Issue Nº430 – In Memoriam

Merry, born in Vermont, USA, passed away on 30 March. She was 85. She officially joined Auroville in 1999, but was already involved 10 years earlier.

Merry is remembered by her friends and caretakers as “mighty willed, brilliant and the sweetest lady we know … Her strong individuality, inherent sweetness and sincere aspiration for the Divine Mother shone through, touching the lives of everyone around her.”

Merry joined Auroville at the age of 50, and, being a lover of animals, soon got involved with the dog shelter. As a music teacher, she harmonised the lives of countless students, sharing the universal language that brought joy and beauty to all. She expressed her kindness and love for children through teaching and caring for many animals over the years.

In later years Merry suffered dementia and severe hearing loss, which did not prevent her from being a regular customer at La Terrace where she had lunch and read the newspapers, with a pen in hand to write her comments in the margins!

Merry’s remains were buried on 4 April at the Auroville Burial Ground.

True Animal Stories, a book that Merry wrote and which was published in Tamil and English, is available at Thamarai and other Auroville schools. 

Anand Prasad passed away on 8 April. Born in 1957, he studied at the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. During his school days, he participated in Matrimandir concretings. He joined Auroville as a volunteer in 2006 when he helped found the Saracon campus, bringing an invaluable contribution to its growth and spirit. He was also actively involved in various community activities including the Auroville Marathon and Aurinoco.

Anand’s remains were cremated on 9 April at Karuvadikuppam, Puducherry.

Walter was born in Stuttgart, Germany, on 7 December 1950. His childhood and youth were difficult but he felt there was always a protecting hand over him.

In 1970 he graduated as a landscape gardener, and later became a qualified engineer of landscape architecture and environmental preservation.

At the office where he was employed in Munich there was a photo of the Nebula (an earlier design by Roger Anger, which later became the Galaxy) attached to a cupboard. Walter was always attracted by it. He had been introduced to the Integral Yoga early through his spiritual friend and guide Heinz Kappes (1893 - 1988), a priest who, after retiring, lived in the Ashram for one and a half years.

He worked on a farm in Egypt between 1983 - 1985 and there was a German on the farm who had lived in Auroville for some time. Walter became curious. In 1986 he came to stay in Auroville for several months, falling in love with the Matrimandir and the idea of a garden design based on the Mother's Symbol. He came back for good in 1987 and jumped full-heartedly into participation in the design of the Matrimandir gardens and the park.

He had a love for perfection and Mahalakshmi, the Mother’s aspect of Harmony and Beauty, became his inner aspiration. Walter had an intense inner life with lots of beautiful spiritual experiences.

In 2023 he had an accident from which he didn’t fully recover. On 17 April in the early evening the Mother took him into Her arms while he was walking. His partner, Mechtild, received a last message from him on the same day.

“Our dear friend Heinz has made it clear to me that I will never be able to give back what good deeds other people do or did to me. I can only say ‘thank you’.”

A silent gathering for Walter took place at the Matrimandir Banyan Tree on 21 April.

Walter’s remains were buried on 22 April at the Auroville Burial Ground.

André, one of Auroville’s early architects, arrived in Auroville in 1968, aged 26. On the invitation of the Mother, he started working with Roger Anger, Auroville’s chief architect, and was his first draughtsman.

André was originally from Tunisia and spent the first 13 years of his life there. At the age of 14, he moved to France and attended the Ecole des Beaux Arts, where he studied Arts and Architecture. He became a painter and worked in architectural offices.

Through a chance meeting with an artist in Marseille, André’s interest in spirituality was awakened. He read The Adventure of Consciousness and a brochure on Auroville. On its first page, there was a picture of the Galaxy, the Charter, The Dream and a photo of Mother. It was like a revelation, an immense joy. “But this is where I must live!”

After selling his paintings he came to India overland. When he arrived in the Auroville area, he was taken aback because he did not find even the beginnings of a city he had been expecting. However, “I wasn’t disappointed – I wasn’t happy either – and I told myself that it was up to us to build the city; that we had to transform ourselves through doing it. It was a process that had meaning.”

André began living in Auroville and working under the guidance of Roger Anger, and for the next 40 years, he helped create numerous private residences, apartment buildings and commercial facilities. His projects included the Centre for Research in Communication and Publication (CRCP) in Fraternity; Surrender community - a residential collective housing project; the Pavilion of Tibetan Culture in the International Zone; commercial units Shradhanjali & Auromode Atelier, both in the Industrial Zone; and the school at New Creation.

For André, expressing beauty and harmony linked with functionality was his aspiration and the most important aspect of his architectural work in Auroville.

André passed away on the night of 17 to 18 April. His burial took place at Auroville Burial Ground on April 20, the day he would have been 83.

An autobiography by André Hababou (previously published in French) is now available in English at the Visitors Centre bookshop, under the title From Tunis to Auroville, In search of Truth.

Boris, Auroville’s entomologist and nature lover, passed away on 22 April at Marika Home, where he stayed for the past few years. He was 87.

Boris was born in Krasnoyarsk, a city in Siberia, Russia, on 9 June 1937.

He arrived in Auroville on 21 September 1991 at the age of 54. He came to live in the Aspiration community, and remained there for the next 30 years. About his life before coming to Auroville, he wrote, “For more than twenty years I worked legally in the Soviet Science Academy and I practiced illegally yoga for fifteen years.” Through yoga, he realized that “science is nothing compared to Yoga .... Yoga gives joy, health, wisdom for all the people of the world. It is from God. Science on the other hand can be, at times, from the asuras.”

He described what he saw when he arrived. “I saw a child in every Aurovilian. And now my vision hasn’t changed. It is a city of very young people who created their own young world. This reality has a great perspective. The physical and spiritual atmosphere of the city creates the constant youth of Aurovilians.”

His observations of the natural world, and also of human behaviour, appeared very regularly, during many years, in short but often pithy pieces of writing in the weekly News & Notes. Boris’s writing had its very own inimitable style. As an entomologist (i.e. a scientist who studies insects) he got plenty of opportunities to observe insect life, not in the least in his own thatched-roof home in Aspiration. In one of his pieces, he makes fun of Auroville’s attempts at organisation and governance while talking about termites: “The Working Committee of Aurovilian Termites has decided that all the termites which are residents of the city must work round the clock, all year long, every day including all holidays and festivals, without any salary. The results are obvious. Now the Housing Group of Termites successfully competes with the Human Housing group. In reality, the Auroville land belongs almost equally to man and to insect, although the insects are less serious and do not celebrate Deepavali.” (1998)

Lately, Boris seemed very concerned about how the city development is affecting the life of nature and humans in Auroville. “The planet is in a dangerous sickness. Our Kurukshetra battlefield for its healing is here…”

Boris’s remains were buried 26 April at the Auroville Burial Ground..