The value of youth

On a sultry May summer’s evening, after one of its communal and tasty pizza nights, the Youth Centre (YC) premiered a documentary simply titled ‘The Youth Centre’. Sitting under the night stars, we watched 90 minutes of interviews, a sliding historical review from its founding in the 1990s to the present, about what the YC has given our young. The honesty, energy and openness was touching and captured some of the adventurous and experimental spirit of Auroville.

The film originated with three friends: Anastasia, Lucrezia and Cheenu. Anastasia, then a German Weltwärts volunteer at AV Radio, and Lucrezia from YouthLink suggested to Cheenu, a film-maker, to make a documentary about the YC together. This was in the seemingly innocent days before the tumult of Covid and what they now simply call ‘the destruction’ (of YC buildings on December 9, 2021). “We wanted to express what the YC was about to the community and to the TDC,” recalled Lucrezia, “… to open their eyes to the world of youth.”

The trio interviewed 35-40 people, starting with the founders and including a range of people who either lived there in the past or live there at present. Most of the interviews were recorded in 2020 but two of the interviews were done in early 2022.

“We wanted to share our story with the community, show them what we practise, how we live, the essence and spirit of YC and its youth,” said Lucrezia. The Auroville community, she pointed out, “didn’t support youth and we wanted support, but we struggled to get the necessary support.” At one point the YC were asked to move to a new place, as originally they were not meant to be on that plot of land, “but no support was given to find a new place or in terms of money to rebuild what already existed. So we decided not to move, to keep our presence in the centre of Auroville, where all young people can easily access it.” They want to grow the YC, by building new tree houses and a better store room. Yet in the present moment there are only two maintenances for the ten people living in and working for the YC, and even these two have been recently reduced to a two-month bridging maintenance with an unknown future.

Freedom to grow

For Lucrezia, the motivation to promote the YC through the film came from “the growth and opportunity [the YC] gave me” and wanting other youth to have access to such a space. She felt supported both by the freedom and discipline of the YC. Coming from a school where everything was imposed, the YC “changed my whole lifestyle. Here I felt like I wanted to do so much because I had the freedom to do it. So that was very empowering for me. And I think it's a point that a lot of people shared in the interviews.”

Cheenu’s story

Cheenu, who grew up nearby, arrived in Auroville in 2010 to live with his uncle after his mother passed away. He studied at NESS school and then completed a BA in Photography and Film-making at Chennai University. He took his last exams virtually in 2020, at the height of Covid, in the YC main space (now destroyed), and says that before living at the YC, “I didn’t really speak English or have friends.”

He had resided with his uncle for seven years and then his sister’s German guardian for three years. With the latter, he “got the freedom to live on my own and look after myself. It’s one of the ways I came to the YC.” Cheenu explains, “In Tamil culture, they never teach you how to live on your own, so [youth] don’t have the confidence to do so. I got here today because I didn't really have much [family] pressure.”

With no financial support, it was hard to prioritise the film’s editing but after ‘the destruction’, Cheenu realised that “this is the time. The message is now not just for the community, but for the outside world too, about the value of youth.” He completed the editing in one month, “just day and night editing.” This was his first longer documentary film and calls it “my purpose.” Cheenu became a newcomer while living at the YC and experiencing community life there. He worked on the film with “a lot of motivation and will to create, to do something good for this place and Auroville. I just felt like it was one of the most effective ways I could help the community.”

“‘The destruction’,” Cheenu recalls, was “hard the whole time, everyday. I was deep into emotion.” Up until that day, he had never spent a night outside the YC. But on the fateful morning of 9 December 2021, he was not there. “Maybe I had to be away that night [before]. I was very shocked when I came back in the morning, when everything was destroyed. After that day it was not fun mentally, living and working at YC. It took us one month to clear up the [uprooted trees] and rubble of what they destroyed. When I edited the destruction part of the film, it was not easy. I was crying in front of the screen, seeing the fighting. It was sad.”

Perceptions of the Youth Centre in Auroville

The events of 9 December 2021 didn’t happen in a vacuum. Ever since arriving in Auroville at age seventeen, Lucrezia noticed that there was a lot of talk around youth being lazy and not caring about work unless they were paid. The perception was that youth “want money. They want an easy life and to have fun.” Lucrezia says the narrative about youth always drinking and smoking is fake. “It's a really strong opinion of a lot of people. That's why some families don't send their kids to YC. I have actually heard people saying that we come here to have sex. It's crazy.”

Lucrezia offers a very different perspective. “I came here from Europe where I didn't have an easy time. Back there, I drank, smoked and had a lot of friends who were getting lost into drugs. Here I got so inspired, and stopped doing all that. Instead, I was being creative and motivated, and this was only because of YC, because it was the place where I could use my body, my mind and my heart as well.”

The gift of the Youth Centre community

Some Auroville youth do leave the township to work outside or abroad, but Lucrezia has seen quite a few realise that “they want something more, not money, but growth.” Lucrezia notes how the film documents the ways the YC provides the youth “a safe space, to go away from their home and find their own community and peers and an understanding of what community living means.” In Lucrezia’s experience, only Fertile, Udumbu, and the YC offer this kind of community living in Auroville. She elaborates, “Community means learning how to communicate with others, learning and expressing what your needs are, and at the same time taking responsibility, including by washing your clothes and your dishes. And for me, that was very powerful in terms of growth. Because of course you have days that might be challenging. But there is always an attempt to find a balance and understand one another.”

It’s evident from the film that community building and learning how to communicate, alongside living with nature as a constant and literal backdrop have been a big part of what YC has offered. The safe space to be young, away from societal pressure, to discover life and the deeper levels of what Auroville proffers were repeating themes in the film.

For reasons hard to understand, the YC and Auroville youth in general often seem to be on the literal frontline of our current polarity. This film conveys with honesty the joys, the value and gifts alongside some of the realities of living in YC, and also shows what freedom can offer to the young.

Trailer to film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztFaNzBuR5Q