Issue Nº323-324 – In Memoriam

N. Saravanan of Matrimandir Nursery passed away on May 28th at the age of 43 due to an accident. He was crushed under the 25 feet high chariot car of the Panchali Amman Koil temple at Thilaspet. While the car was being dragged during the ‘Theemedhi Vizha’, the wheels of the chariot got stuck in a pit and the car collapsed on the road.

Saravanan, who originally came from Pondicherry, was one of the staunch Matrimandir workers even before joining Auroville in 1999. Recently he had started working for Gold in Glass, the Golden Tiles unit.

To enable Aurovilians to bid farewell, Saravanan’s body was brought to Auroville’s Farewell Centre and was afterwards cremated at the Shanmugapuram mandappam in Pondicherry.

Former Aurovilian Bomi Homawalla, passed away on May 23rd at the age of 86, in Baroda, Gujarat. Bomi, Perin and their son Michael lived in Promesse in the seventies (1970-76) and it was Bomi who started Service Farm (next to Aurobrindavan).

Bomi was known for his sharp wit and brilliant mind and played an important role in the struggle with Sri Aurobindo Society at the time. His deep knowledge of Zoroastrian cosmology combined with Sri Aurobindo’s spiritual psychology was a unique combination that enamoured him to several western Aurovilians in the beginning of Auroville.

A few weeks before her 100th birthday, Luise Hansen left her body on April 21st in Kobe, Japan. Luise, originally from Linz, Austria, had come to Pondicherry in the late sixties and had some personal darshans with The Mother. Being inspired by the vision of the Auroville Dream, she supported its manifestation from its very beginning through generous donations to many projects like the land, Matrimandir, Animal Care, Dental Care, schools, farms, Vérité, Mohanam, Svaram and others.

Luise had lived in Japan for more than 70 years, arriving there during the Second World War after being evacuated from Indonesia, where she had worked as a child nurse, and she experienced the war and reconstruction years in a nation shattered by the atomic bomb.

Having joined the first study group on Integral Yoga in Japan around M.G. Patel in Kobe, she visited India regularly and had friends in the Ashram and amongst early Aurovilians. Having successfully built up, with a Japanese partner, a large company supplying medical equipment to Japan, she distributed all the wealth to humanitarian causes and for her beloved animal friends, receiving a high national award for her pioneering work in animal rescue.

Luise was a shining example of keeping her physical discipline, having been active in sports, well into her nineties, and in spite of many falls and hip-and thigh breakages, she participated even in her late years in dance classes and preferred motorbike rides to bumpy taxis. Till her very last days she remained independent in her activities, keeping up with the daily news and happenings in the world and sustaining a vision of a new phase of human civilization and planetary future.