Sunday Masti - Tanjore and Mahabalipuram

When Karan told me about Tanjore, the first thing that clicked my mind is “Tanjore Ki Rathod”. This is a term from the movie “Jane Tu Ya Jaane Na”. But as far as I remembered it was a desert…. So, desert in Tamil Nadu? Interesting!! And here I did the mistake. It was not “Tanjore Ki Rathod”; it was “Ranjhore Ki Rathod”. But it was too late to realize and we started for Tanjore.

This whole confusion happened because of the Europeans! They come here and they cannot pronounce the south Indian names. I should not blame them though, these names are really tough. So all the places have two names; South Indian difficult one and English easier one. Like Tanjavur became Tanjore, Allepuza became Alleppe, Triruvannathapuram became Trivandrum and so on.

So one fine Sunday morning at 4.30 am a taxi came at CSR to pick us up for Pondy Bus Stand. But wait!. Where is Karan the great? He is sleeping yet!!! Celine literally kicked thrice at the door, but our “Sleeping Prince” didn’t hear that! So finally when we started, we were only 30 minutes late. Still it was not over. We reached Mitra and came to know that the girls are still sleeping too……30 more minutes. We didn’t mind; at least we have reached the Bus Stand before the bus left and……… it started raining…wow!

Its ok, we got into the bus soon and we all got seats!!! Hahahahahaha. Better than Kerala trip; what say? Oh! we means, Karan, Dehi, Ranjini, Munira, Satya, Matiya, Antoine, Celine, Camille and me J this time we did a good thing, we collected 200 rps from each person and Karan was our Bank and trust me that was really a good idea.

It was 5 hrs journey and it was really fun. We didn’t really care about the way but we played silly games, we gossiped, we talked, we ate, we sang and we just enjoyed it. I stood at the bus door, cool air were blowing my hair and making me relaxed, quiet and happy… amazing.

[Its pity that its a business to read luck by parrots. for that the readers cut the wings of the birds so that they cannot fly.... pity and silly..]

The town is strange. The main bus road is only twenty feet, highly crowded and the bus just left us in the middle of a bazaar. That’s good. The first thing we did is eating. Second thing was drinking and third is to walk for the temple.

The temple is a typical South Indian Temple with Shikhara, Gopuram, Garva Griha, Nandi and the Ambulatory path. For the non Archis: Garva Griha is the main Chamber, Shikhara is the solid, massive, highly decorated pinnacle and Gopuram is the gateway with Shikhara. And Nandi is the Bull. Is was nice to know about the history but the more interesting was the guide who know some common term from every language like Bonjour, après, chao, kemon acho…. After the tour we stand n the looooooong queue to enter the main temple and to see why the line is so long and what they really want to see! After almost half an hour when we reached the destiny, it was a great disappointment. There is something made of gold inside, but you cannot enter there and you cannot even see it properly…. so bad.

After the temple we went to see the palace which was much more disappointing. They plastered it all over and they drew some “modern” painting of the palace itself on the entrance….awful. the palace was full of the statue of Nataraj. Those were nice and we discovered the girls were very khullamkhulla (open) at ancient period. The statues were always wearing very less clothes. Another discovery is girls look good with a little fat [I am happy ;-) ] and nothing too big is not beautiful. I guess you understand what I mean.

But I could not discover the reason why there is a skeleton of a whale inside the palace. But it was really

What do you think? How many people can board in a auto rickshaw?...... On the wat back to the bus stand, we got only one auto rickshaw and we were 10 in it. Matia, Dehi and Munira were seating at the back, in the luggage carrier. They put the curtain to hide themselves from the police, but their legs were hanging outside…how intelligent we are!

Mahabalipuram in English (I guess it came from Hindi) and Mamallapuram in Tamil.

Friends, if you come to Auroville try to go to Mahabalipuram. It’s a beautiful small town in between Auroville and Chennai. It has sea, the Sun Temple on The beach, a lot of restaurants with good sea food, and a very nice big park full of sculpture and rocks. Out of all, the park was the best.

This time it was me, Camille, Celine, Antoine, Matia, Raphael and Vincent. I will not forgive French people for their pronunciation, Vincent Becomes Vnasno!!! And please don’t try to pronounce. These bad people will laugh at you…. Kidding…

We ate at Bob Marley Café and what sea food they have! Muah…

We passed most of our times in the park, walking and talking. It was really good. Auto rickshaws will offer you several package. Don’t go with those and specially don’t waste your time on museums, those are horrible. It’s a small town; you can walk all over it. Again I want to say the guide book is gonna help you a lot. It’s expensive, but if you can manage, it’s perfect. In the afternoon we had nice coffee, milkshake and crepes in the sea shore restaurants again. Wonderful.

You know, if you have a good group to travel, you can enjoy anything any where. And these two trips are the proofs of that.

Smart City-Bangalore

Again a quick trip and this time it was Bangalore.
It was raining, raining and raining; heavily, slowly, non stop, all day long. Our life in CSR became fully boring and gloomy. We didn’t really need to take a bath. If we went from bedroom to kitchen, we took a bath, we went from dorm to office and we took a bath; even for going to toilet we needed to use a raincoat or an umbrella……. horrible!!! As a result is we started planning to escape Auroville for a weekend and we did so.
On 30th October, Friday night our boss Satprem was leaving for Tanzania for two months. Saturday is half. So we decided to go somewhere and Bangalore was the first choice we all had. Priyadi, Satprem’s secretary, also wanted to join us and it was good as she arranged a cheaper accommodation in Ashram guest house.
This time we didn’t go for any adventure. We booked our ticket in advanced and we booked it for both way. We had chosen a private bus service so it was 740rps per head.
At 10:30 we entered the bus….. I have never seen a bus like that. It has comfortable chairs and above the chairs there were sleeping berths. One row of berth is single and one is double. The weird thing is, Couples was staying at those double berths and they were maintaining privacy by curtains. I must say India is far fast than Bangladesh….. I don’t know anything More about the journey; I slept the all the way.
Now let me tell you what I was wearing….a white cotton shirt and a tree quarter trouser. We reached Bangalore at 5 in the morning. Still it was dark. I stepped out of the bus and I felt thousands of niddles pierced me……..it was a little bit cold!!!!
Thanks to Allah, He is so kind that there was a lot of Autos waiting and we got one for 150rps. So we reached the guest house we checked in and we slept. At about 7:30 the manager wake us up from sleep and informed that Priyadi and Me (as I am an Indian!!!) can stay there but Celine and Camille can’t. We said we will arrange something but we need time.
But the truth is we were not at all thinking about accommodation but about Koshy’s and K.C. Das. Koshy’s is a famous restaurant, especially famous for breakfast and K.C. Das is famous Bengali sweet shop. But honestly, the whole Bangalore city is too lazy to wake up early. No restaurant is open before 9:30. What to do now? We took tea from a footpath shop, walked around nearby places and finally it was 9:30 and we came back to Koshy’s. It seemed like we had never seen good food before and we were very rich. Just for a breakfast we paid 800rps! After that no space for K.C. Das… later.

“pet puja” done! So we called Varun (one of our friend from Earth Institute). He heard about the guest house and he is so sweet that he invited us to stay at his place. So Chandrima (Varun’s friend) would come to take us to Varun’s place by her car. But she will come at 5, so we have a lot of tome in between. We again started walking from one street to another we the whole commercial street, mission street, cubbon road….we eat, we shopped, we visited …..wow. After two months I am visiting a real city. So classy, so smart, so modern. … superb. For lunch we went to a restaurant- Coconut Grove. Very expensive again and very good too. I felt life is expensive here. People earn a lot and they spend a lot. I really liked it… speciall the girl ;-)….. very smart.
But still there is a problem that we were ignoring from the morning- we all are gonna stay at Varun’s place, but all our staffs are in the Ashram Guest House and we don’t want to pay. So at 4 we went there and the great Priya di manage not to pay and we just left..hahahaha…
Varun recently built a new house for him and his parents. He designed it himself and managed to build it simultaneously while working at Auroville. Bravo! In South India people do their house warming party and prayer before the finishing work is done. Varun’s house warming party was done but a lot finishing work was remained. So they were living in another house nearby. We went there just after sunset. It was almost dark and so we rushed to see his house. It is a 10 minutes walk through green. Most of the plots were yet to be built on. So Varun’s house was standing in the middle of a green sea!

I can imagine how lucky Varun’s parents will be in a house like this. Its fantastic! Its calm, its quiet and when its night….. I have no word to describe…
The ground floor is for his parents and younger brother and the first floor is his bedroom and studio. I would say the relation of space he designed, the light and air circulation path he created is really very logical and perfect. I don’t know Varun is gonna read my blog or not. But I want to say, Varun, you just did it. Congratulations.
Now I want to say to you what I experienced that night. Light in the dark!! The people who have been to Chittagong Neval Academy, at night have you ever seen the light of CAFCO on the other bank of Karnafully? Even in a moonless night have you ever noticed a very clear sky full of stars? Did you feel something………. I already said that Varun’s house is in the middle of almost nothing. At night the green becomes black, just black. And then ….. you will find small bright light sources one after another.at every 1 minute at least one plane crosses Varun’s house to land at nearby International Airport. Sometimes long trains with hundred of lit windows appears…. And twinkle twinkle little stars.. they are always with you…….. no guys I could not describe anything. One has to feel that, there is no other option.
I think I am a little excited about the house  Anyway, we had nice dinner that night and we decided where to go next day.
Next Day early in the morning w again went to see Varun’s house…. Don’t be scared people; I will not start describing again. But it was wow… Varun Dropped us at the bus stand and we took a local bus to go back to the main city. In the bus I realized the most posh, smart and modern people are mainly leaving in the center of the city. At outskirt it’s like other parts of South India…. I mean they are Indians, not westernized Indians.

We reached Majestic Bus Junction and took another bus for Lalbagh Botanical Garden. The whole day we visited the Botanical Garden, cubbon Park, we ate Hydrabadi Biriyani, we shopped and at night we went to the pub. Priya di was very interested to go to the pubs as she went with her husband 14 years ago. So we went to the same pub, Nasa…. Nice. We tried to go to Hard Rock Café, but its so expensive that we had to come out. Not only Nasa, before we went to the bus stand we visited others pubs… that was a pub night. Actually it was true for other people too. As it was Sunday night the whole Bangalore city was in party mood and so were the pubs.
We were enjoying so much, but time was limited. So we went back to the bus stand and started for Auroville again.
If anyone asks me what we did in Bangalore, first thing I would say is “eating”. We really ate a lot, Celine and Camille shopped a lot (o, you can get very good silk there), we walked a lot and so, we saw a lot. What else we could do! Wow we had done everything, na? good…..!!

Rush to Kerala

Long time ago, I read a book named “Around the world in eighty days”. A guy travels the whole world by balloon in 80 days only!!! Even I often heard people going for world tour for 2 months or like that. I used to be surprised how this is possible! How can people see everything of the world in such short time! Later I came to know that they don’t really visit everything they just touch places!

Our Kerala trip was almost like this. 28^th September, 2009, in a Monday Morning Meeting, we came to know that we are gonna have a Government holiday on Friday. Saturday is half; so we asked Satprem for a leave and he agreed. Uuuu… we had three days of holiday; we can make a long trip!!

We know that we are going but we didn’t know where. At the eleventh hour we decided to go to Kerala. Frankly speaking before going to Kerala I didn’t know that it’s a state, not a city. Anyways, it was a little bit (!!!) tight schedule. On 1^st October we were suppose to shift from Mitra Youth Camp to Revelation and at the same day we had to leave Auroville for Kerala.

Nothing was planned or decided. We just arrive at Pondy bus terminal. We didn’t have any idea that it will be so crowded. As there was holiday ahead, everybody was moving. So all the buses were full, full means full. People were traveling on the floor. In fact it is not a big deal here. In Bangladesh I have seen people traveling on roof of the buses and trains. But here people sit on the floor and later when the bus starts running, they lie down and sleep!

Anyway, we didn’t get any bus. Somebody suggested us to go to Villupuram bus junction, only two hours from Pondy and there we will obviously get a bus. Okay! We took a local bus from Pondy to Villupuram and we reached there at 12:30 am. Then started the main problem…..

Oh! Very important!! We were making plans from a guide book, “Inde du Sud” (south india). Buy something like this before you start your trip. It’s really very helpful. It would be impossible for us to see India without that.

Every minute buses were coming for Trichy, Madurai, Salem, Coimbatore and sometimes for Trivandrum. Now comes where to go! Yet we only knew that we were going to Trivandrum first but didn’t know the route. We wanted to talk to the information office but the guy was sleeping. Station masters were passing us from one to another. A lot of people arrived to help us and as you know, ways are as much as opinions. So some people were sending us to Madurai, some to Trichy some to Coimbatore ….. uff! Within one hour we travelled the whole Kerala!!

Fine, it’s too much, we took our own decision; we started looking for bus for Madurai. But again there is a problem. Everything is written in Tamil. Buses are coming and people are rushing into that. So before we understand where the bus is going that was full. Finally we jumped into a bus without knowing where it was going and good God, it was going to Trichy.

We were happy to see the bus, the seats are comfortable enough for a 4 hours journey….but wait…where is our seat? There was no seat. We have to sit on the floor. “bisshash hoina” and you know how much was the tickect? 192rps!

5 in the morning we arrived at Trichy. Now again we need to look for Madurai bus. We started looking from one platform to another and asking “Anna, Madurai?” Anna means brother in Tamil. At last we got the bus and it will start at 7:45.

Restaurants and toilets-two good things of the Indian bus stands. You don’t have to know the location; extreme strong smell of open urinal zone will inform you that you are in a bus stand!! But there are pay toilets in every bus stand. You can pay 2-3 rupees and use them. As they are taking money at least they try to clean it, so it’s usable. Not so much… but what to do… Prokritir Dak Bole Kotha! But my boy friends, I heard in spite of paying the boys’ toilet is horrible. Do you want a description... Aw! leave it.

The bus came on time and we found there were only two seats. One at the first row and another at the last. Antoine and Camille sat there and me and Celine sat on the entrance stair. And actually that journey was not bad at all. When the bus was running it felt like I was driving the bus myself. The road was going through horizontal landscape with fields and trees, only green on either side….. it was good.

Whatever, we reached Madurai and then from Madurai to Trivandrum. Though it was almost three o’clock, we didn’t have time for lunch. We had to go to Kuthiramalika Palace Museum which closes at 5 and we had to buy train tickets for Verkala. So we ran to Palace museum….. literally running on foot. But honestly speaking, I was not so impressed. I mean, yes, it was nice and interesting, but I felt so familiar with this type of architectural details that I was not very amazed. This is all my university’s fault they teach us in a way that everything becomes seen to us ;-) but this is not true for all. There were a lot of tourist and they were very amazed too. Why not! It is a typical Kerala Architecture made of wood and highly detailed. You can visit!

After the Palace Museum we went to drink juice. Because it was written in the guide book that in Kerala, one should not miss the pineapple juice and pink banana. It is weird to see banana of pink color. Ithink Allah created it especially for me.

Verkala is one of the nicest place we visited in Kerala. We reached Verkala at almost 8 in the evening, we find out a cheap hotel near the sea. All the hotel, restaurants and even trains schedules we found from the guide. After 24 hrs of journey, no sleeping and without proper food, we were completely tired. So first thing we wanted to do is taking shower and then eat.

Verkala is 3-5m high fom the sea level and it has a very linear sea beach. We went to the beach and it was amazing. I am not talking about the sea; we couldn’t see it at night. But I really liked the place. It is full of nice restaurants and guest houses facing the sea and the roars are always with you. We had chosen a very nice restaurant and ordered our food. Here for the first time I drank Mojito- it’s a drink with white ram, lemon and mint…. Awesome.

Next day we had our breakfast in the same place, we enjoyed the sea for sometime and we started for Aleppey by train. It was a very short journey and Allepey is a very small town. Within 2 hours we walked through the whole town and we reached our destination- the boat yard. The guide book also suggested not to miss the back water journey from Allepey. We took a public boat for kottayam at 2 o’clock. It was like a public bus, stopping in different villages, ringing bells and passengers were coming out to board. For this 3hrs journey we paid 10rps per head. You have far better options. There are some house boats that you can hire to travel. Those looks like heaven, but only 200rps per hour per head. Now its your choice. I would say I didn’t miss anything. It was more than awesome.

We reached Kottayam and took a bus for Kochi, our last destiny in Kerala.

Kochi is a big city. It’s different from any part of Kerala. Its busy, its more modern even people look different. It is basically a city with three islands. We wanted to go to the malls, to the restaurants and to visit all the islands, but we didn’t have time we need to reach Auroville by Sunday night. So we went to train station to see if there is any train for tomorrow. Yes they had, but at night, at 10:30 and at 7 in the morning. So I suggested skipping Kochi for this time and taking the train that day. But who cares... no one. Finally we bought ticket for the morning and stayed in very expensive (for us) hotel for the night!!!!! Wow. The next day we woke up early in the morning before sunrise and we started walking through the city to visit as much as we can. Ok, it’s nice, but what can we see at 5 o’clock? Almost nothing. We came to the rail station and started for Auroville.

Kerala was our first trip outside Tamil Nadu. We were too much in hurry and at the end it was tiring too. But after coming back I realized I saw a lot, I know a lot. But still there’s a lot to visit there. I surely need to come back…

Moon Walk

No, I am not Michael Jackson, neither the others. But thousands of people are doing moon walk every month.

Tiruvannamalay is two hours bus journey from Pondy. In every full moon night thousands of people go there and walk bare foot for 14 km. The path is surrounding a hill with a temple on the top. After the walk people visit the temple and pray.

But mistakenly me and my small group of six more people went to the place day before the full moon. It was in a sense very good as it was not crowded. But still there were people walking with us. As far as I know at full moon night, the moon does not stay for a long time in the sky. But as it was not a full moon, the moon was with us for the whole night.

Sometimes it was dark roads with trees on either side; sometimes yellow street lights were making the roads mysterious. The moon was playing hide and seek with us and we were walking.

Me, Camille, Jeremie, Varun, Antoine, Andy and Tomas. We walked, walked and walked. It was so nice and especially nicer for me. In general I like late and quiet night. But I think it was one of the nights I will not forget easily.

My First Month At Auroville

I came to Auroville one month before my internship. It’s because I wanted to attend two courses on CSEB (Compressed Stabilized Earth Blocks) & AVD (Arches, Vaults and Domes) for the first month. It was really a good decision as from the first evening I started meeting people who had come here for the courses. It was so nice to meet people of different ages, different places and different professions. I met architects, civil engineers, mechanical engineers, contractors, masons, software engineers, bankers, politicians and……. They were from different parts of India and even different parts of the world too. 31st August was our first class. I confess, in that class I could not understand more than 70%. And the 30%, that I understood is only because of my previous knowledge from my school (BRAC University, Dhaka, Bangladesh). Satprem, our boss, has a very different and difficult accent of English. It took me sometime to understand him. Our long classes were going on. We were doing theories and practicals. Generally Satprem was taking the theories and Ayappan was taking the practicals. We learnt about Earth Architecture, how to build with earth, we learnt about different techniques and machines, we produced blocks with Auram press (One type of CSEB producing machine. Be careful if you are working with this machine or if you are near the machine when someone else is working. It’s dangerous sometimes.) We built CSEB and rammed earth walls, arches, vaults and domes. We learnt how to calculate load for different arches. The classes were very knowledgeable but very lengthy too. We were tired of either seating for long or doing practical works. But we were having fun in the evenings. We started going to the rainbow parties in Visitor’s Center and Well Studio Café. There are pizza parties on Youth Center on every Saturday and Wednesday. Sometime we had chanting sessions on La Terrace and Visitor’s Center. There are movies everyday at 8pm at Town Hall. Sometimes there are performances or movies in Bharat Nivas Auditorium. We were trying to enjoy as much as possible. Not only these events. There are a lot of food shops and restaurants around Auroville. Especially at Koilapalayam. Swadista is one of my favorite shops for bhelpuri, samosa, kachori and cold coffee. The chatni they serve……….muah! Coffee Bar has created a very nice environment in a small space. La terrace has beautiful terrace just to chill. But be careful if you want to go to Solar Kitchen or La Terrace (upper floor of Solar Kitchen). They don’t except cash. You need a guest card to buy food. For that you need to open an account in Town Hall. Town Hall is the place in Matrimandir compound that deals with all the administration of Auroville. Now come to Matrimandir. This is the structure you cannot avoid anyway. If you are in Auroville and you say someone that you haven’t visited Matrimandir, they will make such a face that you have done some crime. Yes, not only for the people, you should visit it for yourself too. It is worthy. But………….. again there is a “But”. You cannot just go and visit Matrimandir. If you are just a visitor, you have to go to visitor’s Center and make an appointment. After that, they will show you a documentary of 15 minutes on Matrimandir. And only then you will be allowed to get into the compound. Yes just the compound. Because again there are some “If”! If by any chance its raining or may be just drizzling, they will not allow you to enter the meditation chamber of Matrimandir. And to enter the Chamber you have to wear white socks. But don’t worry for that, if you don’t have, they will give it. (So kind….) In spite of all these there are possibilities that you would not be able to enter the meditation chamber. And you will break your head for wasting you time in those formalities. It’s because sometime they do renovation and they will not say it before you reach the door of Matrimandir. It’s sad that it happened with my parents. Another important thing is moped. You will not find any auto rickshaw or taxi stand in Auroville. So you need either bicycle or moped. And if you can drive you can hire a motor cycle too. A bicycle will cost 25rps/day, moped-40rps/day and motor bike 60rps/day. To my full consciousness, I am saying, don’t hire a bike from Suresh, hire it from Lakshman. And please careful with your moped when you go out. Check it there enough petrol or not and specially where you are parking. I will explain the reason later. But if you want to go to Pondi, there are buses from Town Hall or if you are confident enough, you can drive moped. But its difficult and dangerous. A lot of people get hurt at Pondi; people are crazy there. You have another option. If you are rich enough to pay 150rps to go to Pondi, you can call for a taxi. But for coming back you have to pay 150rps again. Pondicheri or Puducheri, whatever you say (we call it Pondi), is the nearest town of Auroville. It’s a small town with lots of things. It has a beautiful sea edge. You can just go and chill there at any time at day or night. It’s really super. There are lots of restaurants you can try. Surguru is cheap but you can get very good vegetarian south Indian food. Oh! Vegetarian, I have to talk about this ……… later. Richy Rich is good for ice creams. Nilgiris is a good super shop to buy things. But for things like rice, vegetable and even for clothes Goubert Market is the best option. There you will get dresses of latest Auroville fashion. Auroville fashion – in a sense it is no fashion. You can wear anything you want, literally anything. Generally people wear very simple dresses and slipper or shoes. Even sometimes they walk bare foot too, but not hills. People are generally so careless about their getup that if you go outside in this way, you will feel like alien. But whatever you wear be careful about wearing white dresses and fancy shoes. All of them are gonna be spoiled. The red soil of Auroville makes everything orange. I think the soil is red because of extreme iron in it. You can feel it in water too. The first disaster that happened to me is severe hair fall. The hard water, humid weather and extreme dust causes a very bad hair fall to almost everybody. I think I am scaring you about Auroville. So let me tell you some good things. There is a place named Veritie, they offer yoga and meditation in the morning and dance and chanting in the evening. You can find a very interesting thing in Veritie office building. If you go there before 5pm, just at the entrance there is a rectangular water body. You can seat around it dipping your legs in the water and fishesh will come to eat dead cells from your feet- free fish pedicure……….. cool. If you want to do some sports, you can go to Certitude and for swimming and gym you can go to New Creation. If you are a visitor, for swimming they are gonna charge you 150rps per entry. But if you are working as volunteers for more than 6 months, you can get a letter from your office that will make the fee 400rps per month. There is a beautiful beach restaurant called Repos. You can go and chill there. There are two more beaches near Auroville. One is Auroville beach and another is Quiet. Auroville beach is the biggest one where people from surrounding villages and even from Pondi come and swim. But Quiet is basically a guest house or you can say community, where they have healing center. They have yoga, meditation, massage, water therapy and so on. The place is very nice and “quiet”. Infront of the place there is a small quiet beach. You can go there too. But wherever you go, be careful about the sea. Somehow the beach or the ground of the sea is not leveled and so the waves come and bounce back to the sea. As a result you get force from either side. If you are not careful enough, the wave can throw you to the sand and you can severely get hurt. Camille was hurt in that way. Now let me tell about the communities. But before that I think I should say about Auroville. I have already said a lot. But now I am gonna say about my own understanding and opinion, nothing else. It can be right or wrong. Its not bookish knowledge, its my opinion only. Informations are available on internet and books, but I didn’t read those. I think there are three groups of people living in Auroville. First group is the Indian local people living like a shadow. They are in front of you, working. But its like you cannot see them, they are invisible. Second group is the foreigners and peoples from other parts of India, who has now become Aurovillians. They are the people who are in scene. And the third group is us, the students and the volunteers. We come, we work, we enjoy and we go. We are not really part of Auroville. We are the people in whom the first and especially the second group want to plant the seed of sustainable village or the seed of the dream they see. We are the people by whom they want to make some work to accelerate their journey towards their aim. We are the people who make Auroville full of life. All of their aim may be same, but the way to reach that is very different. So they are doing different stuffs that results different communities. For example Revelation. This community is maintaining a calm, quiet forest. They are planting trees, making gardens, cultivating crops, but all are in organic way. They are trying to maintain an organic life. On the other hand, Satprem: he is trying to make sustainable buildings with environment friendly materials. Not only these two ways, there are many more communities and people working in very different ways to reach their aim. Whenever we are entering a community, we like it or not, we should be respectful to them. Otherwise we can always leave one community and join another one we like. Oh! I should tell about something very important. May be it is not relevant at this moment, but very important. First thing is, if you are driving alone and you are a girl; please try not to be late at night. I would say not to be alone after sunset, especially on Saturday-Sunday or if there is any party going on. Sometimes some crazy and drunk Indian boys come from surrounding villages and make mess. They will arrive suddenly on the street and will touch your body. You will have all the possibilities to lose your balance and have severe accident. Even there are record of rape and robbery too. So, one should follow the safety measures. Another important thing is scorpion. Sometimes there are scorpions coming out. If you are living in the ground floor and you don’t have any water protection around your house or you don’t have a proper plinth, it can even climb into your room and bite you. By any chance if it bites, immediate go to doctor for treatment. These are poisonous. That’s why everybody should carry torch light at night. I think now I should stop scaring you. Let me talk about some good points again. If you are gonna live at Auroville for quite a long time, you can start looking for house sitting. A lot of Aurovillians go to other places for work or vacation and they want somebody to keep their home safe and clean. They may also have plants and pets to take care. So if yu have contacts you may get the opportunity and you can save money :) Oh! we went to a wedding too. It was the wedding ceremony of the son of one Amma of the office. Amma means the women who is cleaning the office, making tea and all. Generally we call boys anna means, brother, young girls akka, means sister and women amma, means mother. in Tamil appa means father, but people doesn't use it for calling a person. So in the wedding it was so intersting that the caterers come in one line and serve you; as if a train and they will serve you on banana leaf.... interesting. Isn’t it a lot for one month? Actually its nothing. We did a lot, lot more fun. Coming up next friends……..

ON My Way To Auroville

It was almost like a movie-the whole story appears within three hours. Just within two weeks I submitted my design project, finished my exams and I applied for a student visa for India. My parents also wanted to come to Auroville to see the place where their “little” daughter is going to stay. So they applied for tourist visa the same day. The next day was our visa delivery date. We had to wait for one hour and we got our visa. No no …… my parents got there visa, I didn’t. The Embassy told me, “You need to wait for one more week.” What? I begged to them, “I have to reach Auroville by 30th August, otherwise I will miss it. And what will my parents do in Auroville without me, earth construction?” who cares? No one. But thanks to Allah that finally I got my visa on 24th August and within two days I finished all the formalities for my school, packed my bag and on 26th August at 11:30pm we started our journey by bus. I was a little bit excited. Each and everything was new. Even the route that the bus was following, I had never been to this part of Bangladesh before. At mid night we reached Aricha Ferry Ghat. It was a long boring queue to get into the ferry. The night was so dark that you can see the shining water but there was no charm in it. Almost at 1 am our bus got into the ferry and the ferry began to move. I asked the conductor the time it’s going to take and the answer was 1 hour. Fuh! I was pissed. I tried to read something but it didn’t work. So, what to do! Let’s go outside if I get some fresh air. I got down and… O my God….. What’s that? It’s like I was in the middle of the sea. You cannot see anything but you can feel something, something you cannot describe, you can just feel. There was no one on the terrace. The wind was cold and strong. My hair was flying and I was shivering a little. But still I stood there for the whole hour. Amazing, amazing, I don’t have any word to describe that. I am yet speechless. Early in the morning we reached Benapole Border. It was raining, so we had to wait, because we had to walk. Yes, it is not like an airport that your plane lands and your journey is over. No, not at all dear friends, it was the beginning of the journey. We registered ourselves in Bangladeshi Customs Office, walked for 10 minutes and entered India. A lot of porters came running to carry our luggage and said, “Babu amay din”. (Sir, let me carry.) And with this line another chapter of my journey began. I used to read a lot of books from West Bengal and when in the customs office everybody was speaking Bangla with a Calcacian accent, I felt like a character of those books, girl friend of Dhrubo Chowdhury….ufffffff!!!!!! I love him. You know, I have never seen a woman driving bicycle or motor bike with a saree. It was my first observation in India!! Hahahahaha…. I must say Kolkata is a nice city. Before coming here I heard it’s a very nasty city, but it is not. It is far cleaner then Dhaka at least. I think if anyone takes a picture without any people on the road, she can easily proclaim that as a European city. There are two possibilities. Either they are very too conservative to change their architecture and town planning or they don’t have money to change. Not only the public buildings are Colonial, even the street lights are of Colonial style. But the funniest thing is there are lot more customers in the street food shops than the restaurants. Because those are far tasty and obviously lot cheaper. We were in Kolkata just for one night. The next day, on 28th August, we crossed the famous Howrah Bridge by taxi and took “Coromandel Express” from Howrah Junction. I should say, the system they follow to maintain such a huge railway network is amazing and truly admirable. I always wanted to come to India. This is the country that attracted me the most. It has canals, rivers, seas, mountains, DESERT and SNOW. I have never been to a desert or snow. No, there was neither desert nor snow on my way to Auroville. It is the tropical zone of India and it has almost same landscape like our country-Vast crop fields meeting the horizon with small villages sometimes. But all the houses has exactly same staircase that make them look a like…….oh!! They are just like me. They like vibrant colors. hahhah… Now my friend, I am going to give you an advice. Don’t worry, its 100% free. In train never take the first seat of a compartment. You can take, but may be then you may need to use a clip to close your nose. The toilets smell so good you know!!!!!!! Finally we reached Chennai at 5 pm. One night at Chennai was nice. I did a very important thing. I bought a SIM card for me. Now it’s time for another free advice. If you want to buy SIM card for your phone please think a lot from where you want to buy it and talk to your shopkeeper in detail to know where it will be on roaming and where it will not. I was very INTELLIGENT (everybody knows). I didn’t buy a SIM from Kolkata. I bought it from Chennai and I put 300 rupees in it. Next day we took a bus from Chennai to Pondicherry and a taxi from Pondi to Auroville. I didn’t know the location of Mitra Youth Camp, so I called one of my friends. I noticed a sign on my screen “Rm”. I didn’t know what that is. But now I know………… still I am on roaming!!!!!!!!! I can’t believe … so be careful. Anyways, my life in Auroville began…

Wonderful Diwali!!!!

Please note that we do not accept any responsibility for your behaviour / safety during your internship (i.e. driving around in the night, driving without licence or without vehicle insurance, swimming at the beach, any misconduct in public spaces, etc.). We will decline any responsibility if you don’t behave well and we will inform your parents and your school if something wrong happens.

-From my appointment letter for Auroville Erath Institute

This is the paragraph at which I laughed the most, the most. What problem can I create? Getting drunk? I think this is the extreme that could happen. But no chance for that too. I belief I am “Jate matal tale thik”. So forget it, everything’s gonna be fine.

But trust me, I was completely wrong. 15^th October, 2009, we were going for dinner at koilapalayam. Me an Camille, we share one moped. Few minutes from our house the moped got stop-no more petrol. We parked it beside the road near Upasana. Next morning Lakshman, the owner of the moped came, repair the moped and left it at the same place. Its ok for us, we can take it at any time, just we need some petrol to buy.

17^th October was Diwali. So Bharat Nivas arranged fireworks and traditional Kathakali dance. Solar Kitchen arranged free dinner. Who would miss it? We will not! So we bought petrol and walked to the moped. But……. Wait! Where is the moped?

Its not there, someone stolen our moped and now we have to pay 16000 rupees to Lakshman. Nice Diwali eve. Okay, whatever happened, leave it. We went for Kathakali dance.

Friends, trust me, it is the most horrific classical dance. I doubt if there is any particular note for these dance or they just shout and jump out of nothing. In short after this performance I am not really interested for another one.

Don’t miss the “Free Dinner” at Solar Kitchen if you are here in Diwali. It’s awesome. But when you are going there don’t wear new shoes, it will be stolen. Celine lost her shoes. You have to keep your shoes outside to enter the restaurant and for free dinner people from nearby villages rush there. After dinner some of them take new shoes as Diwali gift!!

No, yet it is not the end. We came back home, at Reveletion. It was only 10 pm and we were not at all sleepy. So five of us sat outside our room and Juliet played some music on her mobile. The music was nice enough that we started dancing. Can you tell me how loud a mobile phone can be? Let me tell you. It was soooooooooo loud (!!!!!!!) that Natali, the owner of Reveletion came and started shouting on us, “Out, tomorrow morning all of you are out.”……… so, out! That was the worst that can happen in one day… actually one night.

Next day 7 o’clock we went to CSR, asked Satprem for accommodation and shifted there………. Happy Diwali!!!!! *photos are at Picasa