They could have told more about the life and works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother

After some R & R, we decided to first go to the Aurobindo ashram. I really don't know much about the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo apart from the fact that he was active during the golden period of the struggle for independence. Hence I couldn't really appreciate my visit to the ashram much. The overbearing sewaks didn't help much. It would have been good if during the tour they could have told more about the life and works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

We next decided to go to Auroville. I've never faced as much difficulty in locating any one place as I faced in locating the visitor's center at Auroville. I must have asked atleast a dozen people along the way. It almost felt like Auroville wanted to hide itself and didn't want any visitors. Since it was a Sunday afternoon, they were not issuing any passes to the Matrimandir and we had to content ourselves with a 20 minute video of Auroville and a glimpse of the Matrimandir from a closed gate. The mandir itself did look stunning. A pity we didn't get a chance to go in and explore. All in all I didn't feel positive about the experience. My overall impression was that of a community of mostly foreigners that wanted to guard its privacy and was more or less enjoying a relaxed life on public money and public land...posted by Gaurav Goyal at 5:16 AM Monday, April 23, 2007 Bike Ride to Pondy