Issue Nº378

The year 2020 has turned out to be a really good rainfall year. It didn’t start well. In the first five months we received only 62 mm as compared to the average of 102.8mm, or 39.79% less.

Everyone here knows the expression “Children of Auroville”, but they’ve grown up since, and some now have children themselves! As various waves of ‘children of Children of Auroville’ – i.e. youth that has grown up in Auroville to parents that have themselves grown up in Auroville (monikers: GenZ, iGen or even Zoomers) are born and grow up here, the older ones now represent a category that is starting to be more vocal in the community.

Zohar (17), known to most as Zozo, might be Auroville’s youngest full time forester. He lives and works in Evergreen, where he grew up among the trees and animals.

How does Auroville deal with ageing? Are there community retirement plans? Are Auroville units planning for succession? Auroville Today talked to two unit executives – one who is (slightly) stepping back, the other who is stepping forward – and lifts the veil on a Silver Fund which is being planned for the older members of the community.

The caption below the photo of Dr. Karan Singh and Dr Abdul Kalam on page 1 of the December 2020 issue of Auroville Today # 377 mentions mistakenly “With Prime Minister Abdul Kalam, at Auroville, November 2004”.

Auroville from Above had a similar impact on some of the viewers. “What a change of perspective!” wrote one, “It feels like helping us to realize the amazing place/gift we are living in.”

Over the decades, Auroville has been a fertile hatching ground for many experiments and visionary projects, and this incubatory spirit sometimes goes hand-in-hand with the spark of romance.

In reference to Caloptropis “This courage means having a taste for the supreme adventure. And this taste for supreme adventure is an aspiration – an aspiration which takes hold of you completely and flings you, without calculation and without reserve and without the possibility of withdrawal, into the great adventure of the divine discovery, the great adventure of divine meeting, the yet greater adventure of the divine realization; you throw yourself into the adventure without looking back and without asking for a single minute, “what’s going to happen?”

Last month the dried plant collection of the Auroville Herbarium moved to a new dedicated building in the Botanical Gardens. Funded by SAIIER, inaugurated this March, slowed down a bit by corona, its establishment marks a new phase in the work of preserving and classifying our indigenous flora.