Auroville

While in Pondicherry, my editor asked me to write a story about a place called Auroville, a self-sustaining Utopian society built 50 years ago on the outskirts of Pondicherry. If you visit Auroville's website (www.auroville.org) it says: "Auroville wants to be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realise human unity." Started under a banyan tree on February 28th, 1968 with some 5000 people, today Auroville has a population of 1,700 people from 35 different nations living as neighbors in homes built amidst the jungle (about 1/3 of Aurovillians are Indian). Auroville even has its own school (an examless place called "The Last School"), cafeterias, pizza-shops, a temple, and various community centers.

I interviewed a gentleman named Dilip, (who grew up here), and his 12-year-old daughter, Ayesha, who's half-German. Ayesha took me to her neighbor's peacock farm, where we gathered peacock feathers while she told me about her best-friends, a Korean brother and sister duo named Hansal and Danbi, and a French girl named Sisilia. Later, I chatted with her dad in their beautiful home (pictured above), about growing up in Auroville. In some ways, the people here are really cosmpolitan. They know alot about the world because they live amidst so many nationalities, and many people who live here make yearly visits to friends and family in big cities across the globe. But in other ways, Aurovillians retain a certain innocence, "They're so secluded; they live in an ivory tower", says Dilip. His older son, who's a Rhode Scholar and who went to Harvard, gave up a cushy job at a top-bank and moved back to Auroville where he's writing a book. Dilip said about the kids who grow up here, "They have a hard time in the material world, but they're also very adaptable. They learn to be independent in how they live; they're not interested in going out and getting a job and doing the typical things. My son told me when he moved back here, 'I blame you; you've made me unfit to live a normal life!'"