Auroville, Heaven on Earth or Utopia?

Travel Day 908 – Pondicherry and Auroville, Tamil Nadu, INDIA

Auroville, I had heard so much about it, but since most of it seemed rather vague, today was finally the day to find out what Auroville was all about…

Fenced-off Matrimandir in Auroville, India

But first of all we had the desire to start the day with some nice croissants and since we had the scooter, I decided I would cruise around until I found a bakery selling the French half-moon treats to a reasonable price. It sure took a while but finally I managed to find what we desired and we were at last able to enjoy our classical French breakfast on our open roof terrace… : )

Then we were finally off to Auroville on our scooter, although there was one more hindering to mention. We received the scooter empty of petrol and when we used a local petrol station yesterday evening, the guy not only tried twice to cheat us with the change, but today we found out that he also never filled up the tank. We had thought that the indicator was simply broken, as was the speedometer, but as we ran out of gas this morning, it became obvious that the guy had not only tried to cheat us for the money, but also for the petrol. Since we watched him fill it up, whatever he did, this trick was definitely new to me…

The next little hick-up we encountered on our way to Auroville was that this place was absolutely impossible to find. There were no street signs at all and local people seemed to have never even heard of a place called Auroville in their surrounding area. So what should have been a 20 minute drive on the scooter took us in the end about three hours as we got completely lost and just started cruising though all the local villages…

Dusty-Red-Dirt-Road of Auroville, India

While the villages with their mostly straw and palm leave houses were amazing to see, we were still quite happy when we finally managed to reach the best kept and most hidden secret of the area, Auroville. But even when we were already there and everything suggested that we were in fact in Auroville, we still could not see it. It just seemed we were endlessly driving on dusty red dirt roads with no actual destination in sight…

I personally had envisioned Auroville as a small city with town center, city infrastructure and city grid. But as it turned out, my idea was very far away from reality. All there was, were dusty red dirt roads and some scattered houses here and there, hidden by the local vegetation. There was also supposed to be the famous temple, Matrimandir and a visitor center and right before we lost all hope, we finally managed to find them…

The visitor center was actually quite interesting and it suggested all the great principles and ideas Auroville was standing for. It also displayed amazing architectural drawings of this perfect city of 50 thousand inhabitants who live in harmony and peace. But when we were looking around, in reality this place simply didn’t exist. All that really existed was the highly praised and fenced off Matrimandir temple, which had been a full 40 years under construction… 

Local Village House around Auroville

In general it seemed that everything here was not quite set-up with reality in mind. Yes, creating this peaceful place for a perfect civilization in the middle of India sounds like an interesting idea, but restricting access to a chosen few seemed on the other hand quite contrary to the core principles of what Auroville was supposed to stand for…

Well, I had to acknowledge that everyone told me that  Auroville was much more than what meets the eye on one day and I would have to spend more time here, but for now I answered at least my own inner question: Mirra Alfassa’s Auroville was clearly not Heaven on Earth and until I would have more time look behind its façade, I would remember it as a Dusty-Red-Dirt-Road-Utopia with a Fenced-off-Golden-Golf-Ball in the middle…