Committed to Auroville

A profile of Palani — Authored by Carel

Palani in the Aureka workshop

Palani is the executive and product manager of Aureka, Auroville’s engineering company. Here he talks about his upbringing, his work, and his plans for the future.

Auroville Today: Palani, when did you come to Auroville?

Palani: I was born in Kottakarai, one of the villages that border Auroville. The year was 1968, Auroville had just been inaugurated. My father was fascinated by the new neighbours. After a few years he decided to move to Auroville with his entire family. He started working for Jaap who, at the time, was managing a big farm stretching all the way from what is now Kottakarai to Ilaignarkal school. He planted, drove a bullock cart to water the seedlings and had the joy of seeing the barren lands gradually turn green. He also worked at the Matrimandir, first at the excavation, later in the Matrimandir Nursery.

We children, my brother Vinayagan and I, were sent to school in Kottakarai and Thiruchambalam, and I managed to stay on until the 9th standard. But by then my family felt that we had to learn something practical. I was 16. I met Robi who asked me to join Aureka, the metal workshop that had initially started with Mother’s name ‘Toujours Mieux’. I was fascinated seeing that workshop and being allowed to work with machines I had never seen before. I started at the lathe, then worked with a milling machine and so on, until I had a practical experience of all the machines of Aureka. My brother became a contractor and built many houses in Auroville.

So your entire family became involved with Auroville?

Yes. My father Murugesan contributed in another way as well. In his free time he was a poet. His most famous work is the re-writing of the story of the Kaluveli Siddhar, the sage who lived in Irumbai and whose curse, after he had been insulted, split the Siva lingam in the Irumbai temple and created the barren lands of what later became Auroville. The story is ancient, but my grandfather added the ending, the promise of Siva to the desolate people that the curse would be lifted and the lands become green again when foreign people would settle. And that’s the story of Auroville. The Bharatanatyam dancers Krishna Kumar, his wife Gita and their daughter Harini, together with Johnny and other Aurovilians, once enacted this play in the Irumbai temple itself, at which occasion my father was lauded. [see AV Today #240, February 2009, eds.] I still have copies of his story book which he made with the help of Meenakshi from the Matrimandir nursery.

You continued working at Aureka?

I never left. I developed a specialisation in wind pumps. In those early years, water was not pumped using electricity but by using wind mills, also known as wind pumps. Robi, a Swiss engineer and executive of Aureka, specialised in these wind pumps and improved their design continuously. This led to the Auroville Multi-Blade Windmill, which has evolved from practical experience over the last 33 years. Robi invited me to be part of his team, and for more than 30 years I have been installing and maintaining wind pumps all over India. It was a very dynamic time for Aureka and a great time for me personally. Nowadays, the demand for these windmills has lessened as more and more people go for electric, diesel or photovoltaic pumps. But we have scientific proof that the Auroville wind pumps deliver the lowest cost per water unit as compared to other systems. In Auroville, there are still ten of these windmills pumping water.

While the windmill business is slowly fading out, the manufacture of earth construction equipment is on the upswing. Initially designed by Auroville architect Satprem, Aureka built and later improved on the Earth Block Presses. The first were manually operated; now we also manufacture electric hydraulic presses. Aureka also makes the accessories for these presses and the handling and rammed earth equipment. The products are sold all over the world in collaboration with companies such as Innotec, USA; Dwell Earth, USA; Earthworks Construction, Gambia; Fam Engineering, Gambia; AnyWay Solid Environmental Solutions, Israel; and, of course, Auroville’s own Auroville Earth Institute. Aureka’s website is well-visited and instrumental in getting most orders.

Apart from these two main product lines, Aureka is also involved in making things for Auroville offices and residences, such as window grills. But that’s a minor part of our work.

I have now become Aureka’s executive and production manager and oversee the work of our 40 employees.

Has Aureka been able to keep up with the times, e.g. by renovating its workshops and rejuvenating its machines?

Over the years, Aureka has created some office and auxiliary buildings, and we built a high compound wall out of necessity. But the main workshop still dates from the beginning. The machine park is getting older, but the machines are sturdy and it would be an unwise investment to replace them with modern equipment. Such investments would only pay off if the new machines would be used 24/7, for which they have been designed. But Aureka’s employees work 8 hours a day. It’s more economical to outsource certain products, and continue using the existing machines to make the main parts of the earth block presses.