Creating a protected water and nature reserve

On the east side of Auroville, on the other side of National Highway 66, far behind Promesse community and Morattandy village, one finds Hermitage, the last wilderness of Auroville which stretches over 120 acres. The land is hard, sunbaked, covered with pebbles, scarred by erosion, pockmarked. But the stark landscape with its wide horizons is of an indescribable beauty. In the midst of this infertile desert some trees grow: the grayish green-silver leaves of the acacia that The Mother called ‘work tree’ wave softly in the winds, showing that, even in this inhospitable environment, something can flourish.

Ever since the land was bought for Auroville in the 1960s, a handful of people – hermits, artists and young pioneers – took up the challenge of living here, far away and isolated from Auroville’s main body. Most failed the test, but even now a few continue to make this place their home. They work on the land, making terraces and creating bunds to avoid further soil erosion, and to retain the little topsoil left over from the illegal pebble mining which happened here previously.

The south side of Hermitage is one of the most beautiful canyon areas of Auroville. It is home to a rich ecology of birds, mammals and reptiles. But the lands do not all belong to Auroville; parts of it are poramboke lands, owned by the government of Tamil Nadu. This, so far, has prevented them from being protected. Check-dams, built poorly by contractors in a distant past, are on the verge of collapse.

This year, permission was obtained from the local village panchayat to start work on the poramboke lands in conjunction with the Auroville lands. Seven check-dams, five on Auroville land and two on poramboke land, with an average height of 4-6 metres and a top width between 3 to 4 metres were built upstream, with lengths varying from 17 to 52 metres, each with an adequate spillway. The funds to do this work were provided by friends of Auroville.

Soon after finishing the dams, the builders were rewarded with heavy rains which lashed the desert, creating large and beautiful water bodies that showed the huge rainwater-harvesting potential of Hermitage as well as the possibility of making it a wildlife sanctuary. The steward of Hermitage is now doing the final work: planting the dams with grasses to prevent erosion, and monitoring the water levels.

Phase two of the Hermitage work is scheduled to start mid-August. At an estimated cost of Rs 500,000, [US $ 8,500) the dam-building and bunding of the entire Hermitage and interconnected areas will be completed. The result: an integrated area of 350 acres of Auroville and poramboke land that will serve as a major water catchment area with lakes, ponds and kolams holding harvested rainwater. This will slowly percolate into the aquifers and so help raise the groundwater level in Pondicherry and its surroundings.

The dream of many Aurovilians is that this land be declared a protected water reservation and become a nature sanctuary. If the nearby Auroville communities of Aranya, Sadhana Forest and Aurobrindavan could be consolidated with Hermitage and with the poramboke lands in between, and perhaps with some neighbouring plots that are privately owned, this status might be obtainable. Such a sanctuary would be a gift to the entire region.