Sunday, April 27, 2014

Auroville, dream…utopia…sustainable?


Last year when I arrived for the first time in this garden of Eden, that green bowel... a few kilometers north of Pondicherry I really thought I had reached a dreamland, a bit like an Eldorado for environmentalists and free souls.

This year the permaculture garden we planted with sweat and pain, was almost back to bushes... the people met seemed more aggressive...
Stolen seeds to make individual gardens instead of community efforts...
People not really engaged in sustainable solutions, more concerned about building their own houses...
 Still nice celebrations around Matrimandir....

 And this great hut, suspended in the trees, in front of Serenity Beach

But the greatest things of all I must say remained: a possibility to learn from everything, everywhere: people from all around the world, eager to learn... to share... amazing workshops in so many different fields...
I started a Tomatis training using sounds, especially Mozart to train your internal ear in more focus, raise listening capacities, music, self positioning...

One thing that stroke me this time though: a real aggressivity of some of the children... of Auroville...
Not the fathers, the ones that built it ... but the ones that were born in it.
Weird feeling: they seem to have had it all: beautiful surrounding to grow up, tropical gardens to play, alternative learning schools, advanced green and farming technologies, pioneers to show them the way...
But few of them seem to take over and further the spiritual message, the projects, the community itself!
They seem stuck in something too small for them, in envy and incapacity to bring new ideas from outside again, or even just to welcome new people in...and not really capable to further the dream... endangering the whole concept... and the peace of land itself, getting strangled by indian building constructed all around Auroville trying to grab the tourism attraction... the people themselves kept in fear of villagers gangs...
But that young guy who got ballistic when I was speaking about financing the cleaning of Andaman with a touristic eco tax really made me realize that the community spirit that once made Auroville, the fraternity, conviviality, solidarity, was long gone... The one that build his parents, gave them a great life style, for some, amazing life conditions with luxury house... for some the Auroville tax helping them to build their own business and the back of others efforts... was not passing generations...
( I payed myself 200 Rs per day of Auroville tax which redistributed to keep this place clean, safe and sustainable...)
How can you speak about being on a budget when you have your own company built on such a tax, in some proportion… and being unable to share positively values, hopes, changes…!
This negativity, aggressivity between/by sons of Auroville… worried me.
As much as the great creativity and party ambiance, great workshops will always an attraction to me, the dream of Auroville has faded away!

Not really a dream any more!


TBC

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