Following the tread: a profile of Chali

What are your memories of those early years in Auroville?

I have very positive childhood memories of freedom and fun, being out in nature, swimming in the mud-holes. Later, I realized those days were much harder for the adults, and particularly for sensitive people like my mom. Actually, this is partly why we went back to the U.S. in 1980.

You went from Equals One, a free progress school connected to the Ashram, to Kodaikanal International School, which was a much more structured, less individualized environment. Was it difficult to adapt?

It was quite difficult. After all, I was only 10 years old and in boarding. But I already had some academic grounding – I had been reading from an early age – and there were two other students, the older sisters of Alok, from Auroville at the school. That helped.

After Kodaikanal School you returned to the U.S. to attend High School and, later, university. What motivated you to revisit Auroville and to choose to live here again?

I felt that I was stagnating a bit. I had a degree in Biology and liked my job working in a research lab in a hospital but there was nowhere else to go or learn in that position; there was some frustration there. More than that, I felt that something major had to change in my life, but I couldn’t see what that change would be. So I came to Auroville for one month in 1994 just to get out of that environment for a little while. I hadn’t thought that Auroville would be the next step. In fact, I had told some people that I would never again live in Auroville because I felt that that part of my life was over.

What changed your mind?

It felt really good to be here again, meeting people I had grown up with. Within a week of being here, it was quite clear that this was going to be the next phase of my life. It was a very conscious decision to return.

Fairly soon after returning, you became involved in education. How did that happen?

A young Aurovilian, Luc, had an idea to create a further learning centre. He had stayed in Auroville to do his higher education but had had a hard time because he had to find the teachers and materials all by himself, and he didn’t want others to struggle in the same way. A mutual friend asked me if I would help him and I said, ‘Sure, why not?’ It was something of a casual undertaking. Luc and I started working on the concept in 1996 and the Centre for Further Learning opened officially the next year in the ‘Curd Pots’, which now houses the Language Lab.

We thought of it as an ‘educational match-making’ service. The initial idea was that anybody could come to us who wanted to acquire any skill, from chemistry to basket-weaving, and we would try to put them in touch with somebody in the community who had those skills and who would be willing to teach them. Initially our focus was not just on teenagers or creating a ‘high school’.

However, after one year we realised that we had to narrow that focus. Last School was already there, and it was and is great that it exists to create a different consciousness about education, but it was not offering qualifications recognised outside Auroville. Because of this, at that time many of our teenagers were studying for higher education at schools outside Auroville – at least 15 were studying in Kodaikanal International School, another 15 in the Lycee Francais in Pondicherry, and others were studying in schools in other parts of India or abroad. I remember thinking that trying to create a new consciousness about education in Auroville didn’t make sense if we were doing that without the people it is aimed at. But how to keep them here?

So we started talking to the young people who were studying in these outside schools, asking them why they had left, what they were missing in Auroville education, and what it would take for them to study here.

What emerged was they wanted a higher education here in Auroville that would lead to them getting something recognised outside Auroville. It’s not impossible to accomplish something if you don’t have grades and certificates, but if you want to continue your studies in certain fields it is much, much harder. This is the present reality outside, and it is not going to change soon. So we decided we would try to help our young people get the academic qualifications that would allow them to pursue university and other higher studies outside Auroville, to give them the keys to open doors of opportunity and gain wider experiences.

Your decision to help students study for examinations in Auroville in the Centre for Further Learning, which later became Future School, was controversial at the time because of what Mother had said about the true purpose of education, which has nothing to do with passing examinations.

It is still something of a controversial issue. Even for us teachers in Future School it is always a challenge to prepare students for exams that are recognised outside, and yet to do it in such a way that this doesn’t take over the whole educational programme and the mentality of the students. What we are trying to do is to bring together the aims and ideals that we have here, to offer an integral education, with an acknowledgement of the reality outside Auroville. We attempt to do this by teaching these courses in such a way as to make clear to the students that passing exams and gaining qualifications is not the ultimate aim: that the attitude that they take towards what they are studying is more important than the piece of paper at the end. But it is a constant challenge to maintain that way of thinking and maintain a balance.

One of the reasons we chose the particular examination system we use – ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels in English medium – is that it is very flexible. There is no rule about when students need to take the exam, which subjects they are going to take, how they are taught or which educational materials to employ. So we can use what makes sense for us rather than having to conform to an external system. But we also run many non-examination courses in Future School, including a course called ‘Auroville Philosophy’ where we discuss the history and ideals of Auroville and get the students to think about their relationship to them.

Clearly, we are meeting a need. Our student intake has grown every year since we began in 1996: this year we have 90 teenagers studying at Future School.

You said that you had learned so much through taking up this work, even though you once said that one of the things you would never do would be to teach, and particularly teenagers!

One thing that this experience has shown me is that when you don’t approach something in too much of a mental way but try to follow the thread, what is presented to you, as sincerely as you can, then amazing things can happen. I have gained a lot of confidence from this experience. It has taught me not to be too attached to what I think should happen because often things won’t happen that way. We actually don’t know what is best for us, but if we can let go and follow what opens up in front of us we are usually brought to somewhere interesting. Helping to create and build something like Future School has been an incredible example of what I believe we are all here to do: find a work that serves the community and at the same time is an opportunity for growth in ourselves as individuals, a work that brings us joy and fulfilment while challenging us on all levels,

I suppose one of the ultimate tests of what you have described is being part of a group like the Working Committee because it has to deal with very difficult aspects of Auroville. In addition to your responsibilities at Future School you were a member of what is considered one of our most successful Working Committees. How was that experience?

I don’t think I would have been able to do that work without having had the experience of the school and having the confidence I had gained through those years.

One thing that has become clear to me is the importance of the people I work with. If Luc and I had not become such good friends, if we had not been having such fun working together, I don’t know that the Centre for Further Learning would have taken off. In the Working Committee that was also very much a part of it. We didn’t know each other well when we first came together, but quite quickly we clicked and felt good as a group. We learned to appreciate each other’s strengths and to be patient with and complement each other’s weaknesses. There was no feeling of competition, it was very much a team effort, and for me that makes a big difference.

I don’t think I would have been able to go through that experience without having been part of such a team because dealing with the kind of issues that confronted us was really tough. One of the things that was hardest for me and for several of the others was to see so much rottenness, so many things that shouldn’t be happening here. To hold on to your belief in the ideals and Auroville’s very high aims when almost everything you see is in total contradiction of this was really, really hard. There were moments when I was in despair and it took me a long time to get to the point where I could thicken my skin a bit and feel enough detachment that it didn’t hurt so much.

One of the things I kept reminding myself of when I was really struggling with a situation was that the work wasn’t about us as individuals. We were doing it as a service. My daily mantra for that work was “Make me a better instrument”. It was my way of reminding myself to step away from the result I wanted to allow forces wiser and more powerful to act.

You revealed that recently you have been wrestling with the thought of leaving Auroville. Was this related to the frustration and disillusionment with certain aspects of Auroville that you felt when you were in the Working Committee?

I guess it was for similar reasons. It had been building for a while but what brought the whole feeling to a head was the new selection process for the Council and Working Committee. I felt that the process itself was naive and artificial but I accepted that we should try new things. But what happened after the proposed new members of the Working Committee were presented to the community, the way that some of these people – including people who had been in Auroville for many years – behaved in the subsequent discussions in attempts to hold on to this position was so appalling, so aggressive and hurtful, that I wondered what we are doing here.

Of course, I can understand that sometimes these things come from a place of pain but I feel that in Auroville we should be able to deal with this differently. Even if we are a family, and in families you tend to be a bit more free with your criticism and your speech than with your acquaintances, still there is a line that you don’t cross. And that line was crossed so drastically in one meeting in particular that afterwards I just went home and cried.

This was the catalyst that brought everything to a head. I thought, how can Auroville succeed if this is the mentality that is going to take over our community processes and interactions?

Yet recently you said that you had changed your mind about leaving Auroville. What happened?

It didn’t happen immediately. Before this, I had already planned to spend a month in the U.S. with my sons. It was a really good trip, we met a lot of friends and family whom we hadn’t seen in a long time. This made it even harder to come back, and reinforced the feeling that maybe we should move to the States for a little while.

So what changed my mind? It’s hard to pin down what made a difference, it’s never just one thing. It happened gradually but an informal group of Aurovilians that meets together on Saturdays to try to approach Auroville issues from another perspective definitely played a part because it quickly became a place for positive thinking and positive attitudes: it changed the focus. I think that that helped me to shift my attention from the things that were painful for me to the things in Auroville that are going well. I realized that there has to be a balance. It is not a solution to put your head in the sand and pretend some problems do not exist. But you can look at them and maybe even try to address them in a stronger and more balanced way if, at the same time, you have something else that’s nourishing you, something that is giving you the strength and the detachment to be able to face them. It has become clear that the time to leave has not yet come for me.