EWS #47: Narad’s early days in Auroville (2)

Sept 28, 2019

Topics:

• (00:00:38) – Pioneers in Auroville. Mother’s energy sustaining the hard physical work.
• (00:10:00) – Visit of the Dalai Lama in 1973.
• (00:14:03) – Bird species and wildlife in Auroville. Collaboration with the greatest horticulturists of India.
• (00:28:43) – Narad teaching English to children and workers. British colonial rule and famines in India.
• (00:40:37) – Encroachments of the land by speculators. Matrimandir as a sanctuary.

Narad (0:00:00):
Namaste and welcome to our continuing series, Evenings with Sraddhalu. Namaste. We had a question.

Joel (0:00:48):
Yes, I had a question. So when I hear early Aurovillians speaking of the early days of Auroville, they speak about the difficulties of being in that desert, but also being helped by Mother's presence and energy. And I was, even in the picture you can see that light in their eyes. And I was wondering, it's not there so obviously anymore today so I was wondering if you could tell us if there was a change noticeable at a specific moment and when was it and why was it?

Narad (0:01:28):
Well it's still there and it will never leave us but sometimes it becomes a little hidden when with the influx of so many new people. Many people who knew nothing about Sri Aurobindo and Mother, they were coming to see a new world community, something of that nature. And it took a long time. One young lady from Italy came to me recently, she's a singer and she attended my own choir and she said would you give me one lesson and I said yes you could come to Pondy to my place and I'll give you a lesson. She had been in Auroville for weeks, many weeks and didn't know there was an ashram and didn't know anything of Sri Aurobindo, or  Mother. What Sraddhalu was doing each week in Savitri Bhavan, what I'm doing with the Om choir, brings that back in full force again. But it's going to take some time. Mother said if they don't know about the yoga, what use will Auroville be to them? So I feel with this quite large influx now, we have probably twice the amount that we had just 10 years ago, 15 years ago. All kinds are coming. But then again, that's the experiment. All kinds have to be there. And Aurovillians are facing that now.

Sraddhalu (0:03:14):
I think to just put this in context, in our earlier discussion last time, we went into Narada's personal, we may say diary notes. Today's vocabulary could be blog. They were his personal notes during his early days of work in Auroville and they capture something of the mood of Auroville, of the early period where so much hard work physically but also so much help from the Mother's presence was simultaneously there, and we will be continuing with his notes today also. But to put it in context Auroville as a community is primarily founded on spiritual principles, as distinct from so many other communities, which have been inspired by Auroville also or have come up with whatever origin where the objectives are different. They may be creating a new urbanism, it may be entering in deeper collaboration with nature, it may be somewhere else a new society and social forms, somewhere else it will be a new economic framework, and somewhere else it will be a new hierarchy or organisational structure. The focus is different in each of these, but in Auroville, the foundation is first and foremost the spiritual unity of the self, the soul, the Divine presence on which and through which the whole integration and world unity, human unity and all the flowering of all the aspects of human life have to develop and grow. Without that unifying spiritual foundation, Auroville is not Auroville. And so every new person coming to Auroville must on some level, in some form, in his own own particular vocabulary if it's so needs, recognize that as the focal point and make that the reference point for everything else that they do. In the absence of that you will tend to have a kind of a dilution. But I would even say it's acceptable that someone comes drawn by the presence and the ideal which he cannot articulate. He may not say spiritual, he may not use the vocabulary but he feels it, that's good enough. But when people come without that or who are immune to that in some sense, then they as if represent more the periphery of the movement of Auroville's focus. And in a sense, they may bring some special value, but they do not contribute to the primary objective of Auroville. And so in that sense there will be elements of dilution which is accepted as long as the core is strong all of these will form around it automatically synchronising with the core. When the core becomes weak that's when we have problems and we have conflicts and divisions. So I would put it just to restate what you just pointed out and the core is still there and Mother's help is still there but they often get covered up with other layers and if you do not take the trouble to look behind the appearance, you can get caught by the appearance and miss that thing which is inside. And even for people living there it's possible to get lost in the more superficial layers which have grown. What is different though from that earlier phase is that at that time Auroville was barren place and so there was no appearance to get lost in, you had the hard work and struggle and there was Mother's presence and that's it, there was nothing else you could, and in a sense each supported and compelled you to recognize the other. Today it's a much more sophisticated and complex community and township and so it's easy to get lost in these layers.

Narad (0:07:17):
Yes, because there are different committees, so many committees, you know what Mother said about committees, more committees, more useless talk.

Sraddhalu (0:07:31):
I've heard it said in this way by many people, you know, when they get lost in the committees and the jabber jabber of 20-30 people just talking. I've heard people presenting it as this is the Auroville way. And so when there's a problem they'll say yes but that's part of the Auroville process. And I personally disagree. Would you comment on that?

Narad (0:07:52):
I do also. Well, you see my daughter has been deeply deeply involved for more than 20, 30 years in the mechanisms of Auroville, and she always tries to find a way to bring harmony to both sides and is sometimes very heavily criticised for doing that, but it's really the only way to rise above this egotistical, individual self level and find where there can be a unity. I remember Mother writing to a good friend of mine, Louis Allen, at the Lake Estate. And she said, it is only when we can rise above our position and see another position and each one has to give up one small thing to go from A to B. And that's not very easy in Auroville. In fact, it's very challenging.

Sraddhalu (0:09:12):
Did you have this also in the early days? How do you find this having come in after?

Narad (0:09:18):
You see, in the early days, it was only work. Everybody worked. I mean, if they worked on the Matrimandir, they carried cement, they mixed cement, they bent the bars to be put on different pillars. If they worked in communities, they were doing work on the canyons. I never felt any great disharmony. We were grateful when a bakery began in Aspiration or in Kottakarai. We were grateful when a little more food came. The Dalai Lama came in 73 and that's an interesting story. I'm digressing but. There were about 12 of us standing at the centre kitchen and that was the place Mother named Peace. And she wanted real peace to reside there. Well we lived in keeth^[1] covered roofs in different rooms and we had a kitchen the first time and in that kitchen, each of us would do certain duties. So we would clean the chairs, the tables, the floor and one day a girl comes running up and says, "the Dalai Lama is coming, the Dalai Lama is coming", so all the people in the kitchen cleaned up as quickly as they could. We had the dining room spotless and there was a little dirt that they put under a little carpet that nobody would ever see. So we're all standing there, this rag-tag bunch of heavily bearded, long-haired guys and the Dalai Lama comes and he does Namaste to all of us and walks straight to the kitchen and lifts up that carpet and we all had to laugh.

Sraddhalu (0:11:24):
He was not so famous then as you say.

Narad (0:11:27):
No, no, no. Well, to get back to this, ah, you see, we say here that we began, because we couldn't do the inner gardens, because Roger didn't want that, he said no trees in the gardens. You cannot have no trees in a garden. You can't have, you must have windbreaks in this hot Tamil Nadu summer. You have to have windbreaks, you have to have shade of the trees to protect the plants. He wouldn't have any of that. So we began in the outer gardens and we planted according to the colours of Mahakali, Maheshwari, Mahasaraswati. And it was marvellous work. We couldn't do Mahakali because that was in the north where the mountain was going to be built from the soil dug out for the lake. And Mother said that snow would be on that mountain one day. And these beings came and told her that. So we worked on those three aspects. And we planted the most beautiful plants, many of which were not cared for, some of which were transplanted and died. But I've always had the feeling, and you know that I'm not a philosopher at all, but I've always had the feeling that if they had existed there once, they don't go out of existence. They may be dead, they may have died, they may have been lost in transplanting, but anything that was once done is still there. So we had, here's an interesting statement, but more fulfilling than all is to climb to the top of the Matrimandir. In those days we could go way up and I had the the opportunity to bring Aurobindo Basu, Nirodhbaran and Champaklal. When it was just wooden benches going all the way up before the ramps were done, Champaklal did not want to leave. It was an open chamber. There were no carpets, no sphere, nothing. He said the presence there was so powerful, he didn't want to leave it. Nirodhbaran felt the same. So anyway, we're right here, this fellow, but more fulfilling than all is to climb to the top of the Matrimandir and to view from that height the future forest. Now only small dots of green, but already giving new life to the arid plains. And indeed in those early days, we could see Gingee looking in one direction and we could see the sea looking in the other direction. Now it's all forest. You can't see anything anymore, no matter how high you go. Interestingly, there was a survey done on the bird species in Auroville in 1969 to 72 and they found 30 species. Today there are well more than 300. Two species of civet cats have come in and you know the civet cat eats the seeds of the, what's the tree?, the fragrant, the soap, sandalwood. It eats the seeds of the sandalwood tree and when it excretes it, the acid in its stomach allows the seeds to germinate. Two civet cats are there now, a porcupine has come back, they've seen a deer already. It's amazing how the life is forming in Auroville, on other levels. So nature is coming back into all her beauty. It is impossible to describe in words more than a surface image of any aspect of Auroville for it is something living and unique which must be experienced by each one according to the truth of his own inner being. This is especially true of the Matrimandir and the life and work which surround it. We invite all of goodwill to share with us in any way in the manifestation of the soul of Auroville, the Matrimandir and gardens. That is only page six of some 60 pages. We won't get too far today.

Sraddhalu (0:16:42):
Did you have the same sense of seeing the future in what you were working?

Narad (0:16:46):
For me, the names that Mother gave to the gardens were of such importance. I mean just imagine existence, consciousness and bliss. Sachidananda in the first three gardens! And when she says, you will experience that in each garden, would you want to leave the garden of youth? Would you want to go from the garden of perfection or love or progress or wealth? So we aspired to build the plant basis for these gardens at the Matrimandir nursery and we would collect all the species that would be relevant to those gardens. We also worked very closely with the French Institute. Now see, I was told by the managing trustee that Mother didn't want her children, her students to have any association with the outside world. And so when I suggested that they could look at the French Institute, he said he wouldn't recommend it. I didn't take them. But for us, it was different. There was this gentleman, Tony Khaimani, who was a fantastic horticulturist. He would take me into the scrub jungles, almost impenetrable scrub jungles, and we'd see a tamarind tree under which they say nothing will grow and orchids are hanging and blooming from the tamarind tree and he would let me pick half a dozen or so from the hundreds that were on the tree. Absolutely extraordinary, the collaboration of these people. Dr. B.P. Pal, who wrote the first book on Bougainvilleas, invited me to his house. Dr. M.S. Rondava and I would meet and talk about what could be done to bring beautiful flowers to Auroville. There was an agri-horticultural society in Calcutta who gave me so many things. People were so giving in those days. They knew that Mother had willed this and that it would be. So when you ask that question, yes, I knew it. I knew it. Nothing could stop it. It would happen. And it will happen. And if I have to come back 10 times, I'll come back.

Narad (0:19:33):
In keeping with the Mother's statement that individuals should not prepare food for themselves, the nursery built a community kitchen that accommodates 12 to 16 people. Presently, we are on a raw food diet with emphasis on fruits, nuts, and vegetables. Now, we did a lot of experimenting. We brought the first avocados into Auroville. Avocados were unheard of before. We brought the big yellow lemons. You don't see them very much anymore. They're not grown. They were wonderful lemons, full of juice.

Sraddhalu (0:20:18):
In Pondicherry they were known as Auroville lemons.

Narad (0:20:21):
Ah, I see.

Sraddhalu (0:20:22):
Because here we had only the little round ones. And those were Auroville lemons.

Narad (0:20:27):
We grew a plant called Acerola, which Mother named Sensitivity. And I would be so happy when the village boys would come through and steal the fruits, because each fruit contains 1,000 units of vitamin C. They could be grown all over today still, but they're not. But one day they will be. Okay, so experiments with food will not be complete until Auroville can develop the food of the future. Until that time, we continue our collective study. Individual studies are relatively easy. We speak about the forest in Marakkanam, not so far from here. The chief conservators would come regularly to see what new flowers, what new experiments were taking place, and they would write glowing reports on the progress of the gardens. Only they only knew about the gardens, of course. And I have those letters still with me.
[Sraddhalu] So these are from your notes, which you're reading now.
[Narad] Yes. Yes. But I'm trying to condense a little bit.

We would study all the nurseries and gardens in Chennai, Madras, twelve times a year, each month to see the changes. Bangalore, four times a year, each quarter. And then one major area like Delhi or Calcutta once a year. And so we could get a perspective of the plant life in India and it was so revealing and so beautiful and then people would give us, they'd give us whatever we asked for. We were never refused and so I formed an index seminum, which is a brochure on all the seeds that were available in Auroville, even from scrub jungle, because many, many flowers were named by Mother of these wild plants that the young students would bring to her. Look at this Mother, we found this puncture vine and it had this beautiful flower and the puncture vine had big thorns that would puncture the tires of bicycles. But Mother would name it. And so we collected all of those seeds and made them available to the various botanic gardeners.

So there's a huge list, it goes on and on of the different seeds, where they were found, the age, the specific work of each individual. We kept a list of all the workers in the garden. Mother wrote, “they are your brothers in spirit. This should never be forgotten”. July 1972. We must never forget that. Without them, we could have done nothing. I asked Mother when the first excavation of the Matrimandir was to begin, should we not do it with Aurovilians. And Mother wrote, 'it would be best with Aurovillians'. But you see the hundreds and hundreds of people who came from different villages, the fights that broke out in anger amongst these different villages and had to be quelled. But I guess there was no other way to complete it than having these, I mean, this was gruelling work in that heat and down there in the pit and lines and lines of people carrying ponders, chettis with the red soil and dumping it outside. I mean, it took a Tamil body that was so thin and wiry and accustomed to the heat to do this work. I don't think the Aurovillians at the time were so few, they could never have done it.

Narad (0:25:28):

<<reads from his diary notes>> “So the history of the initial years of the development of the Matrimandir Gardens and nursery is in large part, the story of our relations with the Tamil villagers. Their contribution has encompassed all aspects of the work. Our Tamil brothers have brought the fullness of their strength through the labour of moving earth, digging pits for trees and shrubs, mixing soil and compost with a determination and cheerfulness of spirit that is an encouragement to all. In this climate, the demands of the physical body are enormous. Working side by side with these slightly built men through months of intense and unrelenting sun, one quietly develops a profound respect for the ability of their bodies to endure the extreme heat and hard physical labour, often on a diet that would be considered little more than subsistence level”. The men and boys who came to me learned English, learned all the aspects of horticulture. Some of them had green thumbs and could put something in the ground and it would grow. Others would be in charge of the entire irrigation system, knowing when we had to water in what area, when we had to have enough water in the nursery to water all of the plants, and then extending that into the gardens area eventually. And that was when you saw them with the little water tanks and the hose, because we had no irrigation system there. Now we do. “Men and boys from the nearest village of Kottakarai were the first to join the nursery in 1970 and are still with us today”. This was written in the late ‘79 almost 1980. “They have shared fully in the challenges and difficulties Auroville has been through and many have had the courage and faith to remain with us in times of inner and outer hardship. A conscious attempt at decentralisation, coupled with close guidance, has given the most sincere and directed young men an opportunity to assume a larger share of the responsibility of the work. And that's when many of them were being invited to join as Aurovilians”. And of course today the Tamil population is the largest one in Auroville. I gave English classes to the workers and every Wednesday at 5pm, I had a class for the children of Auroville. They range from 5 to 9 or 10 years of age. And it was always the most wonderful class. One day we would make soap, another day we would learn grafting. And there was, who lives in California now, Neil Oro, grafted the first Plumeria rainbow tree. It's a little boy with a grafting knife and tape, grafted different varieties of Plumerias on a dwarf species. We had a Brahminy kite, his name was Akhnaten, we called him Unc, he would never miss the children's class. He would come every week at 5 o'clock, he'd be waiting for them, and my daughter, who was that tall at that time, would wear her cap, and he would swoop down and pick the cap off her head, carry it into a tree, laugh, and eventually drop it back for her. And I took a picture of him once, I'll show that one day. The children were so open and marvellous in those days. Again, I can only say that they were so open to Mother. And what more can we say? That the opening is the most important thing for every Aurovillian and every worker in Auroville. They may be a paid worker but they are receiving the same force. “During the first two years of the nursery's development, our work was often looked upon with scorn and ridiculed by many of the villagers. Of what value were plants that could not be eaten or turned to some economic use?”. We went through so much.

Sraddhalu (0:31:08):
What did you reply to them? How did you convince them that it was worthwhile?

Narad (0:31:11):
Well, first of all, we were employing their sons in the nursery, and that was bringing some money into them. And then when they began to see the flowering of the nursery, how this barren area was becoming something that maybe their grandparents had known when cultivation was at a much higher level.

Sraddhalu (0:31:43):
I just want to put this in context that as Narad earlier mentioned that many of the villagers lived on subsistence level food, barely, just enough to survive. And you have to see that this has been for a few generations at that point. From 1850 to 1900, under colonial British rule, India went through a series of famines every few years, which were provoked by the governance policies of the British. It was intended to get the economy to collapse and to reduce people into a state of debt so that they could become now indentured labor for their plantations. Basically, that was a strategic plan to reduce India to a level of slavery. And the effect of that, it took about nearly a hundred years to overcome. When you have gone through two and a half generations in which one-tenth of India's population died of starvation. That is 30 million Indians died of starvation in a 50-year period. You have to recognize one-tenth means if one person is dying of starvation, the other nine are on the brink of starvation, just not dying. But at that point when you pass through two and a half generations of this, the whole thinking shifts. You cannot spend any more for aesthetics, you cannot spend for comfort, any expenditure is only for survival. And what happened is subsequently, although that phase of the extreme famines became less, I won't say it ended, it became less, people adapted and worked around the system. Even at the last stage before British left, 1943 to 1946, over those three years, just in two states of Bengal and Orissa, a famine was created by the British, again created by the food taken away by them. The soldiers came and just grabbed all the food which had been grown by the farmers and it led to the whole collapse of the food supply there and the famine there led to 4 million people dying, just in those two states. And you have to understand that this part of Auroville, Pondicherry-Auroville, was nowhere near Madras, which was the hub of the economy and the governance. And so it was one of the most neglected regions. And it had been already reduced to a barren desert. Villagers were now for many generations just on the survival mode. And here's a group of people that comes from all over the world and suddenly starts doing things which don't make economic sense, which have nothing to do with survival, have to do with an ideal which is impossible to see even if you go back a few generations. And so for them it's a bit of a shock also, and there's a whole culture shock and a collision of values even in that sense.

But what is interesting to see today is that in the whole village, the economy, the villages around Auroville, the economy has regenerated itself and people who were earlier, their dream was to have a roof over their house are actually moving into much grander dreams to own entire houses. And all this has happened because of Auroville's development. If Auroville was not there, it would have still been pretty much the barren desert and the villages would have been okay comparatively now because of the new policies with free India, things improved slightly but that's about it. But what you see today is the villagers' children and their children growing up, not only with a healthy education, of which you are in a sense pioneers, but also with skills and creativity now released, unleashed. And you will see people developing their traditional crafts and developing new skills and so on. All of this is part of the development around Auroville provoked by Auroville itself. Mother has a very telling comment about this in the context of the ashram. She says somewhere that one day I hope we will be able to speak openly about how important the ashram's presence has been for the development of Pondicherry. And this is before Auroville that she was speaking of this and this is again something people don't recognize. Today. Auroville, Pondicherry is one of the bigger townships with a very high level of creativity and diversity of cultures and mixtures and all of this you will find eventually comes back to the ashram as a trigger point. Even the big institutions such as JIPMER which are national level institutions as a medical school and hospital, VCRC which is Vector Control Research Center which is like a focal point for vector control all over India and many such institutions which came, came  because of the ashram. Because the people in the ashram with link points to tell the government, why don't you do it in Pondicherry and things like that. So, so much of the development of Pondicherry as a township, culturally, economically and in every way, even Pondicherry being not a part of Tamil Nadu but a separate state in itself, with a chief minister in himself, is the result of the ashram's presence. And this whole story, she said at that point, it was too premature to speak of it, because it involved the linkages with political, economic and other governance structures of the country and even international politics, which to speak of it at that time would be premature because it would hinder with what was happening. Today we can perhaps begin to speak of it. And this is one small part, the example that Narad narrated of training the young children of the villages and the trigger it had in the change in culture, thought process within the villages, within the households where earlier it was not only just survival but even culturally some of them would even degenerate. They would have experiences of extreme alcoholism, beating the wives and all kinds of things, too terrible to speak of. From there, today to a shift where they actually work together and look forward to a better future. It's all the result of Auroville and we have to recognize the larger ecosystem which has grown not only inside Auroville but around Auroville.

Narad (0:38:39)
In the early days if you went into a village you would see Casuarina poles and a Keeth roof and a mud floor. And that was where the people lived. Today you see concrete houses, beautiful houses, gardens, you can't believe it's the same place.

Sraddhalu (0:38:58):
Multi-storied houses, shopping complexes! Also around Auroville where all the green belt was created, you couldn't say, alright, this is the land owned by Auroville, so we will stop planting here. You had to look at the contiguity of the ecosystem. So Aurovillians planted all the trees, which then subsequently were taken over by people who were living in that area, and now want to either own it or sell it at very high prices, where earlier it was just desert land. And there is a whole thing happening more recently about somebody, a local bigwig, let's say, without naming anything, who has just grabbed all the land, which is Poramboke land, that is the community land, claimed it as his own, belonging to some temple and things like that. And there is a whole dispute built around that. But all of this because the land had been greened and now has value. And so what he did as part of his claim to the land and he wanted to sell it off now to developers, he began to chop all the trees to reduce it to level barren soil back to what it was so that he can claim now it's agricultural land and he can sell it and make more money and things like that. All of this is part of the greed that Mother warned about. I'm just pointing to this to show that Auroville's impact is not just in the physical boundary that we will call Auroville, but all around.

Narad (0:40:35):
We see today, because we did not follow Mother's advice in early days, all kinds of encroachment by speculators. They will take a piece of Auroville land, and they'll plant some trees on it, and they'll fence it, and Auroville seems to have no authority to stop them. And, I mean, I could give you example after example of how many lands have been encroached upon. Eventually there has to be a solution here because Mother has given us the map of Auroville and it can't be just speculators building little residences or hotels. It's a big problem right now. It's a major problem. I'll close then with the Matrimandir as sanctuary. “At present, there is no scheme or working plan in the government of India for the preservation, protection, culture, and redistribution of rare and endangered indigenous flora. This was reported to me personally by the Secretary of Forests and Fisheries, Tamil Nadu, and the Chief Conservator of Forests General, Tamil Nadu”.

[Sraddhalu] Which year?

[Narad] 1973. "The rate of deforestation is all too well known to comment upon. I propose that Auroville be accorded formal recognition by the central government as a sanctuary and that through the assistance of the Secretary of Forests and Fisheries of Tamil Nadu and the Chief Conservator of Forests Tamil Nadu, a scheme be immediately enacted to collect something and seedlings of the threatened species to be planted in the Matrimandir gardens, maintained as mother plants, studied, propagated, distributed to the vast green belt communities surrounding Auroville, and then once again disseminated through the new forests of India". And I must tell you about this little thing. It was done on a mimeograph machine. And so it's very hard to read it at times. We had to turn that mimeograph for each page. And we did it. We did it for about a week, I think, till we got this done. So it's a little bit difficult to to read at times. But I will give most of this to the new botanical gardens because they wanted to know the species that were grown in the Matrimandir those years ago. And what is remaining, they've already made cuttings or propagated. So it's at the Botanic Gardens. I only pray, and this is my one prayer, that her vision of the gardens be realised in the not too distant future. The gardens that exist now will be destroyed, and new gardens, the gardens will be built according to her vision. It was a beginning, it was an attempted experiment, a bit mental perhaps, but I don't condemn anyone or criticise anyone, because they worked for years to design these gardens, but they are not what she said. If you walk into them, you do not experience physically and concretely the significance of each garden. That's what is needed. It's needed for any person in the world to come in there and know what youth is. Thy will be done.

[Sraddhalu] Thank you.

[Narad] Namaste.