Isis, or an Evolving Africa

TRANSLATION OF THE PREVIOUS POST , WITH MY THANKS FOR THE GOOGLE TRANSLATION KINDLY PROVIDED BY NINA TRYGGVASSON AS A ‘COMMENT’ TO MY FRENCH TEXT…

Another important thing that happened in February this year: the visit to Auroville of Isis.

Isis Noor Yalagi became a dear friend, and not just because she is the
only person also from Martinique who has spent several weeks in
Auroville, the last ten days of which at my place. Among our “Guests”
over the years in Repos itself, there are many people, French or
not, who know and appreciate Martinique for having stayed there at some
point, and to talk about it with them was always nice for me,
who actually know so little about that small island my family is from,
but where I have myself lived only for three months when I was eight
years old.
There was in this February 2013 a meeting of AIF (Auroville
International France) and I had been invited; listening in silence to a
participant from La Réunion island, who kept telling about the growing
impact that she found there for everything having to do with Auroville or Sri
Aurobindo and Mother, I was a little sad in contrast because of the total absence of
interest for any of that in Martinique, and in the French West Indies in general. I
expressed this sadness for the first time after the person finished
speaking.

A few days later a friend of Auroville hitherto unknown to me
was quite happy to spend a few hours on my terrace facing
the sea before she would return to France. I mentioned my sadness about
Martinique; she said she would contact for me an extraordinary person,
and moreover, precisely one from Martinique, who
happened to be visiting Auroville.

The following Sunday afternoon, sitting as I do now
often directly at one of the tables where we serve the various
preparations ordered by Aurovilians or Guests, I saw coming to me
a tall and beautiful lady, with dark skin, the sight of whom
immediately brought back to my memory the lines by Baudelaire evoking
his Martinique friend  Jeanne Duval: “a beautiful ship that takes off on the
vast sea … at a pace gentle and lazy and slow … ” (quote approximate, I do not have the text with me).

An exciting interview of several hours ensued between her and
I, sitting together there as if we were alone in the world,
discovering each other with a growing mutual fascination. Even from
afar, the strong personality of Isis made a great
impression on those of my colleagues who saw us together.

Martiniquaise (and so, French) by her mother, Isis is Togolese (and so,
African) by her father. I felt also close to her African side, which was
awakening in me all the memories of “my Africa”, the Africa
still French in those days, where I spent most of my childhood, where I
grew up …

In other lives I was also a Berber, and an Egyptian, two other
connections with Africa; her own inner connection with
Egypt is revealed through the name she has chosen for herself:
Isis. And it is thanks to her that I had this year for once a
birthday anniversary dinner on 23 February … and the old Berber in me
could enjoy a great couscous, prepared by her especially for me and a
few other privileged guests!

For Isis is a good and daring cook: a few weeks before she had organized
and conducted hands down, almost alone with the help of just a few volunteers, a large African Dinner,
memorable for the more than 300 people who came.
After meeting me, she decided that my presence was
essential for the future meetings of the Africa Pavilion and so I had
the pleasure to be invited to the next one, taxi paid …
but in this group too large my bad hearing prevented me from following
effectively what was said, so I did not renew this
experience. One intervention in a clear and loud voice that I have at
least had the joy to hear perfectly, was that of Isis herself,
highlighting with a remarkable clarity of mind and a great
power of expression that it was the evolutive message of Sri Aurobindo
and Mother that had to be carried to Africa, because that alone would
have
the power to offer Africa a future truly worthy of her,
revealing her deep soul, away from the mere copying of the Western
materialistic world that for the time being seemed the only option. When
she
said that, it suddenly became so obvious that no discussion
was necessary, this was instantly adopted unanimously.
Mr Tekeste was there also, the former Ethiopian diplomat who had been
the official link between the Emperor Haile Selassie and Mother, and
who after that chose to live in Auroville, since then tirelessly
pursuing his dream of establishing the African Pavilion, and conversely
of introducing Auroville to Africa; he was among those who approved with
the strongest nod of the head Isis’ proposal. It was equally clear that
for the friendly young Africans also present (all boys), students at
the University of Chidambaram near here, Isis had become a valuable
source of inspiration for her contagious enthusiasm and extensive
experience of public action.

My little guestroom being free shortly after, Isis
moved in, with the firm intention – while continuing to help her
young fellow Africans for the Pavilion – to start learning from me
everything she could about the Integral Yoga, including its cellular
dimension.

But our common life began on a note far less serious: I
was not going to miss the rare boon of this other authentic
Martiniquaise without taking that opportunity to elucidate some memories
I still had of my brief stay in Martinique,
precisely at this crazy time when, like in Brazil, the famous
Carnival  is on. I told her the words and hummed the tune and the chorus
of the song chosen
that year for the whole Carnival, apparently it had become a
classic for she recognized it immediately, and there we were, the two of
us, singing loudly in my living room in Creole: “VAVAL, VAVAL, WOU  PAS
QUITTER NOUS! …” (Vaval, don’t leave us!) while outdoing each other
dancing on the irresistible rhythmic cadence of the resurrected song,
punctuated by our laughter! After a few moments of enthusiastic and
delectable Martinique fun, this joyous past re-emerged in our beings
calmed down, bringing us even more exciting prospects of our
evolutionary future …!

About the future evolution of Africa, I’ll let Isis herself say
how she would like to participate in that, when she will be
re-established there, after a short stay in Paris starting from here.
Having read this article about herself, she will write the following
part of it with rested head, from Africa itself, as soon as it will
become possible. Africa does not yet know what onslaught is getting
ready to fall upon her, but myself, who have lived for even this short
period with Isis, and who can still hear her contagious laughter, I have
some idea of ​​what’s ‘preparing to break quietly upon Africa in the
coming years, and I look forward to it!

Review of ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’

Monday 29th January 2013
 I finally saw ‘The Hobbit’. Two days ago first. And again yesterday. And again today… twice in a row (Monday is my weekly holiday).
Wow. What a treat.
I am often unable to take in a new film all at once the first time I see it. I have to see it several times before I have sufficiently digested it to start being able to perceive it inwardly, the impression I have of it taking shape gradually in the individualized form it grows to have in me.
So at first I was completely overwhelmed, but now I can say for sure, the more I see it, the more I love it!!!
So many remarkable moments:
– Moments of total, hilarious fun, as only Tolkien’s Dwarves can offer us. Scenes from the beginning of the book, great to read but so crazy I didn’t think even PJ and Co would dare to take them up, let alone succeed in bringing them to life: the thirteen Dwarves (minus Thorin, he is too serious and self-important) making fun of poor Bilbo by giving him his first fright already, a still domestic one, right in his own house, and to a mocking song at that, the fright of seeing all his dishes and plates and cups broken to pieces by those irreverent and seemingly clumsy Dwarves. In spite of the alarming blur of all those delicate objects being thrown around full speed all across the room and the apparent absolute chaos that reigns for a while, the Dwarves reveal themselves to be in fact great jugglers and throwers, doing it all with such a communicative glee that Gandalf too laughs with them, their collective feat being accomplished with the brio and perfect precision of a comic ballet worthy of some well-trained circus troop.
– Moments of total epic-ness, where the Dwarves’ fantastic spirit, strength and bravado shine through spontaneously, giving them the full heroic grandeur that their short if stout physical stature would not make us expect. Ah, Thorin’s splendid magnificence… I would never have suspected I would be falling in love with a Dwarf!!! But of course this is not just any Dwarf, he is the prince Thorin Oakenshield… Even his younger relatives, Fili and Kili, are quite handsome too, by the way. It must be in the lineage!

 

Thorin Oakenshield (Photo credit: Maelstromarts)

 
– Moments of Elvish aristocracy of exquisite beauty and refinement, that reawaken our longing to live among them in the heavenly Imladris, to blend with them, to be like them: great warriors like the Dwarves, and yet so different from them…
– Moments of inspired Gandalf-ness in the difficult art of harmonizing all those various species’ stiff necks, including the stiffest one of all: that of false friend’s Saruman. Beautiful complicity with Galadriel, an embodiment of Feminitude in all its tremendous, irresistible power, together with its unerring intuitive perception of the Truth.
– Moments of utterly moving Hobbity goodness, Bilbo’s growing humility and pure simplicity of heart gradually revealing the inner grandeur and genuine courage, born of his increasing love for his companions, that bloom unexpectedly in this barely Tookish Baggins of Bag End in the Shire. Extreme intensity of the scene with Gollum, culminating with the beautiful silent Moment when Pity in him replaces fear, and stays his hand ready to kill Gollum. A most challenging scene for an actor, played remarkably well, as my own feelings attested enough.
Besides that well-known, iconic scene from Tolkien himself, two more Moments that seem to be from the writers only, as I haven’t found anything like them in the various Tolkien sources that the writers may have used for the script:
    – the acute feeling that Bilbo the Hobbit, the homebody by excellence, has of the Dwarves homelessness; which becomes his main conscious motivation in deciding to go on with them for their Quest. Suddenly the Dwarves themselves become more aware of their own sad condition; and Bilbo’s sincere compassion for them and wish to help them regain their own home is what really touches them and makes them feel for him too. Their new appreciation of him deepens in themselves too the same capacity of simple caring; they are usually rejected and not very much understood by the other species; here is someone they made fun of, and that Thorin ended up rejecting openly, and there he is, willing to go on risking his life for their sake.
     – the actual leap forward of Bilbo, sword in hand, to save Thorin from the abominable Azog or at least protect him at the cost of his own life – an astonishing act, and yet fully in character for that Hobbit slowly turning into a hero out of love. Even Thorin then finds himself, out of genuine admiration and gratitude, acknowledging in front of all his companions that he misjudged him completely.

 

The Prologue:
cf for ‘The Lord of the Rings’, establishes at once the Reality of the Story, not as a fairy-tale for imaginative children, but as a story of epic greatness and world significance.   
At the very end, return to a – this time more discrete – comic vein and renewed expectation on our part of many more complications to come, with Bilbo saying, a sweet smile floating on his lips,  these naive last words, ‘The worst is behind us’… followed by the ominous glimpse of a huge dragon half-buried under an enormous  treasure, stirring in his sleep and opening an eye, big and cruel enough to send you fleeing as fast and as far as you can!…

 

The ending of this post was, in a second draft, much more elaborate mentioning the less known texts by Tolkien himself that inspired  many of the scenes added  to the story as told in the little book, but that draft got erased by mistake, and I don’t want to delay any further an already much delayed posting; so while this first stable connection since many days is lasting, I put this up just as it is, my first draft…

 

…

 

The Inner Meaning I See in What Happened Here Recently

Of course as always what has happened here over the last few weeks is not to be seen superficially, but in the context of the evolutive purpose of the very existence of Auroville as a whole, and, within that whole, of my own individual existence as well.
I am certainly not a daredevil trying to prove myself to the world or to my own eyes. I am not the adventurous type, rather the opposite. But whether scared or not, if I see and feel clearly that I must take a certain stand/do a certain action, I can’t help but doing it!… It has been the same already when I came to Auroville: I was terribly scared, actually I thought I was completely mad to go live in a place where everything would be so difficult, but at the same time I knew that this was the only choice for me, the only decision worth taking, the one that would really make the most out of this present lifetime I had finally decided to go on living. So although all the rest of my being was scared, my soul still won, and dragged all the rest, kicking and screaming, all the way to India, because that’s where Auroville was, and my soul wanted to participate in Auroville.
So I am not really brave at all, as some people believe: I wish they were right!… In fact my soul only is brave, the other parts of my being just have to follow, that’s all, however miserable they may feel doing so. Same thing about my so called strong will-power: it’s not strong at all, it’s just that I find myself sometimes saying or doing things with great force from some inner strength, while I am astonished at saying or doing those things without having had any conscious intention of doing or saying them…! Yet, there is a kind of inner certainty that this is the correct thing for me to say or do at that moment, and it is that inner certitude that gives me this unexpected strength against even the opinion of the bewildered others, or physical circumstances.
As for those others, they too are playing their role, whether knowingly or not, in this overall script that will have the best possible result for the inner growth of each of us and for the whole process of our collective evolution as well. Auroville is but one sub-play inside the overall  terrestrial Play at this point of its linear time, illusory but agreed upon by all participants as indispensable to the acting out of the Play.
I’ll explain what I feel I myself and Auroville have progressed upon through these recent events:
I was not quite sure I was really detached enough to let go of that house without much emotional distress if ever it became necessary; well, it did become necessary, and so I was able to see how well I took this loss, which at some point seemed bound to happen quite inevitably. I  can say now that I really was not terribly affected; on the other hand even after moving out to this other house because the worst of the cyclone was still to come according to the meteo, still something in me kept having more faith in the Divine than in the meteorological predictions, and I slept soundly that night… only to discover the next morning that no cyclone had happened and that my house, o complete delight, was still in the vertical position.
Yet the slight threat to the front foundations was still the same, and that is what motivated at last one capable person to intervene without waiting any further.
The funny thing is that at first, like all the others who had come before to urge me to move out, etc, he too came back from looking at those front foundations, saying something like ‘oh my god, what a terrible weather and a dangerous situation’, etc etc; but I suddenly couldn’t take it anymore, I just exploded, and blasted the poor guy right in front of the other persons who were there that morning at the Kitchen:
 ’Stop this!!! Stop this nonsense!!! Of course it will go on like this if all of you keep imagining only that it will, instead of imagining deliberately another outcome, another possible future for this house, for this whole place!!! All those negative thoughts do nothing but attract the catastrophes they predict and anticipate, so please, if you really want to help, first stop this !…’
He was so stunned by my words, which he at once realized were right, it turned him around completely, and he decided there and then that he would not only change his thinking, but also add some immediate action to insure a more positive future: he would take up the protection of my house.
And so he did the very next day.
The email he at the same time sent around to all our major administrative Groups in Auroville had a contagious effect, and they too joined in that effort, each one in its own independant way; the interesting thing is that all of it became a concerted effort and a collaboration that no one had envisaged before, but which nevertheless happened, for the good of Auroville as a whole, I believe, breaking at last through the inertia and apathy that had been until then the only collective response to our plight on the beach.
Then the ocean itself in the following days became so calm I was able to go again in the water, and even to float and swim blissfully on my back, something I had not been doing since many months because the ocean was too rough!…
Next came the change in direction of the current, and the waves starting to deposit sand instead of taking it away!!! Day after day the high cliff dug out all along the shore became less high, it was being filled, and by now there is almost no difference in level anymore.
What a complete change.
Even the expected cyclone’s disappearance may have had to do with a change in way of thinking on the part of all the friends of mine who had come just before, nearly mourning me already, and insistently proposing to me other refuges more inland, in their own places for example; to all I had as patiently as I could explained how their own worrying thoughts were actually likely to make the very result they dreaded become true, and I had urged them to start countering any dire meteorological prediction by deliberate thoughts of a more positive script. Perhaps they all did start to do just that afterwards regarding this anticipated cyclone, and that sent it away indeed!!!
In any case, that time, not having my laptop, I didn’t have any possibility of calling upon you all, visitors to this blog who in other occasions had helped inwardly with such magnificent results; so that time it must have been just my own faith plus the changed thought of those other Aurovilians that were enough to push the danger away… With as always the help of the Divine Grace of course.
Well, all this experimentation with our collective thoughts has been for me a most fascinating thing to watch over this year, every time with a significant outcome… Thanks to all for their participation in this  spontaneously extended research work somehow sparked by this humble blog for the Laboratory of Evolution not only in Auroville itself, but all over the planet!… So, congratulations, and please keep at it, especially when you are not hearing anymore from me, which is generally a sign of trouble, as you may have noticed…!

 

English: Beautiful view of Pondicherry Auroville Beach (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Ports and Beach Resorts, the Worst Threats for the World’s Beaches

The acute coastal erosion problem we are facing here has made me discover the heavy responsibility of the ports everywhere in setting up the erosion process, by interrupting the natural flow of sand that normally replenishes the beaches along the coasts all year long. The accelerated beach erosion noticed in the last decades on most coasts of the world is usually blamed on the sea level rising due to the so-called ‘global warming’, but actually the main cause of the erosion is the blind, avid multiplication and expansion of ports, done in most cases without applying the measures that would protect the beaches.
Humanity obviously needs both ports and beaches, so a balance must be re-established and kept between the two for the true overall benefit of the Earth’s populations.

But this would be only the first step needed, the first and most urgent problem being addressed; another one is coming close second, that we have to be careful about as well: while protecting the beaches, ‘developing’ those beaches shouldn’t mean simply giving free rein to yet another form of economical greed and abuse of Nature’s gifts, the only difference being that it would lead this time not to ever more ports but to ever more luxury ‘Beach Resorts’ filling up the coastal landscape with concrete buildings.

India is at least trying its best to avoid the West’s past mistakes in this regard, by forbidding permanent constructions close to the shore, and it is a good thing, but perhaps another approach could be tried too, that in Auroville is being tried:

In Auroville we are learning to use lighter materials and techniques for the living quarters and the collective facilities needed here in Repos, directly near the ocean, in order to welcome there the Aurovilians and Guests from other parts of Auroville; many of these people  are coming from the West, know how to swim, surf, etc, and understandably want to go on having those healthy activities in their life here too.

But for the future of all this to be environmentally sustainable, the luxurious lifestyle that has been artificially linked with all these beach various modes of enjoyment must disappear to a large extent, for this lifestyle is merely an unnecessary accretion added to activities that could very well be practiced at a fraction of the cost by the innumerable simple people who don’t care about a status statement and just want in their leisure time to enjoy the beach and those beach sports they love. 

For India itself too the same change of attitude towards the beaches and their use would be very beneficial, I would think.
During the forty years I have been living on and off here on the Auroville seaside, it has been so depressing to see in the water only the fishermen, who do that mostly for a living, rarely for pleasure: it isn’t part of the culture.
Besides them and us beach-lovers from Auroville, the only other persons to ever come on the beach were other Indian males, in their forties, winding their way out of some nearby restaurant, a bottle of alcohol still in their hand, all looking not for the great sight of the ocean, but for the great sight of the Western women in bikini they had been told could be seen on this beach. Our poor lifeguards had more often than not to save those inebriated males from drowning, for, being drunk, they forgot that they didn’t know how to swim, and they blithely went into the waves anyway.
There has been a time when these types came here from far away by the bus load, or were brought right here by the local taxi or autorickshaw drivers. How charming.
Then there has been the even worse phase of the crowds of younger guys arriving in groups on their bikes from Pondy or surrounding villages and taking pictures avidly with their cellphones of any bikini girl in sight, to put them up later on various Internet sites. How charming again.
Well, all this is starting to change.
It is such a pleasure for me to watch now more and more Indian people coming to the beach just for the sheer genuine enjoyment of being in the ocean, those who can’t swim playing at least with the waves. The girls too do it, and even the ladies in sarees can be seen out there, making a stronger line by holding hands while standing bravely and letting themselves cheerfully be drenched again and again by each coming wave, everybody laughing their head off and screaming with excitement and delight.
What happened??? How did such a change take place???
Well, there is another beach place, not yet known by outsiders, where since more than a year most of the girls in bikini from Auroville itself find a more discrete refuge. After the cyclone (end of December), for several months the sight of any bikini at all has become rare here – and so have the drunken or cellphone equipped voyeurs. Simple, isn’t it?…
Beginning of July, when the violent waves of June that have eroded things so badly here finally quieted down (my deepest thanks again to all those of you who helped inwardly for that), the very next Sunday, bright and sunny, was the first time I saw a big Indian crowd having genuine fun out there.
What an illuminating sight.
As I watched them, amazed, in their innocent mass revelry, it dawned on me that perhaps our Western way of wearing smaller and smaller swimsuits to go swimming just wasn’t right here.
Tanning is an obsession in India like in the West, but in the reverse way, rather amusing to see for the Westerner I still am in this kind of superficial outer habits: here no one wants to tan, everyone tries on the contrary to become whiter, and all the ads you see for beauty products, even for men, must claim that the product makes your skin also fairer!!! So no one here is seen lying down on the beach, as uncovered as possible, and as exposed to the sun as possible. That all those   Westerners wish to become sun-tanned is quite incomprehensible for an Indian person.
I suddenly remember that not so long ago, we Western ladies didn’t want to tan either, and large hats as well as umbrellas were not only fashion items, but beauty musts too for any refined lady not wanting to ruin her delicate rosy complexion…!
I am not mocking either attitude, mind you, because I have been there too on both sides in one lifetime or the other, but still, how laughable it all is: it’s only a question of the current fashion, all fashion implying that people feel they must follow it or be socially disgraced and ostracized…
Our evolutive future will free us from this collective compulsion: more focused on our own individual uniqueness, and respecting and appreciating that of others too, each one of us will value genuine self-expression more than any dictated fashion.
In Auroville it is already visibly that way, you see as many styles of dressing as you see individual Aurovilians. It is a small thing, but still, already quite liberating, I must say!
The interesting phenomenon that happened next on this beach is that the few Westerners that did come here recently, either were wearing swimsuits, but not being too many, they blended in all right nevertheless; and the others felt by themselves that after all they too could swim in ordinary clothes, just as most of those Indian people were doing, and they gleefully did the same!!!
So the whole scene has changed quite a lot, compared to what it was in the past. I am still digesting the lessons that it seems to indicate as to how to use this beach in the best fitting manner as Aurovilians, supposed to somehow ‘give the good example’ always…
The real problem is not so much the way we human beings dress, but the presently excessive and unhealthy focus most of our societies have developed over sexual matters and the freedom to be left or not to women, of dressing the way they want, just as men are mostly allowed to (still within limits of course) in most countries.
It is not by chance that for the time being beaches, not only in India but more or less everywhere in the world, are seen as the places where you can ‘let your hair down’ and allow yourself more freedom than in other social circumstances. A sunny beach is the very symbol of holidays for most of the Western world, and that is only natural, and perfectly okay. But because of that ever spreading influence everywhere through the invasion by male Westerners looking for exotic pleasures their euros or dollars can buy, poor countries that used to be self-respecting and respectable are now falling to the degrading lure of ‘sex-tourism’. Sex and drugs are what Westerners are more and more known as wanting, and what they are more and more automatically offered wherever they go.
I am really ashamed that this is what our culture is presently doing to all those other cultures.
In India there is since long Goa, but there at least that tendency is somehow softer, less depraved. There remains still something of the idealism of the Sixties and of the Hippies who started it all in Goa. But now the way some other beaches in other parts of India are already busy catering unquestioningly to the Westerners’ and other tourists’ most common wants is quite alarming. It is a rush for money first, even if it comes at the cost of the most honored traditional values. And money itself, one can see it all the way up to the so-called highest levels of our societies, is almost invariably used for easy sex again, at the risk of the scandals no politician or businessman is immune to.
Here itself, right on the other side of our fence, in the guest-houses hastily built both by some local villagers and by some rich Pondy developers, the same downward trend is there.
All this is going so fast, it is frightening.
How can the presence in this area of a growing city as special as Auroville help slow down this trend?
How can we show some other way to make use of beaches, than this so sad and utterly distorted way?
One more challenge, then, that Auroville has on its plate: not only the physical erosion, but the erosion of the human beings themselves and their life-style, because of the wrong way the ‘globalization’ of our world has been happening until now.
It is not yet over though, Evolution will not let us wallow much longer in this disastrous collective muddy ditch!
Let’s try already to do whatever we can here, in those little Auroville places on the beach, to show another way…

There is a very different, specific trend of tourism that has spontaneously developed around these two linked spiritual centres that are the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, and Auroville just nearby in Tamil Nadu. The kind of tourists who flock here are mostly not the same as those who go to Goa or to Kauvalam. They want a different atmosphere, one that is elevating and conducive to the meditations and spiritual states those special tourists are after.  Many, from abroad as well as various parts of India, are disciples of Sri Aurobindo and Mother since long, old friends of the Ashram and Auroville – and for some of them, friends specifically of Repos too…

And there are now these young adults, again from all parts of India but the younger generation, preferring to come to the simple life in Repos’ humble Guest-Huts, rather than to the usual Beach Resorts or Hotels most other youth go to… Some of them get so interested also in the new way spirituality is being lived here, they are following this blog as well..! 

So let’s do our best, all together, to keep the new atmosphere of this place protected from the intrusion of the unwanted kind of tourists! As the Mother put it so simply, defining actually criteria that make all the difference, making people sort themselves out automatically:

‘Are invited to Auroville all those who thirst for progress and aspire to a higher and truer life.’

These are the ones who are also welcome to Repos! 

22 September: The Hobbit Day!…

HELLO, ALL THE HOBBITS THAT ARE THERE EVERYWHERE…
Today is a Happy Day, where I feel not only authorized, but invited to express openly the Hobbit in me!!!  I mean, inside me there is also the Elf of course,  and the Numenorean, and the Man of Rohan, and the Ent, and the Dwarf now too, thanks to Peter Jackson’s thirteen great Dwarves in ‘The Hobbit’; and I am not forgetting the Orc that’s trying to hide in the remaining shadows of my being; but today is the Day of the Hobbit, so I will gleefully indulge the Hobbit in me!
This morning I started already with an Early Breakfast, followed by the Second Breakfast no Hobbit will miss… And then today being Saturday,  my usual ‘work session’ with my usual colleague and friend will happen this afternoon, but it will be exceptionally preceded by a proper Lunch, as we will open especially today the big can of a French gastronomic treat she brought back for me after her recent trip to France: she stayed for a while in the very region of France where since centuries that savory treat is traditionally produced, among the many other ones that region is famous for… This is not the season, alas, for strawberries with cream, but I am sure my friend will find in our Auroville Bakery some other dessert worthy of today’s Hobbity Celebration!

Elijah Wood as Frodo in Peter Jackson’s live-action version of The Lord of the Rings. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sunday 23rd:
The whole day went nicely, but this little post didn’t make it on my blog in time, because of an exceptionally long power cut in the night, when my friend had gone back home, the day was over and I intended to finally post this text.
I do it at least today then, while still in that cheerfully childish mood that is the normal gift of the Hobbits… when they are not, like Bilbo and Frodo and friends, turning into unexpected heroes and saving not only Erebor or the Shire but the entire Middle-earth!…

Kaliveli Tank: ‘The World of the Winged’

Auroville is mostly known until now for the tremendous work that has been done here to reclaim the vast desert of sand and laterite that was all that was left of that land when the first settlers arrived on the barren plateau in the early seventies.
Well, I was among them.
Not that I had ever dreamed of becoming a pioneer of that kind – on the contrary, all this hard work was a far cry from what I had thought at first would be my initial contribution to the collective life being started here. But digging holes and carrying buckets of water and running, stick in hand, after emaciated goats and cows, were the needs of the hour at that time, so it is what I did like everybody else, lost with a unique companion in some arid vasts we had courageously planted with seedlings. Once a week, a bullock-cart would bring two barrels of water that would have to do for everything: to drink, cook, wash ourselves, wash our dishes and clothes, and water the seedlings during the full week. After a few weeks like that, I had become an expert in the art of washing my teeth with only one cup and having a full shower with only a half bucket of that so precious water…
Perhaps two years later, I had the opportunity to take the bus that was bringing from the Ashram in Pondicherry the visitors interested in seeing the first settlements of Auroville. We had very few and very bad roads linking those settlements separated by long distances; on our cycles, going from one place to another represented a long and difficult journey. I realised one day that the bus would be a very pleasant alternative way to discover the other already starting Auroville places I had only heard of.
At some point the bus arrived in a place that was nestled nicely along the big road to what was still then ‘Madras’.
That place wasn’t just starting: its cement buildings that had served as customs offices or something like that, were in the shade of large trees that had stood there obviously since long. When we all got down from the bus, the tourists and I, I stopped in my tracks: I had suddenly heard a sound, a marvelous sound I had almost forgotten existed: birds singing in the trees.
Elsewhere in Auroville, there were no trees. No old trees left, and no new trees yet either.
No trees meant no birds, and so, no birdsong.
My heart sank. I realized for the first time that it had been two long, hard years since I had heard a bird sing.

If some of you have read the self-introducing note written by my young friend Apoorva (see my previous post), you will have seen that she mentions the Kaliveli Tank, a great bird sanctuary that old-timers like me in Auroville all remember with fondness, as it is an important element in that bio-region around Auroville that we greatly contributed in the early years to save and develop into the beautiful example of biodiversity it is now.
In Auroville we have all kinds of people, also some biologists. One of them, Boris, is from Russia. For years his simple and deliciously imaginative way of writing some small pieces about Nature owed him a regular place in our internal weekly newsletter, the ‘News & Notes’. Here is one such short piece, written in March 2004, that I am posting here because it is precisely speaking, in Boris’ inimitable way, of that Kaliveli Tank:

News & Notes 6 March 2004

The World of the Winged – by Boris

“A bird has been described as a feathered biped. This description is apt and can apply to no other animal.” (Salim Ali).

‘When the Almighty created the birds, He jumped in joy: “It is very well done!” Maybe at the same time the Lord decided to create the Kaliveli tank too. So many birds gather in this place during the winter season! In February the larks sing in the sky beautifully, like music of the spheres. Their songs are gentle and sweet, they fly like beautiful singing flowers. Everyone who sees and hears these marvellous musicians wants to jump in joy as the Great Creator did at one time.

Eric and Iyanar (from Pitchandikulam) together with me (from Aspiration) visited Kaliveli tank in the morning of February 17th. It is a paradise for bird watching. There were numerous pelicans, egrets, storks, lapwings, herons etc. etc. One by one the predatory pied harriers slowly flew in search of available prey. The females are brown in colour, but the males are very bright – ashy grey body with black tipped wings.

Kaliveli tank is close to Auroville. Now it has a lot of water but in summer the tank becomes totally dry. The Uppukally Creek and Yedanthittu Estuary which tie it with the Bay of Bengal, have a special regime: water at full moon time moves to Kaliveli and in the period of the new moon they have an opposite current. There aren’t so many mosquitoes and frogs in the creek and estuary: its water is salty – of course the saltiness is less in comparison with the ocean.’

Whenever from my house on the seashore I see a few white egrets – my favorite ones…- or a whole magnificent flock of them, flying silently away towards their far migrating other home somewhere else on the planet, I smile at them with gratitude for being so graceful, filling my eyes and heart with the beauty I need absolutely in my life, and I think of this dear Kaliveli tank where they probably stayed while living here, and took off from when beginning this long journey in the sky …

Now if you feel inspired and want to study some more the subject of Birds, but not in a too heavily serious manner, I would recommend you read ‘Evolution of Bird, the Fun Way’ .

English: Bird-Watching at Dawlish In the middle of this park that leads to the sea there is a leat with several small weirs. On both sides of the water are seats where tourists and locals sit. When the bandstand is empty the entertainment comes from birds. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It is an early post of mine, of 22 May 2011, which includes a hilarious whole passage from a book by American humorist Dave Barry, where he tells in his usual crazy fashion how birds came to evolve into being… He ends with a few additional paragraphs, a description of Bird Watching, that puts this activity into such a funny light it will be impossible for you after that to go on considering it seriously any more!… You have been warned!

Another Healing Miracle… from a Cake

Health (Photo credit: 401(K) 2012)

An indelible memory I have of another case of a spontaneous and instantaneous healing I myself saw happening to someone else, is a great testimony to the extraordinary healing power of food, when associated with comforting childhood memories:

An American Aurovilian I lived with for five years, who normally was in quite good health, one day fell ill for no known reason, and within a few days had to take to his bed and remain there because of his increasing weakness. I don’t remember if there were other symptoms, but  all appetite had gone, so he was practically not eating anything, and the weakness kept increasing alarmingly.  I myself never had had to take care of an ill person before, so I was doing what I could to help in the small ways at my disposal, but many of his friends kept coming to visit, bringing one medicine after the other that they were sure was going to help, but that didn’t have any effect whatsoever on the prostrate condition of the patient.
Things were becoming so bad as days kept passing without any improvement in my companion’s health, people were now entering his room  on tiptoes and were speaking with me in the low voices you hear only in hospital rooms. I was indeed starting to consider calling a medical doctor, in spite of our shared reluctance to do so. I was prepared to wait only a few more days if it was going on like this.
And then one visitor came, who happened not to even know personally the ill person, she was just a passing guest, but as a fellow American from the same region, she had heard, as the patient, she had felt like cooking something for him, that she had brought along and was timidly offering: a special cake very appreciated in that region, but she wasn’t sure she should even propose it, as it was such a rich food, full of stuff no person in that almost dying condition should ever ingest.
Still, I sent her to the bedside of my poor companion, so that she herself could explain to him what exactly she had brought for him. As she spoke, I saw a faint smile grace his white, lifeless lips, and he thanked her with a grateful look from his half-closed eyes.
She left. I put the cake away into the safety of the cupboard, wondering if I shouldn’t eat it myself soon with the help of some other friends, so that something prepared with such good  and loving intentions wouldn’t go wasted.
I was about to tiptoe out of the room to let my friend rest after this visit, when I heard his voice feebly calling, and I quickly went back towards his bed.  I noticed his eyes had some tiny bit of light in them as I leaned and he whispered into my ear,
“Could I please have some of that cake she brought?”
I couldn’t believe what I had just heard. And then I hesitated too, before giving him the symbolic slim slice I hoped he would be able to keep in, so slim I hoped also it wouldn’t disturb too much his already exhausted organism.
As I helped him to half-sit, he gulped that tiny slice of cake in one single mouthful, and asked for more.
My mind in a daze, I complied.
He wolfed that second slice down just as quickly, and asked for more.
Quite alarmed now, I wanted to discuss with him, but he insisted quietly but firmly, so I again complied.
After a few more slices like this, sensing that something extraordinary was going on, I brought the whole cake to him on its plate, settling it down on a stool next to his bed so that he could take some whenever he felt like it, even if I happened not to be around at that moment.

About ten minutes later, I  came back to check if he was still all right with all those pieces of cake he had eaten; I don’t remember for sure, but I might have been bringing a discrete small bucket to leave by his bedside too, just in case all this too rich food would already need to come right out again.
I couldn’t believe my eyes; there he was, sitting straight up in his bed against his propped up pillows, looking at me with the broadest grin on his beaming face. On the stool, the plate was empty. Scraped clean. Not the tiniest crumb of that big cake was left.
He chuckled softly:
“Bhaga, I’m feeling much better!”
I came closer, asking, my eyes wide with stupefaction:
“My goodness, what was in this cake, to have such a miraculous effect on you?!?”
He lowered his eyes, and after a short hesitation confessed, still smiling:
“Well, you know, this happened to be exactly the kind of cake my mom was baking for me at home when I was a kid. When that girl told me this was the kind of cake she had brought, I knew at once that I had to try it. And for the first time in days I felt slightly hungry, just to think of that cake, so that was the sign that my body too wanted it! And yes, it was just as my mom was doing it, perfect… Oh, you can’t imagine how much I enjoyed eating that kind of cake again!!! And the more I ate of it, the better I felt, so I kept eating! I think it did me real good, I feel almost normal now, actually, like I could even walk!”
And there goes indeed my half-dead patient, scrambling to his feet and standing unaided, while I was the one gaping and about to swoon  at this astonishing sight!…
Do I need to tell that there was no relapse?
From that blessed day on, my friend’s health returned as mysteriously as it had faded away before.
I strongly suspect it was a case of intense home-sickness after all those hard years in Auroville, far away from one’s culture and everything that made up one’s life previously. But if that is a more potent factor than one would imagine, a factor quite capable of bringing down an adult unaware of or unwilling to admit his own deep feelings of emotional distress, too easily dismissed as childish and irrelevant, the magical cure of the mysterious disease revealed in this case unmistakably what the problem, childish or not, had been all along, and proved that sometimes the richest of foods can be not only totally innocuous to a patient, but become the very saving grace for him or her… if that food happens to be one of the patient’s favorite ones from childhood days and mom’s own cooking!…

Shall I mention my private weakness sometimes for some specific very French foods, like for example sandwiches ‘jambon-beurre’ – made with a French ‘baguette’ of course…! My friends returning from France know also that some simple ‘saucissons secs’ are the best treat they can bring back for me… that is, if they cannot afford ‘le top du top’: a small tin of real ‘foie gras’…!
And then, for the ‘me’ from another lifetime, there is also the couscous, characteristic very ancient traditional Berber food that the Berber in me craves from time to time too!!! So much so, that I had to write a whole post some time ago about those ‘Berber cravings’ in this present non-Berber lifetime…
Or if it is still something else my body needs, that I don’t think myself of taking in, my body has found an amusing way of letting me know: it sends me an image of what it wants! Suddenly in my vacant mind comes floating the image of mashed potatoes, for instance… Or it is directly the taste of the needed item that my body puts on my taste-buds; or the aroma of that food is suddenly there in my nostrils, although none of it is physically present; then I know what I am asked to do, and just like with my sick friend whose body knew it wanted me to give it that cake, I don’t argue: I just comply!!!

Food is such a fundamental part of our being’s make-up, physically for sure but emotionally as well if not more, we have to acknowledge the place it has in our lives. Even the android Data, in the very same episode of Star Trek TNG, ‘Deja Q’, mentioned in my previous post, has observed how for example the ship’s Counselor, the empath from Betazed, Deanna Troi, whenever upset, will tend to go for ‘something chocolate’!… He also observed that it does have wonderful results, and he is right: anything that will improve our sense of enjoyment will automatically improve our health too – as long as it is not some addictive substance that disturbs the natural functioning of the body and makes it dependant of its use, however negative its effects might be for the body.

Conversely, even the best food in the world nutritionally speaking will not profit much to the body if it is eaten only because we are being forced to eat it.

Or it might be like what happened to Q, feeling hungry for the first time of his life as he is now a mere Human: assuming he is probably very hungry from never having eaten before, and following Data’s advice regarding chocolate as a mood regulator, as his mood was dreadful he has ordered ten chocolate sundaes, but when the two full trays are finally brought to their table, he is disgruntled from some additional bad news that have just come, and he realizes he is not hungry any more!!!
In most cases, once again, we see it all comes down to the simple state of well-being we usually call ‘happiness’…

And an additional benefit, literally, that should be mentioned too: health in that way, instead of having to be secured at the cost of ever more money, will become on the contrary a wonderful money-saver!

A Small Healing Miracle… thanks to ‘Star Trek: TNG’

For the entire duration of last week I was in a pitiful state: after a previous week already on the almost depressive side, my thinking power too had been affected in the following days, as my brain kept feeling like it was buried in a thick, gluey smog and was barely able to function at all, even for the simplest everyday things to be done. Days and nights were both spent in a kind of very unusual and very unpleasant sleepwalking condition, in which I found myself totally unable to do anything about the pressing, urgent task of preparing the necessary estimates for the possible fund-raising operation someone wants to start doing for Repos. This was such a terribly important opportunity for this place, it couldn’t be missed, and yet, there I was, paralyzed mentally even more than physically, and not making any progress on preparing those estimates. My poor brain couldn’t even bear the thought of those estimates needing to be prepared!… It actually hurt, it was that bad.
So the Saturday before, at the end of the usual three episodes of ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ I had looked at (together as always with my usual accomplice, my Aurovilian colleague and best friend N.), instead of feeling good as usual, I had burst into silent sobs of utter compassion for the Romulan Admiral who had become a defector and asked for asylum aboard the ‘Enterprise’ in order to warn Jean-Luc Picard – and through him the entire Federation – of the massive attack planned by his colleagues from a well-hidden planet in the Neutral Zone.
After a lifetime of being himself totally given to the war against the Federation, this Admiral was now also a father, and that suddenly had made a big change in him: he wanted peace for his dear daughter’s future, so he didn’t want to risk the precarious peace already arrived at between the Romulan Empire and the Federation. As all his attempts to convince the other high-ranked Romulans of his new perspective on things had failed, he had resorted to this last extremity in the hope that his sacrifice would prevent the reopening of hostilities secretly planned by his country.
Alas, as it turned out, the whole so-called plan was only faked by the others, fake ‘information’ had been ‘leaked’ to him, just to make him reveal himself, and at the same time to attract the ‘Enterprise’ into a trap: the planet the ship came to check had several cloaked Romulan warbirds waiting, and the ‘Enterprise’ would have indeed been caught if our dear Jean-Luc, always quite clever too, hadn’t prepared also a little surprise of his own: a few cloaked Klingon war vessels, suddenly uncloaking when the Romulans already thought they had won… and convincing them at once to leave it at that, and go away.
It was a happy end for the Federation, but for the Romulan defector, the disgrace still was complete, and there was no way he could ever be any more considered as anything but a traitor by his countrymen, as long as they would go on being so war-inclined. So, entrusting to Captain Picard a letter of explanation only for his wife and his daughter some day, he committed suicide with the poison he carried on himself in case of torture, preferring to die rather than live for ever in exile from his beloved country.
The sad sight of the complete outer failure of this man after he had tried everything for that good cause reminded me powerfully of my own difficulties in saving what was dear to me and precious, I felt, also to Auroville, and I did feel some tears running down my cheeks…

So this Saturday I wasn’t too sure if the next episodes of Star Trek that we would be watching would do me any good.
The first two were quite all right…

And then came the third one… “Oh no! Not ‘Q’ again!!!”
This arrogant, cynical and totally unpredictable member of the Q Continuum, like all other Q immortal and endowed with enormous godlike powers, has been so often bothering or even seriously endangering Jean-Luc and his friends on the ‘Enterprise’, his recurring appearance is a frustrating occurrence every time; but little by little even he is impressed and starts liking especially Jean-Luc, and through him comes to respect the potential of Humans as a species.
In this episode, called ‘Deja Q‘, once again he materializes on the Bridge inside the spaceship, but as a stark naked human, stripped as well of all his normal powers by a decision of the other Q, tired of his constant mischief in all the universes. Quickly provided with some clothes, he does his best to curb his arrogant and selfish behavior in order to convince everyone that in his new situation as a human he can be a valuable member of the crew and should be accepted as such aboard the Enterprise, in spite of all the bad tricks he has played on them in other occasions: he doesn’t know where else to go, and finds himself now totally vulnerable to the attacks from the other creatures he has wronged previously everywhere. He soon realizes, though, that because of his presence aboard the Enterprise, the ship is being attacked more and more dangerously. Coming to his help, Data the android gets almost killed as well. Finally, ashamed of the colossal egoism and cowardice he discovers in himself as a simple human, although he knows that in his new mortal condition he will probably face the end of his life, he goes out on his own in a shuttle craft to draw the attacks on himself and save the ‘Enterprise’. The attempts by Jean-Luc etc to protect him by bringing him back all mysteriously fail and we quickly discover why: just as his attackers come near, another Q appears inside the shuttle and explains that his unexpected act of selflessness has been noticed; as it shows he can still change for the better, he is given a second chance and all his powers back! To be used more wisely than before…
All this sound like a very serious story, and it is, but at the same time because of the somewhat very childish huge personality of Q it becomes constantly a comedy and a farce; his histrionic tendency comes back full blast with the joy of being given back his powers: he soon re-appears on the Bridge in an explosion of noisy south-American music, all dressed-up in the colorful human garb he feels most fitting to express his exultation; seeing that this is not much appreciated, he tries giving to this or that member of the crew what he imagines would be to their liking (sexy women appear by their side!…), and when that too is not much appreciated, he graciously leaves, still in fabulous and gentle mood, promising to dear android Data a great special present.

A derivative collage from two other files – captain Jean-Luc Picard in his quarter on the USS Enterprise-D (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Moments later, the usually very serious face of Data suddenly shows quite a surprised and surprising change, as he attempts several times to express a completely new and unknown inner happening, and finally does it fully, erupting into such irresistible laughter that we too, the onlookers, can’t help but laughing uncontrollably with him, and the flabbergasted crew members too start joining in, or at least smiling happily, seeing that their beloved Data is realizing at last, thanks to Q’s gratitude, one of his dearest dreams: to laugh, just like a human does!

Well, on my sofa, I for one was laughing like I had not done since days, and kept laughing with complete glee.
And I started immediately feeling much better than I had for days.
The next morning, after a rather normal night of sleep, I woke up with my head free and clear again, and my normal thinking capacity – whatever that is!… – restored.
And I wondered once again at the marvelous healing power of this so simple but deep thing in us: Laughter. Pure Fun.
Like Data said with softened eyes and voice after his own sudden experience of it,
‘It is such a wonderful… feeling…’   
  

The Needed Inner Balance

After publishing my just previous post, ‘C.L.E.A.N.I.N.G.’, I could nearly hear the particularly loud thoughts of many of the visitors to this blog, some commiserating with genuine sympathy and understanding born of similar personal experience, and some others on the contrary getting almost irritated with me for being so hopelessly inclined to keeping things, when for them it is so easy and simple: they just throw things away.
Yes, for this like for so many other human traits, you find basically two categories of people: the ones who keep everything, and the ones who throw away everything.
Each type of behavior can claim some good results in life for establishing its usefulness and validity, but the truth is, both are too extreme, and simply opposite addictions, one to compulsive keeping, the other to compulsive throwing away, that’s the only difference. Neither actually is better than the other.
What is really needed in both cases is for each individual, whichever compulsion s/he happens to be affected with, to gradually learn to sometimes do the opposite thing, however hard or downright painful it might be do to that the first times…! Gradually they will become able to do it more often, and with less effort, and a glorious day will come when they will feel free to keep or throw away anything, depending only on real good reasons, not any longer on any blind inner compulsion.
That’s also part of the process of Conscious Evolution, so that’s what I am working upon too, of course… I confess I find myself sometimes retrieving straight away from the dustbin what I had just managed to force myself to throw in it, but that’s the normal hilarious kind of behavior that happens while you are trying to change but are not yet very good at it!…
Happy are those who are already naturally balanced…

C.L.E.A.N.I.N.G.

CLEANING.
CLEANING, CLEANING, CLEANING, CLEANING…
Some other persons, Aurovilians or not, may have problems so obvious I notice them and get some idea of what they may have to make progress on. But that always sends me back to myself, and to what I myself have to make progress on as well… and that’s plenty of things!!!
The two main problems I had to deal with before (over years and years of patient uprooting of the wrong reactions in me to certain circumstances, or whenever possible, of slow transformation of those wrong reactions into the spiritually correct ones, so much more pleasant to experience…) are by now nearly over; but there is a third one, which “circumstances” have of course caused to invade my life more and more in the last few years: the problem of keeping things clean all around my house.
Two aggravating factors have to be mentioned here:
!/ My house is so near the sea (even in normal conditions) that the salty damp air flows all the time into everywhere, leaving a sticky film on everything, that soon will attract and keep dust on it, making everything dirty much faster than it would be in a house elsewhere….
2/ The things in my house are so many in each category (books and files, clothes, hats, sunglasses, sun tan creams, swimsuits, shopping bags, DVDs, skin care products, empty small bottles, empty big bottles, etc, etc) that although within each room each thing is strictly and carefully kept in the place where it belongs, still each category overflows and gets dusty, simply because there are just too many things there…!

So during the last two weeks, especially as the internet connection was most often not there, I have been cleaning a lot, if not always with a result visible to others.
But  I have to keep the right balance, for it is impossible for me to spend my days being only the home-keeper: although I like very much cleaning things, there are other activities I like to do too and am good at too and am supposed to do too, particularly this blog as my beloved ‘Laboratory of Evolution’ outer work for Auroville, for which I am getting a monthly “maintenance” amount from Auroville, covering the regular basic expenses I have for my daily life here.

So as you can see my life too, like my house, is too full.
There are too many activities I find myself having to take up here, because each activity is truly needed for Repos to keep existing, but there is no one else at the moment to take up those various necessary activities.
And yet I also must keep some time for washing myself, for resting during the day, and for getting proper sleep at night (and that means, for dreaming too…!).
Having that many things to do is pretty much like trying to juggle with more balls than you can realistically handle: you keep losing them and seeing them fall and you keep getting them back going, but then another one starts falling, etc, etc.
The one activity that nearly always gets relegated to the end of the priority list is the cleaning.
Result: my poor house is more and more invaded with piles of stuff waiting to be sorted out and cleaned, for the time being tucked away as invisibly as possible in every still empty available corner.
It’s not all my stuff, mind you: you wouldn’t imagine how many friendly guests, intending to come again soon, leave under my care ‘just that small parcel’, ‘just that little bag’, ‘just that small size metal box’… and then for some reason never come back.
For quite a long while you still expect them to indeed come back, so you faithfully keep as promised the ‘small’ whatever you accepted to keep for them.
It all accumulates nicely over the years.
Until one day you look at your house, at your guest-room in it, and even also at the big store-room outside, and you realize it’s all full of stuff abandoned there by all those good-intentioned people. 
Add to all that a lively lady cat, very nice and all, but loving irresistibly like all cats to go after any edible living thing that disappears under any pile of any stuff anywhere, and you are in for catastrophic landslides at anytime, the cat-attacked pile exposing then suddenly for all to see its variegated contents until then neatly contained at least.
Well, the good thing about this kind of cat-caused landslide is that it at once transforms the sorting out and clean up of the concerned pile from low priority to absolute top priority, so in a way it is beneficial. I have at times highly suspected the Divine Wisdom as well as Playfulness of the One Being inside Whom all this is happening, to have secretly guided the creature chased by my cat, to disappear right under the pile that really needed urgent attention from my part. I have to admit this trick works, and I do take immediate care all right of the cat-ruined pile, but still I find it a totally unfair, if clever, strategy for the One to do that to me when I am already overworked with so many other urgent things to do!…
The December cyclone of course has been another totally unfair catastrophe that made things only much worse than before: speak of cleanliness anywhere after rain, wind and fragments of keet (dry coconut palms made into highly biodegradable roof material), plus some sea-water and sand on the floor, including under every piece of furniture, have soaked everything up for three days and nights before some rays of sun started at last to reappear…
After that horrendous cyclone (and I know it could have been still much more horrendous…), the only way I found to cope with the immensity of the cleaning work to be done, both outside in the whole of Repos, and inside my own house, was to pretend there would be all the time in the world to deal little by little with all that mess.
The problem was, the very sight of all that mess was making me sick inside: it was such a sad and ugly sight, my eyes didn’t know any more where to look for some tiny bit of beauty left. It hurt so much I was screaming inside, but it was no use screaming aloud, or letting my sobs come out. The only way to keep the inner strength and courage and endurance that would be necessary for how many months to come, was to keep the pain well locked up inside of me for as long as it would be impossible yet to let it out.
Last Friday, I was able at last to address the mess that my desk had become since those days and nights end of December. Only the later, upper layers had a semblance of order and cleanliness to them; under were still the deeper, more ancient layers of papers and bills and Guest-registration forms blocks and everything else, all caked and glued together by the water and dirt that had managed to filter through the closed windows, onto everything I had been unconscious enough to leave in their usual place, outside on my desk, instead of better protected inside the metal almirah next to the desk.
I never expected that cyclone to hit us so hard in Auroville. It could have been much harder still, but even that much has been for me too much, and I have yet to recover from the deep trauma of it all.
While sorting out finally the mess still underlying everything on that desk, some tears did come out, briefly. I was half-living again those horrible moments at night when nothing seemed to be able to stop this elemental violence from happening and from ruining so much of the work we had done here for forty years.
Auroville as a whole has recovered, I believe.
But here, after we had recovered a bit too, there was a tsunami alert a few weeks later, which luckily was a false alert, but still was scary enough for one more of us to decide to go live elsewhere in Auroville; as for the month of June,  as you know, with the massive erosion it did to our beach and to the very land of Repos itself, it has been a hard blow again.
It is not easy for me to understand why that too was necessary.
The fact is that only on the night of July 5th, when the situation had suddenly become really bad for the biggest house, and quite alarming for my one (the waves were so strong, Aurovilian and local friends, and even unknown passers-by were already advising me to leave), only then did I call for collective help from you all.
It would seem I needed that extreme degree of urgency in the situation, for finally calling for help in the inner action immediately needed.
And, lo and behold, the situation immediately (from the next morning on) started to change for the better, a better that since then has unexpectedly stabilized and has given the few of us who still live here an almost entire month of July, free of any erosion or even threat of it by the ocean.

Is it in order that we learn to truly trust and fully use this inner means of self-protection for ourselves and for Auroville, that this threatening situation has been allowed to take its toll until we did the right thing? Was that all part of our inner training?…
It would seem to be the case. That’s the only thing that makes some sense, I would say.

And what about today, and what happened just now?! This afternoon I intended very much to go to a second meeting of our re-activated ‘Beach Group”, in order particularly to follow-up on certain very urgent financial matters concerning Repos; but I got so engrossed in the writing, in this new post for my blog, of all those events and emotions and questions, the meeting at 3 pm got totally forgotten and it is only now, at 4.30 pm, that I suddenly remembered it, with the jolt you can imagine.
I was of course totally expected to go there, everyone must have wondered why I wasn’t showing up; nobody phoned me to find out, though; that would certainly have stopped me from writing and sent me like a rocket to the forgotten but so important meeting, but it so happened that no one phoned me to check why I wasn’t coming, so I just kept writing, completely oblivious of anything else. No guest came to disturb me either, as is usually the case all the time for one reason or the other. I have been allowed to remain in this complete deep concentration and absorbing expression of my feelings and my thoughts over the past seven months. Amazing.
This is the much anticipated year 2012.
Quite intense indeed.
But we are learning and growing, yes we are…
At the moment, as far as I am concerned, very much by way of CLEANING, which was indeed much needed!…
I guess this post is part of the inner cleansing as well – and that, too, was much needed.