The Money Challenge, part 1: A New Roof for Repos Kitchen

The only new post from me in the last few days has been ‘About my name’, a new page some of you only may have noticed,  probably not many, so I mention it explicitly now, for everybody to get to read it if they are interested.

I have had to neglect a little this blog because of an urgent situation to be remedied in the place where I live, situation about which I sent around the following call:

CALL FOR AN URGENT NEW ROOF ON THE COMMUNITY KITCHEN IN REPOS  

1/ The present need
After six long years of patching up the old keet roof again and again, now we just cannot wait any longer: there are huge leaks everywhere, keet debris fall down on everything all the time – and when it rains, it is almost as if there is no roof at all. It must absolutely be redone before the big monsoon of October-November. Now, when there are fewer people, is the ideal time for doing that renovation work. It can be done immediately if the funds come.

2/ Why this is an important need:
This Community Kitchen has been part of Repos since almost its beginning thirty years back, and it must go on, because:
– we the Auroville Residents have our meetings there, plus from time to time community meals together;
– the ‘Early Breakfast’ and the ‘Simple Dinners’  that have been organized since a few years are very appreciated by several of us who like to eat there together with our Repos Guests, and often Aurovilians and Guests from other parts of Auroville as well;
– our Repos Guests need to be able to keep and prepare food in that Kitchen on their own too if they like; this possibility is also a big part of the warm appreciation the Guests in our Guest-Huts express about our place.
– in Repos there is the need of an Auroville Information Corner; such an Information Corner has been kept since years in the Dining-area attached to the Kitchen, but in the present conditions, even that is becoming impossible because of the keet debris and dust covering constantly everything.  

3/ What we want to do:
– if we would keep the keet roof, this time not only the keet, but the entire supporting structure would need to be redone, the cost would anyway be high:  70.000 Rs; and in a few years the same problem would occur again, hence renewed expenses etc.
– so we prefer to take this opportunity to change the roof at last to a permanent one, in elegant fiber-glass material figuring dark and light green leaves and palms, that will keep the ‘natural’ atmosphere and look of Repos as a whole. This option will enable us to have more light in both the dining-area, which is open, and in the cooking-area, which is walled in, with doors and windows.
For the kitchen itself plus the attached dining-area such a fiber-glass roof, all included, will cost between 75.000 Rs and 80.000 Rs.

All the contacts have been taken, all the preliminaries are done, this durable new roof can be ready within the next ten days if we start now.
A donation plus loan from my guest and friend Danaya (15.000 +18000), my own contribution (10.000) and the contribution from Repos Guest-Huts (10.000) bring us already to 53.000 Rs.
All of you who had the occasion to appreciate this Kitchen, please help it to be made nice and pleasant again for many years to come!

Thank you for reading this request, and for sending me your answer as immediately as possible, so that we know where we stand and if we can start. The precise way to make a donation will be sent to you in another email tomorrow.

Bhaga
for Repos community

Some more important donations have come in the meantime, so that now we have almost the full amount needed, and we are able to start the work today as was planned. Whatever further donations that may still come will be very useful anyway for the repair or improvement of other, minor aspects of the Kitchen that should also be done.

This blog is meant to reflect all the questions, joys and challenges that come with a life dedicated to Conscious Evolution and the new inner attitudes that we human beings have to learn in order to function in the necessary new way, the way of the future.

In the case of money, instead of hoarding it and being miserly about its spending for fear that there be not enough of it to cover all the needs, the new way of dealing with money needs is basically, it would seem, from what was shown to the Mother for the Ashram, as well as earlier to Edgar Cayce for his family, to trust that the money needed would come in due time, by whatever means the Divine Grace would use for providing it. Such a complete faith isn’t easy to keep when time passes and  pockets and purses are empty and there is still nothing concrete in sight to reassure us that the money will indeed come in time…

So I am glad and proud the inner confidence I did have that this was a true need, has been able to motivate some other people beside myself, and to generate at once almost all the funds that were necessary. I tend to be easily discouraged, but this success shows that this time at least I did better!…