Narad (Richard Eggenberger)

H.P. Rama is a successful hotelier based in the U.S. He is also a devotee of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and has founded a university – AURO University – in Surat based upon the former’s educational principles.

As a therapist I know that one of the first steps to healing is to acknowledge trauma, whether individual or collective. This is an unusual article in that I invite the reader to hold and witness with compassion our inner and outer diversity as a community.

Recently, the process of finalizing the designs of the next four Matrimandir gardens to be constructed – Light, Life, Power and Wealth – was completed and work on Life and Power, the two smaller gardens, will begin in a month.

In early January, the team supervising the process announced that a final design had been decided upon for the Garden of the Unexpected at Matrimandir (see AVToday November, 2018).

An innovative process to design a new garden close to the Matrimandir is underway. What is it trying to achieve? What does it involve?

On June 21, 2018, Shri M.V. Chunkath, Secretary of the Auroville Foundation, opened the newly enlarged Picture Gallery at Savitri Bhavan, which will permanently display the entire series of paintings ‘Meditations on Savitri’ by Huta.

On April 26th, Anne Nunnally (called ‘Anie’ by The Mother), a dear friend of Auroville, passed away at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Nursing Home at the age of 80.

On February 7th, the ‘Landing Auroville Celebration’ held at the Unity Pavillion was an encouraging success. Organised by the joint land fundraising teams of Acres for Auroville, GreenAcres and LFAU, the event’s central message was the sacredness of the land, and the need for an intense collective effort to acquire land in Auroville’s Master Plan area now.

On 17th December, Prema (Adelina Intanno) passed away. She was 68 years old and had been fighting a terminal ailment for two years. Prema, who was born in Argentina, came to Auroville in 1979.

Chali was born in San Francisco in 1967. She attended the inauguration of Auroville and was taken to Mother while still very young. She moved to Auroville in 1969-70 with Mary Helen and Narad (who she mainly grew up with), but left with her mother at the end of 1980.