Promesse community

M. Velmurugan son of Madhusudan left his body on May 13th. He was 53 years old. Velmurugan along with his parents have been part of Auroville from its inception.

On 24 January Christian Edet passed away in his Promesse home at the age of 62. Born at Noumea, New Caledonia, Christian came at the age of 46 to Auroville in 2006 and was accepted as an Aurovilian in 2007.

Bhavani Shankar Sardar passed away on January 3rd in his home town Kurnool, in Andhra Pradesh at the age of 83. He first came to Auroville in 1991, and joined a year later.

Looking at some of the old issues of Auroville Today, it’s fascinating to see how some of the articles could have been written just last week.

On January 19th Chris Gray left his body in his Yantra after suffering a stroke. He was 75 years old. Chris first arrived in Auroville in the early seventies, travelling overland in his blue Mercedes van.

When the members of the Land Board took office in January 2014 they met with a dire scenario. Funds to purchase lands were in short supply, the sale of outlying lands was blocked, land encroachment was rampant, land grabs and falsifications of land documents by outsiders were discovered, and legal assistance was insufficiently available.

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).

On February 15th, long-term Aurovilian and pioneer, Jayant Thakkar, who lived in Promesse, passed away in the Ashram’s nursing home at the age of 94.

Last year was the 40th anniversary of the arrival of the second ‘caravan’ in Auroville. That caravan, like the first caravan a few years earlier, was made up of a motley collection of individuals who travelled overland from France to offer their energy and idealism to Mother’s Dream.

Dear Auroville Today Team, In your interview with Shri N. Bala Baskar published in the August issue of Auroville Today, you wrote: “No Tamil Nadu Chief Minister has ever visited Auroville”.

Little is known about those early days before Auroville’s inauguration, when land purchase and the first Auroville developments were started by the Sri Aurobindo Society.

Records of Auroville’s history during Mother’s lifetime are found in periodicals (Mother India, the Bulletin of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, the Information Letter of the Sri Aurobindo Society and the Gazette Aurovilienne), in books published by disciples (Satprem, Shyam Sunder, Huta, Savitra), in archives (Sri Aurobindo Society, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Auroville), in personal archives as well as in published and unpublished interviews of disciples (Roger Anger and others).