What happened here these last weeks

After this especially long interruption, here is an update… starting with the text I wrote a few weeks ago, when I was still in my normal house:

‘To avoid any misunderstanding, I want to make it clear publicly that if in spite of the threatening coastal erosion I am still staying in my house on the beach at Repos, it is not because I have nowhere else to go.
The Housing Service has since long nicely offered to relocate me, individuals from some other Auroville beaches have kindly told me I would be welcome there, and in Repos itself there are spaces more inland where I could move temporarily if ever needed.
Although extremely touched by this concern from others, and thanking them all warmly for it, well, still it is rather in my present home that I prefer to go on living.
I am not giving up on this house so easily, my faithful companion of nearly twenty years, built thanks to a gift from Auroville and especially dear to me for that, and for being of my own quite satisfactory design.
So it is entirely by choice that I am still staying there and I will not abandon it but under the most extreme necessity. If ever something were to happen to me at some point because of that choice I am making, no one is to be made responsible for it but myself.
But I don’t believe anything bad will happen. On the contrary…
Anyway, whatever the fate of this house, it will be the Divine Will deciding about it, so no problem with me; but I want to have at least done really all that could possibly be done to save that house – and Repos, if it comes to that.’
(Continued on Wednesday 28th November 2012)
‘For it is really what it all boils down to for me, and my deep motivation for staying in Repos: it is for Repos.
The draft above was written a few weeks back, while I was still staying in my house.
In the meantime there has been the beginning of cyclone ‘Nilam’, the first two days of which brought up the violent waves that finished off completely the big yellow house and the Cafe; my house too was threatened: my old shower place, kept for the guests, had already fallen, and with it the small old terrace only loosely attached to my house; two more days of full force cyclone Nilam were announced, that could very well make my house too start to fall; so I did move out in haste to another house, a simple keet roofed one… but still in Repos.
I am writing now from there, but the cyclone Nilam, thanks to the Divine Grace, actually weakened and went away, and my house stayed up.
Thanks then to the quick intervention on the human level of S. and his team (kindly financed by the Housing Service), plus, the next day, the big machine sent officially by Auroville with the Cyclone Relief Cleaning Team, the front foundations of my house have been reinforced and protected; now the waves are bringing back sand instead of taking it, so the level of the sand is higher and higher all over the beach, also under my house; I may be able to return to that real home of mine soon, freeing my temporary keet house for the very much needed guests, just in time in this starting ‘season’.
Why taking all this trouble? Because Repos (and Quiet) cannot be left to fall into the ocean. Places of Auroville named by Mother herself and given their true purpose by Her are simply not sellable, nor transferable. They are among the most precious assets of Auroville, bringing with them specific inner gifts in their very atmosphere, that are invaluable, whether those places are also financially profitable or not – and they will be indeed, if they are helped to develop to the full potential of the expression of their respective truth. They may fall out of fashion for a while in the consciousnesses of some of the present Aurovilians, but none of us has the right to deprive the next generations of Aurovilians of what had been an integral part of Mother’s vision for Auroville. Already a number of the young Tamil Aurovilians, the young adults, visiting Repos, express to me their sorrow and anger at Auroville’s inaction to save this place they have been so happy to grow up with; they are worried that their children may never have a beach to go to any more; they are appalled at the shortsightedness of today’s decision-makers, when Auroville should on the contrary be the voice of a truer future not only for itself, but for India and the world at large.
It is for this Future of the world’s beaches that our beaches must now be protected and helped to re-grow. Out of love for them – and for ourselves. That’s why I keep stubbornly staying here.’