I regret not having stayed there

The scenery was undeniably picturesque. Whitewashed houses with colonnaded balconies dominated the scene and people of varied nationalities were walking past without a care in the world. Since it wasn’t a beach, the numbers of street peddlers were in minute quantities. I saw a couple of European kids, playing with their nannies. They were speaking in Tamil, with absolutely perfect clarity in their speech and the slightest of accents. It was Pondicherry, just the way I’d imagined it to be.

Aurobindo Ashram was just some distance away. The first thing that struck me about the Ashram the moment I entered it was its smallness. From what I’ve heard of the place I’d definitely expected something that was more extravagant. The ashram was structured such that a huge, imperfectly beautiful tree that branched out in a million directions was at the center. I think the tree must have been pretty old because there were beams placed below it for support. There were people of all kinds, sitting in various positions; some having a slightly dazed expression in their eyes, the others with their eyes closed. The common expression that everyone’s faces seemed to portray was that of peace. The ashram was well maintained and extremely clean which is probably why I regret not having stayed there.

We eventually decided to visit Auroville on our way back to Bangalore. The drive till there was good. The road was decent and there was the ocean, stretched out beside it allowing us glimpses of its vastness from time to time. Auroville struck me as a little weird- with its Utopian ideas, prospective villas that would be called Shanti, Gratitude, Horizon etc and human beings living in harmony with each other and that sort of thing. We were showed a short video and from what I saw, I thought the Matri Mandir seemed very similar to the Lotus Temple in Delhi. The Mandir was still under construction so we could just see it from outside after walking for about half an hour with the sun shining on us in all its glory. The walk back was much nicer after having a refreshing lemonade. I concentrated a lot more on the kind of people that were around.

Auroville was an interesting place and it made all of us think. Maybe that was one of the intentions of its creators. Pondicherry is a nice place. It could definitely do with a little less hype about the Ashram and so many other things but it’s nice nevertheless. posted by Sneha Nagesh Saturday, March 04, 2006 at 11:23 PM