AV in 2050: Through the Looking Glass

Auroville in 2050 offers two distinct possibilities. One, that I, now ninety-three, enjoy sailing across the lake on a Matrimandir gondola to the Park of Unity, with or without my dentures. The other is that thirty-two years from now I’ve absconded to the lighter side of the universe yet not averse to visiting incognito as wonderful changes are afoot. The dream that was at least a hundred years ahead of its time has deepened. Eighty two years have gone by, the population has grown to almost twenty thousand. The city buzzes with peace.

A new generation has completely overhauled Auroville’s organisation, as well as its society. Negativity has sunk to an all-time low as the cottage industry of conflict and controversy has finally decided to call it a day while bureaucracy is now only left to the bores. Professionals are no longer those with overburdened official knowledge but those who have the deepest understanding of Auroville together with a practical capacity to make it manifest. As a result, all parts of the city are now able to grow together. The International and Cultural zones are real happening places, creative in its research and of great innovative beauty. The universal town is ripening at last.

Auroville just won an award for enhanced sustainable mobility as the Crown monorail was flagged off and the inner city up to the Crown was declared almost wholly pedestrian, with the exception of collective electric transport.

People have actually begun enjoying working together, making sure that the city steadily takes shape in all its parts. There is great empathy amongst this new population. About five Lines of Force, big and small, are now inhabited, even as twenty new farms dot the Greenbelt which is almost all there, and the forests are growing well. There is no longer that old separation and hostility between Green belters and city dwellers. Green belters often take a week’s break, reserve a room in a Line of Force to catch up with city friends and events and take a look how the hydroponic farms on rooftops are doing and note the increasing variety of bird population that comes to nest in the spring. People from the Residential Zone often go off for quiet retreats in the forest or go work on a farm for a month. Mongoose and porcupines cross the city at ease along paths and green corridors and the radials. No, they are not allowed to ride the monorail. There was an incident which I cannot divulge on Auroville Today.

Of course, all this begs a question. How did such things happen? What about ground reality, the villages and topsoil?

Well, something happened to people between Sri Aurobindo’s 150th birth anniversary in 2022 and the Mother’s in 2028. The carbon footprints in our minds and hearts were the first to fade. It helped the city and society enormously as the atmosphere went through a massive change. Six sustained years of great inner transformation carried Auroville to a new place even as the world went through turmoil and change as it tried to find a new equilibrium. People came to Auroville, from the bioregion and everywhere else from the known galaxy seeking another life, another kind of humanity.

Did Auroville have it in itself to offer something of greater worth? Did it have a place for these seekers of a new life from here or from there? The light that had been growing inside was starting to become visible. ‘She’ had once asked for our sincerity. And She wanted new forms for the new force to anchor. Form, not as flat shapes and structures but as a living, organic momentum. A new education was in the air.

When I looked in, in 2050, Auroville was steadily reaching a new equilibrium of consciousness. Tourists were still coming of course, but Auroville had changed because the Aurovilians were changing, opening to the new consciousness that inhabits the air like a miracle. Tourists don’t just rush to shopping arcades or the golden ball, they are first given space and time to discover Auroville and enter an atmosphere that is different.

One day, while I was still around, I saw a group of young friends get off at the monorail stop in the Cultural Zone and walk to a café. They were young architecture students coming out of a workshop and they had been given an assignment. They had to find the planning principles for Auroville’s growth. Was it from everything? Why were new forms needed to manifest a new force? What did that imply for the Auroville? The standard criteria of building and planning is that Form follows Function. This includes basic positioning, utilities and facilities and is worked together with sustainability principles, said one participant. But what of the people, asked another. So they added another level: Form follows Fiction, imagining the city and the Greenbelt where people live, work, grow and interact, following their needs, trajectories and responses to humanize circulations within the form. But still, another participant mused, what of the dream, its poetry and its intention? So they added another level: Form follows Vision and began exploring how all these levels would percolate: function, imagination and vision, so that the city could co-exist at those levels. The owl that lived on top of the bookshelf beside their table gave a hoot and flew out of the window, satisfied.

In 2050 two young people stepped off the Lake Promenade and into my gondola. Suddenly one of them turned to me with a smile. “Building Auroville together is the most spiritual thing we’ve done. It is the beginning of harmony. We have crossed massive egos and entrenched positions, people have let go of fears and prejudices so we can ride this gondola together. We are on the bridge to the future!” Truly, Auroville in 2050 is an amazing place to be in. Check it out.