by Deborah First-Quao

Today started like all other days except the 3am temple music. Barking dogs, alarm clocks, shuffling feet, and blazing sun you can’t keep out of the blinds. I had started on my website for the PSDF (People’s Social Development Foundation), an NGO in Pondicherry which aimed at improving the socio-economic welfare of the Dhalit community and fought for their basic human rights as well. By the afternoon I was already putting together a slideshow of the cyclone’s damage to Dhalit villages which could be used as an appeal for donations for their cyclone relief fund.

After a simple lunch of ratatouille and rice accompanied with a glass of lemonade at Town Hall, I rode my pedal bike over to Visitor’s Center for a huge glass of strawberry, vanilla, and coffee crunch ice cream. Just when I thought my day couldn’t get better, at 2:19pm I received the following text:

“Sadhana Forest! Tonight! Cool Deep eco space. Two departure times: 4pm for visit, meal, movie. 6pm for movie and meal. Aurorville Bus departs from Solar Kitchen. 200 rupee donation.”

There was no way I was going to get the the 4h30 bus by the time I had finished talking to my roommate Sorana about her amazing experience volunteering with an NGO called Maximo Nivel in Costa Rica, building a room in a church. At 6 0 clock I was on the bus, my mind filled with images of tree houses, huts and gypsies. After a 20 minute bus ride from Solar Kitchen we arrived. Sadhana Forest was pretty at night. All the houses were big open bamboo huts. They were all welcoming, but a bit troubling to me because they didn’t seem like one could get any privacy in them.

The first thing on the programme was the film. The title was BORN FREE, a true story of a British couple, Joy and George Adamson. In the beginning, George, is sent on an assignment to hunt down a man-eating lion in the Baran region of Uganda. While searching they are unexpectedly attacked by the lioness of the maneating lion. In their surprise they shoot her, realizing later that she had only attacked them to protect her sleeping cubs. In his guilt, George takes the 3 cubs home to his wife and they end up raising the cubs. Plans are eventually made to send them to the zoo. Troubled by his wife’s attachment to Elsa, the smallest, most curious and most playful cub, George decides she would be the perfect companion for his barren wife.

After raising Elsa for until adulthood things inevitably start to wrong as Elsa realizes life outside the household and nature’s urges steer her to realize her true calling. George and Joy are then faced with a difficult decision: to send Elsa to the zoo, where will live out her days in a cage but the receive the care she is used to, or to attempt to teach Elsa how to fend for herself in the wild where she can live free, but face the agony not knowing whether she was well equipped enough to survive.

The movie in many ways paralleled the purpose of the creation of Sadhana Forest and their efforts at reviving the forest. Sadhana Forest was initiallyh created in 2003 as an initiative to revive severely eroded land on the outskirts of Auroville and recreate and indigenous Dry Evergreen Forest.

The movie in many ways paralleled the purpose of the creation of Sadhana Forest and their efforts at reviving the forest. Sadhana Forest was initiallyh created in 2003 as an initiative to revive severely eroded land on the outskirts of Auroville and recreate and indigenous Dry Evergreen Forest.

The dilemma raised in the movie is a question I walked away with as the bus pulled away from the hippy go green community. Can what man has interfered with ever be restored to its original state? Apparantly the inhabitants of Sadhana Forest have often had to learn the hard way, standing by as indigenous trees have died in front of their eyes, not being able to survive the climate and competition with other species. What then, is the solution?

For the 1000 or so residents of Sadhana is in living our lives in accordance with nature. Everything they do reflects this principle including building eco-friendly homes from bamboo, using compost toilets, minimizing waste of water (only 50 litres of water per person is used a day), eating vegan cuisine, and using ash and vinegar to clean dirty utensils, all in an effort to minimize harm to the environment. Can this lifestyle catch on, as like in Auroville, people get tired of their mundane lives and seek a different lifestyle in the Forest of Sadhana? Can humanity move from following the trendy bio lifestyle to leading lives that function in accordance with the biology of the Earth?

This is a question for serious meditation, and I look forward to doing just that at the much publicized night of Tibetan Meditation taking place at at the Tibetan Pavilion on the day of the full moon. Perhaps, if I am lucky, I may I may get an audience with the famous Man in the moon.

by Puxan
SDP Practicum 2009/10 // Media coordinator 2011/12

This year marks my third consecutive participation in the AUP Sustainable Development Practicum in Auroville. With each new practicum comes a different set of ideas, perceptions and experiences to the city of Dawn. While the energy and contribution of the AUP group differ from year to year, all contribute to building a unique relationship between the American University of Paris and the universal township of Paris. In my opinion, the biggest similarity between AUP and Auroville resides in finding unity out of diversity.

AUP Green launched an initiative of more conscious living in 2010 by outlining crucial checkpoints in an attempt to make AUP’s urban campus more sustainable and environmentally aware. Closer ties between AUP and Auroville grew out of the Practicum. Each year, AUP students offset their carbon emission by planting trees in the Green Belt of Auroville at Lumière with Martanda and Catherine (ex-AUP student).

As we headed out to the forest last week (pre-Cyclone), we came across trees planted by the previous practica.

Tree planted by SDP Practicum 2008/09.

Tree planted by SDP Practicum 2009/10.

Here is a look at this year’s SDP Practicum 2011/12 tree planting:

by Laura Collier

Sustainability is not communism. It does not mean that everyone should have the same things, nor does it mean renouncing all of your worldly possessions and living in a hut. I have found myself struggling with this a bit during my time in Auroville. The surrounding villages and many parts of Pondicherry, especially after the recent cyclone, are impoverished, and life there can be very difficult. My experience in Auroville has been extremely pleasant, despite setbacks with power and water shortages as well as damage to trees and structures because of the storm. I’ve been well-fed, housed and taken care of. Is it inconsistent with the notion of sustainability if I eat an ice cream at the Visitor’s Center while I am working on a project to help a local NGO, which hopefully will have a positive effect on Auroville and the surrounding communities? Perhaps. But it is not inconsistent because I am eating ice cream and there are some people in the world, or even in Auroville, who cannot afford ice cream. It may be inconsistent with sustainability because I am eating too much ice cream or because of the costs, be they economic or environmental, to supply the cafe. But it is not a problem to have ice cream simply because there are people in the world who cannot have it.

The idea of living sustainably is partly to serve as a model for how others can or should live. Though I was assured by Sacha, one of our program coordinators, that “you don’t have to be Buddha,” or give up your entire life to serve others, living sustainably calls you to lead a life that can be a model for others in the world. The lifestyle should be one that generally, if adopted by others, would have a positive effect. It calls for sharing and conserving resources, being mindful of how you interact with the environment and consciously trying to give back to the world, your family, friends, neighbors and community on a local, national and/or international scale.

There must, however, be a question of how much inequality is acceptable in the concept sustainable living. Having a fortune that would be difficult to spend even in two lifetimes while people are dying from hunger in the streets, doesn’t fit into a sustainable living model. I would assert that everyone has the responsibility to give of their extra resources to ensure that the basic needs of others are met. The controversial part of this assertion comes in defining basic needs. Are they just clean water, food, and a place to live? How much water, food, living space? What type? Do we just cover the basics of human rights? There is a lot to interpret.

It is in search of this balance that Auroville’s experiment is interesting and important. One can dive into contemplating these issues and then go beyond and try to live them, not just on a personal scale, but in a community. I can say personally that I don’t think I’ve found my balance, but my eyes are opening to new ways to try. I may need to start by having less ice cream…or at least sharing more of it.

by Sorana Ionascu

People often say there is a huge dissonance between expectations and reality. Personally, I always thought of this as one of those clichés that make you cringe and you end up agreeing with only out of courtesy. India proved me wrong. About half-year ago, as I was drafting my application essay for the Practicum, I vividly remember including some thoughts along the lines of how this trip is going to change me forever. At the time, I was fully confident of the persuasive power my declaration would have on those who read it, but I only half-heartedly believed in the statement itself. In my case, I tried to limit pre-departure research because I wanted to live this experience on my own, unmediated by other people’s interpretations. India and especially Auroville was surrounded by an aura of mystery, best defined by “well it’s going to be different”. Still, I was not convinced that I would go through any life-changing process. Coming from Eastern Europe, pretty much anywhere I go in the world is an encounter with a different culture, so up until I arrived on Indian soil I was not expecting much more than an intense culture-shock.

I could not have been further away from the truth. In the past weeks, I was overwhelmed by the learning process that grabbed me and has not yet let go. India, especially Auroville, truly teaches me something new every day. And it is not only theoretical information; it is mostly valuable knowledge about how to live in harmony with nature and build a relationship based on respect. As the Earth’s resources are depleting, people here are trying to find tangible solutions to the problem and incorporate them into their everyday lives. Be it solar panels, composting toilets, recycling or planting trees, Aurovillians are constantly fighting to diminish their negative impact on the land. The first few days in India were an exercise in learning how to reconnect with nature. But it was not as easy as it sounds, as there was a lot of adapting involved. You are put in a situation where you have to forget the lifestyle you had back home. But it is not just slightly altering your behavior. You have to be willing to learn how to put the interest of the community before your own concepts of comfort. And trust me, it is not easy at first, but it sort of grows on you.

While I was barely getting used to this new approach to life, Cyclone Thane came by and left us with complete devastation. Looking at the bigger picture, this catastrophe taught us an important lesson in modesty. The lack of water and electricity combined with the witnessing of the destruction in the region is almost too much to explain in words. The first thing that comes to mind is gratitude that we are still alive and unharmed. The emotion that follows the appreciation is a sense of guilt, which leads to an encouragement of giving as much as we can to the community through our work on projects.

Every day I wake up with the impression that I am still dreaming. Half of the time I am overwhelmed by everything that is going on around me. Auroville is a constant learning experience that I will never forget. The culture-shock is indeed present, but it slowly becomes a minor element in the background of a lesson on adaptation and an attempt at understanding. While trying to arrange the confusion currently going on in my head, I stumbled upon a quote from Sri Aurobindo, Auroville’s main spiritual figure: “what the soul sees and has experienced, that it knows; the rest is appearance, prejudice and opinion”. With that in mind, I leave you dear reader to draw your own conclusions.

By Lindsay Hebert

Seventeen years ago, Kalsang planted a service tree in preparation for a road that was to run through Auroville by way of her yard. The tree was a service tree, named for the cover it provides from the hot Indian sun. The road never came, but the tree grew to shade the pavilion where her daughter was born nine years later and where we have lived since we arrived in India. Someday, Kalsang wanted to build a house beneath that tree. But yesterday, in service to her, we used machetes to cut it into pieces.

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By Tendayi O. Chirawu

Being in Auroville is an experience like no other because it totally changes your perception on constructs of waste and in applicable, everyday situations. I have been impressed and amazed at the concept of zero waste and how it is put into practice in a ‘waste not, want not’ way.

However, there are some leakages in the way people actually live sustainably, for example: we visited the Bhudda Garden, which is a vegetable garden that aims to make Auroville self sustaining by growing and supplying all organic produce. One of the problems the Bhudda garden faces is that people in Auroville are accustomed to the kind of fruits and vegetables that their diets were comprised of before coming to Auroville and as a result those are the fruits and vegetables they want. These however, are not indigenous to the region and so the things that can be grown may go to waste as there is not a large market for them.

On the 30^th and 31^th of December the entire Tamil Nadu region was hit by a category 1 cyclone called Thane. The effects were devastating and it is my observation that the places most severely hit in my immediate proximity are the ones that chose to build sustainably such as the Bamboo Center. A young man named Diego who was visiting our media mentor, Puxan, walked for hours in the rain on Friday morning to the Tibetan Pavilion to ask for shelter because he was staying at the Bamboo Center and the roof of his room was blown away and the collapse of the remainder of the structure soon followed. Everything at the center, infrastructure wise, was made from Bamboo because it is renewable and strong but most importantly it is a sustainable building material.

Incidentally, the last two talks we received before the natural disaster were about water management and beach erosion. Water in the region is a scarce resource which has now been aggravated by Cyclone Thane. Being that Auroville was founded by the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, the society is embodied by a spiritual aspect which is bound to sustainability. However, the spirituality aspect has in one instance stood in the way of sustainability in the creative water solutions. I posed the question as to why sewerage water is not recycled and used for drinking as is the case in my home country, Namibia, which also has water shortages as the country is predominantly desert. The answer given was that because researchers have found that water retains memory drinking water that has sewer memories would be ungainly for the well being of its drinkers.

I feel as though sustainability appears to be occurring and is based on selectivity such as in the case of the vegetables whereby people will eat sustainably by eating vegetables, but it is ineffective because it demands unsustainable production based on the type of vegetables people in the area prefer. Additionally, some sustainable options are not implemented because they are incompatible with the perceptions in the minds of people as is the case with the creative solution for water which ends up being an enemy of progress. Finally, using sustainable building material may not be the best way to be sustainable because should disaster hit, nothing remains. The conundrum is how to be sustainable in an inclusive and progressive manner? There is some dissonance with the way sustainability occurs. Sri Aurobindo said that all problems of existence are problems of harmony.

By Lacy Wood

Level one cyclones are not generally considered destructive. In the case of the one that touched the Pondicherry and Auroville area, a lack of structural preparation made cyclone Thane extraordinarily damaging. There was ample warning of its arrival, and as we returned from a long day’s hike and swim in the countryside, no one seemed concerned of a system that in the West we call a hurricane. Auroville felt indestructible somehow.

After a long night of wind gusts of up to 150 km/hour, we survived that first day on the graces of Kalsang and her family, who run the Tibetan Pavilion where many of us live. That afternoon, the rain slowed long enough to venture to the nearest village for water and food. Along the way, we examined the extent of the damage. Every twenty feet a tree was down across the road. With electrical wires interspersed, the roads were virtually impassable.

She made us lunch, led us to the nearest vegetable sellers, and opened her home to us. Despite being wet and tired, it was because of her, that our rain day was actually quite enjoyable. The following morning, our clean up began with the tree in front of the pavilion, planted on its commencement. Even though Kalsang was there for its construction, dedication, the hosting of his holiness the Dali Lama, I was the one crying as the tree was cut into pieces. Stoic and wise, she understood that this storm is an opportunity for rebirth.

I only saw her get emotional when she announced later in the day, that she would not be hosting her New Year’s Eve celebration.  Instead of spending the entire day moving trees and clearing roads, her family and friends would get up early to put out over five thousand oil candles, cook food, and prepare the pavilion for the guttural chanting. Busloads of people show up every year to witness the memorial of those that have died in support of the Tibetan people.

Watching the stars this New Years eve, Kalsang described to me how the scent of the oil, the sights of people packed into every corner lit up by the glow of endless candles, and how the throbbing of the chants surrounds you. That night, the absence of light in the pavilion became a symbol of the devastation of thousands of homes, the loss of many lives, and the upending of the glory days of development in Auroville. As we watched the moon poke in and out of the clouds, waiting for the midnight to strike, Kalsang, was stoic as ever, making her resolution to be positive in every situation. Even though I struggled to be optimistic about the coming year, I decided to leave our fate in the hands of Shiva. It is obvious that the god of destruction and rebirth has visited us this New Year, forcing us to accept what the future holds.