Auroville- Where you hear the loudest silence.
Auroville is an universal place. It’s a dream, it’s a place without God, religion and money. Auroville was the dream of Mirra Alfassa who is popularly known as The Mother, who came from Paris just to build a peaceful and silent place in the world which has harmony. It has residences from more than 50 countries now. That is how Auroville has spread out around the world.
On our second day of Pondicherry trip, we decided to visit the heart of Pondicherry; Auroville. Auroville is a beautiful area covering 5 villages. It has schools, art-heritages, eateries and everything that is needed for a simple and minimalistic life.
So we drove to Auroville by 8 after a oatmeal breakfast as my sister likes to have it. Journey to reach Auroville itself is so peaceful that it instantly felt home. It is a village-ish town.
We reached there and found the food so delicious (& economical) that my BIL (Brother-In-Law) and me instantly ordered for Idly, Dosa, Coffee and Fruit bowl to my Sister. Once energised, we waited in the lobby for the pre-booking of passes for the next day to Matrimandir.
Usually, like out of 364 days out of 365 in a year, I carry at least one of my ID Proofs, everywhere. But to my misfortune when I visited Pondicherry, I had accidentally left it in my other bag. I was really scared of not getting a pass just because of my stupidity. But then as my sister and me look alike, they valued her ID Proof and on their guarantee they put us all on the waiting list as we were the last ones. The tour to Matrimandir was fixed for the day next.
As we had a lot of time to kill, we rented the 3 bicycles and roamed through out Auroville for the next half day. As my bicycle had no air in its tire, I’d to peddle harder in order to maintain the pace with my sister and BIL.
We stopped at one of the Auroville hotels for food. But my curd rice accidentally had some dead worm in it. Being a veggie, trust me! that is an awful scene especially when you have had 4–5 spoons from it already. Empty stomach, sunlight, extra strength for peddling made me so irritated that I had planned not to come back the next day! My hunger-anger was calmed only after my sister bought me an extra large burger and my BIL bought me some Auroville cookies from Auroville Bakery, once out. Then we came back from Auroville village and headed towards Chunnambar Beach.
My extraaaa laaarge burger!! ;)
Even being half minded, I had to go Auroville the next day as it was our last day. Though scared being on the waiting list and not getting a pass, we went there on time and luckily, we were allowed for the Matrimandir tour. All 3 of us were so happy.
Matrimandir is like a km or two away from from the lobby area. In the morning we walked there and batch wise they took us on the tour inside. Matrimandir is a huge structure like that of a lotus just blooming out. Small 8 petals shaped rooms are designed for meditation with different colours.
They had made us wear socks and asked to maintain death silence. Cleanliness and silence is what you majorly see in there. Inside was just mesmerising. Just a ray of sunlight was falling on the crystal globe which spread out glowing the whole room. The light was so calming that when we were made to sit on the carpets, some closed their eyes and some looked straight into the concentrated light on the globe. I would have regretted if at all I had missed it as I am interested in these a little more.
Once out, we went around the shopping malls, eateries and museum. In museum, they have displayed a lot of stories, pictures, progression of Auroville and in the end they gave us a little doll called the tsunami girl.
Yes!!Auroville is a place without God, religion and money. It is a one time experience. I just cannot explain the way I felt inside and later on whole day. It looked like another world with only peace and harmony and silence. There, silence has more value than words. There, silence is a better teacher than that of speech. There, you hear the silence
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Auroville is another new world and Matrimandir is just an unexplainable experience one can just have. I would definitely recommend. Catch my whole story of Pondicherry in my next blog.
Until next time!!
Cheerios :)
