Wholesale French India & New-Age wonders - Ancient Wisdom

This is a timely repost of a newsletter, a while back..

It's almost Mother's Day... so I thought you'd like to meet... The Mother..

Since the last newsletter from Delhi we have been to Goa and Chennai. Then we drove down the right-hand side of India along the Coromandel coast though beautiful peaceful country almost biblical, with palms and stretches of lakes replete with net casting fisher folk. Most un-Indian.

Finally we reached Pondicherry … forget everything you know about India. This is a town is place like no other. We arrived late in the afternoon, though the usual Indian city honks and hustle and bustle. Managed to find our little hotel on the edge of the French quarter of town. Basically a grand old Tamil house, central courtyard, rooms with high ceilings and monastic stained glass windows. It has been converted gracefully into a colonial haven of peace.

As dusk fell I took myself off for a walk around the tiny closed in streets. Almost immediately I came upon a fire ritual been performed by two priests on a slowly moving stage brightly lit and thronged by a fire-carrying crowd. I turned another corner and came upon an almost naked sadu blessing a mans new motorbike. Another corner and outside a street temple a huge pained elephant blocked the way, he was been fed by a queue of supplicants and seemed to be hugely enjoying the attention stamping his feet and waving his trunk.

I got a little lost in the grid of streets, but made my way back to the hotel to get my wife and Carlos.. they were both glued to the laptops catching up with work. Forget that guys.. you gotta get out here and see what’s kicking off.

By the time we set off (about 9pm) the place had reverted to an attractive, former French colonial town exuding a calm Mediterranean aura. What we saw were chic streets, elegant houses and ornamental gardens. All the street names are in French, policemen dress like gendarmes, and elegant French ladies cycle past on the way to evening rendezvous. Honestly I told them.. really there was an Elephant and… but I could see they didn’t believe.

Apart from the charming atmosphere what attracts many people to Pondicherry is the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and its strange new-age offshoot: Auroville about 15 km outside town. Auroville is a township founded by a French lady called Mirra Alfassa in the 1960’s with high ideals about no religion and no ownership.

It’s about all nationalities working toward a new world in peace and prosperity. About 2000 people from 40 nationalities live here. Mirra Alfassa died in 1973 but her work and plans have continued, for the last 40 years they have been building a huge golden golf ball like building in the centre of town, it had finally been completed.

In Auroville.>
So the next day we took a taxi to see this legendary place, you had be impressed. They have a trendy little shopping complex full of giftware and clothing produced in Auroville, a slick brain-washing, sorry information centre complete with a moving video show explaining the ideals and history of the place. After the show you take a peaceful gardened walk to view a symbolic Banyan tree and to the view point to see the what they call the: Matrimandir – what we called the golf ball. You can only look from a distance, your not allowed in to view the crystal ball that the building contains at it’s centre.. that is unless you want to go further..

The place is calm and reflective. It’s well ordered and not the least bit pushy neither were we charged anything to be there. But high ideals about no religion had obviously failed as the French lady had now become “The Mother” and seemed to be revered and her attributes and images adorned the place. While we wished them well, there was just a slightly creepy feeling to the place.

This is Mirra Alfassa... also known as "The Mother"
Since it's almost Mother's Day.. it seems apropriate to give her a mention..