Issue Nº325

The Sacred Groves project is an experiment in sustainable construction that is gaining recognition in the larger India. However, it has become the focus of controversy in the Auroville community as some feel that it has cost too much and delivered too little.

Mother gave broad and clear directives that form the basis of Auroville’s socio-economic organization and vision: a communal economy with no private property and no exchange of money between community members, each of whom would contribute to the collective in one of three ways – work, kind, or money – and whose basic needs, would, in turn, be provided for by the community.

Like the name, India, it was with some surprise that I learnt that the common south Indian fruit, tamarind, has a Persian etymology. The Persians gave the fruit the melodious name of Tamar-i-hind or the “date of India”, which was subsequently Anglicized to tamarind.

We are happy to welcome Mr. Mohan Verghese Chunkath I.A.S. (ret.’d) as Secretary of the Auroville Foundation. He assumed office on Monday, June 13, 2016.

Peter Klingspies, a young Aurovilian who returned to Auroville in 2012 and works in Sumark Construction, shares his thoughts on his life and what it means to work in construction in Auroville.

Snakes of Auroville and Pondicherry, written by Deepanam school teacher Rajeev Bhatt, is an easy introduction to the snakes that are common in this area.

Sustainable Palate is an unusual cooking book, a collection of recipes for preparing traditional vegetables, grains and millets grown in and around Auroville.

From the Editors’s Desk II contains a compilation of selected editorials from the monthly journal Sri Aurobindo’s Action, written in the periods 1976-1985 and 1998-2004 by Shyam Sunder Jhunjhunwala, who passed away in July 2011.

The Joy of Offering contains selections from Madanlal Himatsingka’s correspondence with The Mother. Madanlal, who passed away in 2004, was a great devotee of The Mother and one of her tireless fundraisers, in later years for Auroville, and in particular for the Matrimandir.