fast as we could. We knew that Mother had not been well for several months, but we never imagined that she would ever leave. It was a huge shock. But we entered an atmosphere that was intense, somber, yet at the same time very beautiful.

But her leaving her body didn’t change why I wanted to be in Auroville, though decision-making became more difficult. Before she left, any questions we had would be written and sent to the Mother for her decision. After she left, we had to figure things out for ourselves.

I was never very actively involved in the struggles with the Sri Aurobindo Society which started shortly after Mother’s passing, and lasted throughout the 70’s and early 80’s. I supported the Auroville side, went to all the general meetings (less civilized, but more lively and action-oriented than the ones we have today), but that was about it, except for having to appear at court in Tindivanum a few times on charges of trespassing, if I remember correctly.

Motherhood

The next phase of my life was motherhood. Sukrit was born in 1975 and L’aura in 1978. I no longer cycled to the village to crochet, but built a workshop next to my house, where the ladies came. In 1978 Skye and her ex-husband Philip built Centre School, which became Centre Kindergarten several years later after Transition School started as the middle school. I remember Suzie was the main teacher and both of my children loved her. They both remember having very happy and carefree childhoods in Auroville. They did not have many toys, but didn’t miss them either, as nature and the things around them were so interesting, and the sense of community was very strong among the families with children, and there was a lot of visiting back and forth.

I continued running Handicrafts Joy until 1992, when the ladies moved to Auromics to work with Bobby and Heidi, and the buildings were turned into a guesthouse, which still exists today, under the management of Giovanni, Stefania and Sara. When I ran the guest house, it offered very simple accommodation for backpackers and students.

Educational programmes

In 1993 we ran a trial educational programme aimed at three groups of students, from Auroville, from travelers and guests, and from the surrounding villages. [see Auroville Today June 1993]. All of the lectures were given in English with a Tamil translation. This programme was not repeated because of lack of interest from Auroville at the time, but we began to host student groups, such as Living Routes. We usually had a night watchman from one of the surrounding villages, who was a college student, to interact with the foreign students in a learning environment. Some of these students have gone on to become Aurovilians, such as Kumar, a teacher at Transition School and founding member of New Colours in Edayanchavady, and Sathyaseelan, now a lawyer, who has become a legal advisor on land matters.

Organisational matters

In the 1980s, I started to develop an interest in the organisation of Auroville. Before the Auroville Foundation came into force in 1991, Auroville had what was called an Executive Council, which I belonged to for a while. Much of its work was about solving problems, which I felt was not what it should be doing. A few years later, some of us proposed that the Council should be a coordinating body for all of Auroville’s internal affairs, with problem-solving to be dealt with by a separate group. When this concept received community approval, it was clarified that the Working Committee, a statutory body of the Auroville Foundation, was to deal with ‘outside’ matters, and a separate group, called the Auroville Council, was to take care of internal issues.

Although there were attempts to have a separate conflict resolution group, they did not last and the Council continued to deal with conflicts. The reality was that we didn’t have the people with the right skills. There was an American mediator called Rabhiya, who did it for a while, and gave several mediation workshops, but when she left there was nobody really qualified. Kathryn, aka Swaha, came later and did some mediations. However, a professional approach to conflict resolution only started many years later, when Elvira started Koodam, which today has 3 trained mediators. In 2011, my daughter L’aura started sharing Restorative Circles in talks and workshops, but it wasn’t until late 2015 that we committed ourselves full-time to this work of hosting regular circles. I am happy that both of these systems have now been accepted in Auroville.

Restorative circles

For the past 10 years I have been a member of the Aikiyam School Support Group but my main work today is with the Restorative Circle team and I am increasingly impressed by their potential to hold space for difficult conversations in which a relatively large number of people can participate. In this process, people listen very deeply to each other and then reflect what they have heard, not just the words, but the feelings and longings behind the words. Sometimes not only the conflict, but also the underlying animosities get resolved. I think Restorative Circles can also become a tool for decision-making, for finding solutions together. “You must all agree. That is the only way to do good work”, Mother said to Roger Anger, Auroville’s architect. That applies to all of us in Auroville.

Cross-cultural issues

In September 2016, inspired by a film we saw of Restorative Circle principles used in very emotionally charged meetings between Maoists and those loyal to the government during the Nepali civil war, we invited Duke Duchscherer to Auroville to co-host with us a Restorative Dialogue across Cultures. More than 50 people came; half were Indian and half were from a Western background. More than half of the Indians had originally come from the surrounding villages. People spoke very openly. One thing that really touched me was when a Tamil village Aurovilian described how he felt when non-Tamil Aurovilians didn’t seem to know or care that Auroville existed in a context, and how this attitude is so hurtful to the people who have lived on this land for countless generations. Everyone present, regardless of background, wanted to be seen above all as a unique individual rather than put into a box and labeled a Tamil or a Frenchman.

A second Cross-Cultural Dialogue is scheduled for the end of April, particularly to address a perception of some people that there is racial discrimination in Auroville. This issue came up after the visit of the Prime Minister, when two Tamil village Aurovilian members of the Working Committee were not given proximity passes. They attributed this to discrimination by the organizers, an accusation which is flatly denied by them. I am not so much interested in discussing who is right or wrong in this particular case, but would rather encourage the underlying issues to come to the surface so that they can be looked at and dealt with.

The future

I do not know where we are going, but I believe in Auroville, and I continue to be very happy being here. On the surface, it seems that Auroville is far from its ideals, and perhaps that is true. But can we really judge? I can’t. Someone might say that we have many conflicts in Auroville as compared to elsewhere, but I think this is due to what we are here for. In Auroville, you can’t run away from a conflict, you have to face it. Each of us carries so much baggage that it is not amazing that development takes time.

Speaking personally, I have become a lot more humble and tolerant. I am not very spiritually evolved, I do not have any great realisations, but I do have that absolute sense of certainty that everything is developing as it should.