Making the cap

Villagers are rushing homeward on all sides, outracing the long-expected, prayed-for rains (the sound of drums, chants, prayers and fireworks have punctuated the night for the last week or so) as I bicycle towards Matrimandir at 4.30 in the afternoon on the 8th of August. The sky is piled black with clouds, looming like mountains above the freshly ploughed and planted red and green fields. The concreting scheduled to start at 3 begins an hour late due to a brake burn-out on the crane. “The last of the crane and wheelbarrow concretings”, Larry remarks. A phase that began more than six years ago, with the raising and placing of the first of the 1200 beams, has now reached its close. The rain falls on all sides and can be seen in sheets in the distance, and yet only sprinkles the roof of the structure, circling it. The mood is relaxed and joyous on top, amongst the twenty or thirty of us gathered there, and the work is more shared than at the previous concreting of the first section of the cap. As night falls, the village lights in the distance come on like fishing boats across a bay of darkness as the Matrimandir, lit-up, seems like a strange ship under construction, ark of some new and dawning age.

A dance performance followed by a gift distribution occurs under the Banyan tree below us in honour of the auspiciousness of the 8th. Someone who comes up afterwards remarks that the recording of The Mother’s reading from Savitri combined aptly with the sound of whistling and shouts from the structure, the humming of the vibrators (echoing through the inner chamber like the low chanting of Buddhist monks) and the churning of the concrete mixer.

The work proceeds steadily but slowly as it takes fifteen minutes for each wheelbarrow of cement to be hauled up to the top of the structure. Lowered into position on wooden planks, each load is tilted and emptied onto the grid of steel shuttering where it is then vibrated into place. A team of masons follows to smooth out each completed section of the half-circle. I recognize one of them as an old Forecomers worker who has learnt a new trade. Piero is in a relaxed mood, we joke about it being his last concreting. Groups of people converse leaning on the railings and a band of children are camped out for the night on a platform to the side. (Last concreting they swore they saw an UFO). Concretings remain one of the few genuine collective happenings occurring these days. I break with Andy and François for an hour and a half’s fitful sleep at 3 a.m. and we return to relieve Gopal and Selvam’s team at 5. Slowly, night gives way to a blue-grey darkness, and then, above the sea, the first trails of pink streak the sky stabbed white with the cloud-veiled shimmers of a late moon-rise. Day breaks to reveal many activities and scenes, like a later-day Breughel painting: farmers ploughing their fields below us, the blue grey hills of Gingee etched in limpid clarity to the northwest, windmills turning, dominating the green belt like spires, a trio of freighters anchored off Pondy.

The cement mixer keeps churning, the vibrators humming – Andy and Patrick are now working them, settling the cement. New people show up, there is little sense of drag. Caught in the rhythm of work time’s sense fades, encapsulates itself as if we were carried, cradled by a refreshing inner wind. The crew of masons from the nearby village carry on rounding, evening out the dome-like surface and by the time the concreting comes to an end, slightly after 1 p.m., they will have worked for more than 21 hours. Slowly, people come down from the structure as small teams hose the chettis, the cement mixer, the tools, and buoyant, tired and happy they scatter to the four corners of Auroville, the children on horseback, the others on foot, motorbike, bicycle or car.