Pondy | 3

Pondicherry – Give time a break!

Part 3

The last day of the trip was a visit to Auroville, an experience of tranquility yet adventurous. The ashram is about 40 kms away from the city, inside a long and dwindling roads leading inside the villages. With the help of a couple of friends, I was allowed inside the matrimandir, a huge gold globe like structure.

The matrimandir, a round shaped structure signifying the centre of a lotus bud - is beautiful place with breadth taking simplicity and absolute tranquil inside the mandir. The round shaped glass like crystal at the centre of the mandir carries the sun light like a shining diamond ray piercing through the hall in straight line. The sun ray brightens up the entire hall, allowing for peaceful concentration and absolute silence.  With the walls, floor carpets, doors all in white color, the hall seems straight from the heaven. 

The mandir is situated many meters higher than the ground level, with 12 petal- like structure surrounding below the bud, is a one of a kind architecture. Each petal uniquely designed with a meditation hall inside the petal like structure, marked for a value that unites humanity (such as compassion, gratitude).  The petal is surrounded a beautiful garden of a specific type of flower, signifying the quality of that petal. Beneath the mandir is the culmination of all the petals and the bud like structure – a walk down from the mandir leads us to this place where the same sun rays passes the  small crystal inside the circle, very similar to the one above.  The entire zone is known as ‘Peace’, and maintained with complete silence.

The age old banyan tree and an open amphi-theatre that has soil of 142 different countries around the world is situated right next to the Mandir. After the visit to the area of peace, we headed to the administrative block of the ashram, got a map of the place and headed to Cita Dyn, a place of art and crafts. I then headed to the visitors centre; saw a nice video of the ashram, paintings and pictures in the exhibition.

It was time for lunch, and I rented a cycle and headed to the solar kitchen – asia’s biggest solar kitchen. It’s the canteen meant only for the ashram residents and cash transactions are not accepted here. I really wanted to taste the food of the ashram, and the solar energy based preparation. Upon request, one of the ashram residents agreed to take me along, and we had a nice long conversation over lunch. The lunch is a simple south Indian or a simple western food, with big wooden seating arrangements and spacious dining hall. Ramachandra, who manages the small scale industry village was kind enough to share his life and stay in the Ashram, and his pretty daughters, invited me to their fire dance show. They study at the ashram school. The ashram has residents from citizens of 45 different countries and is melting pot of different cultures of the world.

After a long lunch, I headed to Savithri Bhavan which has books, exhibits and interesting pictures of Aurobindo through his life stages. The hall is big and very beautiful, with stunning architecture and statue of Aurobindo. I later visited Bharat Bhavan - a huge library and Indian artifacts, a nice place to visit. I also went to a Tibetan Villa which was inaugurated by Dalai Lama and had a temple stone from Tibet. It has exhibition of Tibet evolution, their monastery and long history of Chinese, Mongolian and Indian influence. A Tibetan child, with red cheeks and twinkling eyes watched me as I moved around the villa, buzzing in activity - the sound of a theology class in progress at the room above, and the melodious beats of a bharatnatyam class.

The visit to Auroville ended with warm experience of seeing different cultures co existing, intimately connected to beautiful nature around. It’s an amazing story of the human effort in converting a barren land into a beautiful forest, where people from around the corners of the world, live as one united community.

 The experience of cycling blissfully around the ashram was another high moment of the day. I had touched a cycle after many many years and it left me with nostalgic memories of my school days. Overall, it was a nice experience of visiting auroville, and a day spent well.