“Now I am aware I have choices”: Savithri journey

Auroville Today: How did you get to know Auroville?

Savithri: I knew about Auroville as I was born and brought up in Kottakarai, one of the local villages.  Also my father has been working in Auroville as a potter for over 35 years, and when I was a child he took me with him to work from  time to time. However, for many years I never thought of joining the community.

What changed your mind?

I heard about human unity before, but when I met a few Aurovilians with good hearts who were helping and supporting each other, I felt it is actually happening here, and this is a community which I want to be part of. I could also see that people were trying to live without competition, religion, caste and any kind of hierarchy. I loved that Auroville would give me the possibility to go beyond tradition, culture and family to the universal quality of humanity.

Is Auroville very different from the village?

Yes. For example, here I can talk, I can give my opinion, but in the village I am not allowed to say ‘no’ to people, mainly to elders; if they ask something, I have to do it.

Why is this? Does a man have more freedom than a woman in the village? Or is it a caste issue? 

It is not a boy or girl thing. Maybe within some families the male holds the upper hand but it wasn’t a challenge that I faced.  The caste thing is there in the village. There are different castes in my village and some older people still won’t let lower caste people into their houses, although this is changing now. But it hasn’t affected me or my family because from childhood I have seen my father’s friends, who are from a different caste, coming to our home without anything of that kind being on their mind. Even my close friends are of a different caste. However, I can’t talk for others about this as I have heard stories of discrimination.

One thing that is very different from Auroville is that in the village there is a lack of consideration for other’s opinions, people won’t sit and listen to others, whereas here I see people taking the time to listen.

Still, I feel blessed that I was born in Kottakarai because it is completely different from more traditional villages elsewhere. On the whole, it is much less strict about such things because it is very close to Auroville, and many of the people work in Auroville and see that things are done differently here. 

Yet some attitudes change more slowly. For example, I’m 30 now.  According to my culture I’m quite old to get married and I see the pressure on my parents from the village. People ask them why they don’t get me married.  But my parents are exceptional.  They never tell me that I have to do something. They just want me to be happy, and they trust me. They know I won’t misuse this freedom and I just want to be a good daughter to them.

You went to college. What was that like?

When I went to college to study computer science engineering it was a completely different world.  There I was meeting new people and I couldn’t sense any caste distinctions. This was because the students came from all over, and they were educated enough to feel this is something that actually doesn’t make sense.

Towards the end of my college studies I also got a placement in a company in Pondy. That was one of the happiest moments in my life as I felt that I had done something important in return for all the efforts that my father had made to help me study, paying all my fees without taking an education loan or borrowing.

I was happy taking this job because I was able to support some of the expenses of my family. I felt a little more responsible, too. But over time I didn’t feel satisfied. There was pressure, and I was overloaded with work by the managers and senior people who dumped their work on to me. Also, I wasn’t recognised or given credit for what I was doing, and a work-life balance wasn’t there. 

So you stopped?

Yes, I stayed home for some months. But then my father asked Anamika, one of the potters my father worked with, if she could find me work as a volunteer in Auroville.  Anamika spoke to Sonja and she offered me a job in the Housing Service. To begin with, I was just feeding information into the housing database, but even on the first day I liked the work and the behaviour of the people. As a volunteer I had the opportunity to feel the joy of service, of helping others. Also, it was totally a different environment from my previous workplace.

How?

Let me give some examples, they may look small or silly, but they mattered a lot to me.

For instance, one time in the Housing Service I was on a personal call and the office phone was ringing. I was about to cut my personal call and attend to the office one, but another person who holds higher responsibility asked me not to do it and picked up the phone herself. I was astounded this could happen in a workplace and to a new kid on the job. This is something which would never have happened in my previous workplace.

Later, there was another instance where in a meeting with the Foundation Secretary it was mentioned that I had put the housing database in order. So people here are recognised for what they are doing and they are respected. This sort of encouragement never happened to me before, except from my family. There were many other small happenings like this which pushed me to make an extra effort and put more love into whatever I was doing.  

All this gave me the courage to try new things. I’m experiencing so many things here for the first time which are completely different from my culture.

Like what?

I never stayed away from home before coming here.  Even during my college days I travelled back home every day. And at home I have never stayed alone – we are five in our family in a single house – and I even got scared when the power went off. So when I first stayed alone in Grace community, both I and my family were scared. But they encouraged me to do this, to get some space for myself and try it out. Eventually it started working. I think that was a very big step for me.

Another thing is that in Auroville, unlike in the village, you are allowed to call people by their names and express yourself freely.

I always found it difficult to express my opinions to a larger audience, but recently I did it. In one meeting in which I was representing the Housing Service someone was complaining about the Service, but I was able to explain the actual facts, to let everyone know what actually happens there and to show that the complaint was not justified. It was difficult for me to speak up, but later I was happy that I did.  I was proud of myself because I could see myself growing in confidence.

But I just don’t just say things for the sake of saying them.  I am learning to choose my words carefully.  In fact, I’m becoming more aware of everything, not only about how to speak but also how to behave.  Before coming to Auroville, I accepted that my life was already laid out. I would go to college, get married, have a family; that would be my life.  But now I am aware that I have choices, so I need to be aware of everything and choose everything that I do. 

In fact, I’m really happy that I’m here in Auroville because I’m learning and growing a lot.  I have more confidence, I am more conscious in whatever I’m doing.

Working in the Housing Service must be challenging because housing is such a huge issue in people’s lives that if they don’t get what they want, they must sometimes bring their frustrations to your desk. How do you cope with this?

I meet people with very different characters. Since I’m taking care of youth housing now and most of the people I deal with are around my age, generally it goes well. But some older people get upset very quickly and shout if they don’t get what they want, or think we have made a mistake. When it first happened, I didn’t know what to do, but now I am learning to handle it by asking them to sit down. Then I explain how we are functioning, and if I have made a mistake I apologise and say it won’t happen again. This calms them down. 

I don’t take it personally; I kind of understand that it is a situation that they couldn’t handle, which is why they are shouting at me. They just want to know what is going on and how things work, and obviously it’s  my duty as a member of the Housing Service to explain this to them.

Do you have any sense of what you would like to do in Auroville in the future?

I realise that much of my time is spent in Housing at present. This is good, but in the future I want to do something else also.  Now I started participating in some other projects / programmes with young people who don’t know, for example, what is going on in the Town Hall and how groups like the TDC and FAMC work.  I joined one meeting with TDC members who explained how they worked, and for many people who attended this was the first time they understood it.  I also learned something from it.  

I was also very happy when I got selected for the Citizens Assembly pilot experiment.  The main topic, water,  is such an important issue, and I’m learning so much about something which I didn’t have much idea of before.  I was a bit nervous at the first meeting because I wasn’t sure what I could share and how useful it would be.  But when I saw we were free to give our opinions, whatever they were, I started sharing mine and from the way people responded I could see they were valid. Sharing something useful once again brought me happiness and pleasure.