Auroville

"Auroville wants to be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realise human unity."  -the Mother

We were not aloud to stay in Auroville because Auroville has policies requiring guests to stay for at least a week, and still frowns on those staying less than two, and seeing as we could only spend three nights (and promise to contribute a mere three days of labor), we were told that we were "not serious enough" for Auroville, and were kindly advised to go and realize human unity somewhere else.  So we went to a small town outside of Auroville, and we have spent our last several nights here, spitefully declining to volunteer our labor to support a cause that similarly declined to support us.  No, that is not true...  It would have been a long walk back into Auroville, and I was nearing the end of my book, and we needed to go into Pondicherry to buy rail tickets, etc...  We will head out to Auroville today to see what is going down.  The UW group will be back tonight from their weekend trip, so there will be a place where we are welcome.  And we rented a scooter, so it will no longer be a 5k walk in 90 degree weather.  

 We rented the scooter for today because we needed to head into P-town for those train tickets...  Scooters are expensive-- almost 2 dollars for a whole day-- so we only rented one.  We had already talked, a few days earlier, about the fact that Pondicherry is quite evidently one of the worst places to drive in India.  It is way overcrowded, with bicycles, rickshaws, mopeds and motorcycles rushing and flowing like water in a stream, interspersed with fast fish, cars dodging around and honking their way through motorcycle sized gaps, and great, blunt canoes, buses overloaded with 100+ people, counting on blaring horns and roaring engines to clear a path through the inferior transportational debris with which they must marginally share the limited roadway.  Buses trying to pass buses during rush hour on small, crowded streets, vehicles darting from side roads, or nosing out into traffic so as to stop enough of it to be able to cross the street-- that is, if they didn't just wing it, floor it, and hope for an opening-- these were, these are, the every day, every hour, every minute happenings of the streets of Pondicherry, and to a greater or lesser extent, the streets of most every city in India.  I expected it to be difficult and scary to navigate in these conditions.  Surprisingly, however, it really wasn't that bad.  Moving along at 40k, flowing with the stream of movement, feeling the changes in conditions around me as they occurred, weaving, dodging, braking and accelerating in that giant game of frogger (calculators, anyone?), driving in those wild streets quickly became natural and easy, even with Josh on the back of our little 50cc bike (/lawn mower).  This was good.  We were able to get our errand accomplished, and we did not die, not even partially.

The coolest thing here: the bakery.  The Bakery!  Auroville's bakery is located about 200m from our room, and it is the first real bakery we have come across in India, baking real bread, real pastries, real cakes and sweets and whole wheat pumpernickel giant muffin loaves that are thick and dense and strong and weigh a ton and barely set you back 70 cents........!!!!   Oh, bread, how I look forward to baking and eating so much of you when I get home (in three weeks!)!  This bakery was unfortunately closed this morning when we walked over for breakfast, I believe due to the fact that today is a big Auroville holiday, the birthday of the Mother, one of two major spiritual philosophers (?) who were the founding idealists of Auroville.  I was bummed not to be able to get my hands on some of that fresh bread...  But we ended up getting lost in Pondicherry, running across a woman cooking up some breakfasty goods on a back street, and giving her the equivalent of about 70 cents to feed Josh and I up with some tasty brekkers.  So it was ok.  But bread is better.  Her food was rice flour, white flour, and oil (throw in some spices, sauces, etc).  The bakery has whole wheat.  No contest.  

Ok.  Tomorrow night Josh and I will hop on a train in Chennai, to ride up to Calcutta.  Hopefully we can stock up on bread for the ride tomorrow morning at the bakery.  We have 2.5 weeks left in India.  General excitement.  See you folks soon.