by Gordon Korstange
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December 29
 ackals
are howling somewhere -- a pack of them looking for a snack. A cry like a baby, high pitched, unmistakable above the soft whispers of the night, the night of 3 a.m., after all the lingering human sounds are sucked into the stars. Only the ocean's roar is left, the waves rolling into the sand again and again. Smash. The beating, the retreating, and then, in the space of the retreat, the jackals cry on the scent of some prey -- pray, you creature -- unworldly jackals, ghost dogs of the night.
January 1
or once this old moped starts up right away -- only four tries, pushing the pedal down with my left foot, not too fast, letting the clutch out with the lever on the left handlebar and turning the accelerator on the right handlebar toward me, simultaneously.
It's 5 a.m. I have slept through my watch's alarm and missed the bus from Aspiration to the amphitheater bonfire. I think of the Thirupavai, the ancient Tamil poem by Andal, the woman saint, that is sung on the radio here in the early morning. In that series of poems, one for each day of the month, Andal calls upon other young girls like herself to arise, bathe in the cold, purifying December waters, and aspire for Krishna's grace.
So here I am, having struggled out of bed, sleep still clinging to me, perhaps as pure as I can be. The moped hums out on the road as I negotiate the craters, my headlight picking out old men squatting by the side, too old, probably, to learn how to use the new Kuilapalayam toilets put up with Auroville's help.
Other lights beside mine are on the road, most heading for the Matrimandir, but a few going the opposite way to the Ashram to hear the new year's music at 6 a.m.
Suddenly, as I pass the outskirts of Kuilapalayam village, I hear an awful clunking noise coming from somewhere in the moped's drive mechanism, and the thing stops. The engine roars lustily, but the vehicle responds with what sounds like a death rattle to me. Breakdown.
I turn and pedal it back towards the village. Just then Selva comes by on his motorcycle and shouts that he will return for me after he's deposited his sister and child. I park the now totally silent moped and decide to walk to meet him.
 o I am on the road, under the stars, walking towards a bonfire. Scorpio's rising in the east. Vehicles still pass me; I guess I won't be that late. I relax. The night is wonderful and I'm now awake, even more purified without the moped noise, walking in the dark, senses alert. I begin to think that I won't mind walking all the way to the Matrimandir, chanting a mantra, never mind when I might arrive.
We are going up the path to the amphitheater. Candles in bags glow by its side. Who is looking out through the windows of the Matrimandir diving bell. Everyone is there already. I can see sparks from the fire floating up to the stars.
A woman walks ahead of us. She has short hair and is smoking a cigarette. The smoke trails behind her right into my face. She flicks ashes onto the path. Is it legal to smoke here? Somehow I can't stand this -- especially at 5:15 a.m -- to smoke. I suddenly want to say something to her, like -- like what? My friends don't say anything. The smoke hits me in the face and tickles my nose. Our feet crunch the gravel.
The fire burns. In the center of the amphitheater, they have made a large, elevated, round fire pit that looks like the one at an Olympic stadium. This makes it less like a bonfire and more like a ceremony. It's harder for kids to mess around with.
So simple, this New Year's/Darshan ritual. Just Aurovilians sitting in a circle watching a fire; like sitting in a circle watching the crystal. So simple. Is this enough to create a sense of unity among this sampling of ordinary earthlings? Shouldn't we chant, sing or dance? Shouldn't we listen to music or hear Savitri?
The fire burns and each of us sees in it the shapes and hues of our aspirations; each remembers, for a moment, that we are in Auroville to burn up the used lumber of our old lives; each waits for the rising sun of a new year, to greet the dawn in silence and perhaps prayer -- not the way of the West, to make noise at some artificial point called midnight.
It grows lighter. The shapes around me are more recognizable. The children grow restless. People begin moving closer to the dying fire. The east lightens. Two crows perch in a tree. With the fire down, the damp cold of dawn seems clammy. It is time to get up and greet each other, to break the silence, greet each other as new year Aurovilians.
January 3
 am
on am bicycling today. Pondicherry is closed up with a fisherman's bundh (forcible closing of shops and offices), and there is no petrol. It's 10 a.m. I push my pedals on the road between Aspi and Certitude. Motorbikes pass me. Many.
Every AVian seems to have a motorbike today, except me. They have petrol. They fly by and I decide to count. How many will pass me in the 10Ð15 minutes it takes to go reach the turn-off towards Forecomers. 18. Later, someone tells me that it was a mini-Pour Tous rush hour shopping run that most people were making. Oh.
Then I'm coasting down the tree-lined road to Forecomers. No motorbikes here, just a "work" tree forest on either side that provides shade.
I find Ed's house just outside the main gate to Forecomers. It's tea time of course. He and Mindy have a great stereo system. They've got phone and fridge. They've got e-mail. Now, one can contact an increasing number of AVians via the Internet. Some, like Ed, have their own computer setup, so that they receive it directly. Others have it delivered to them.
* * *
Ed takes me into the famous Forecomers canyon. I remember it long ago as being rough and red earth. Now, trees old and new, have given it a green cast and native vegetation is growing back. Auroville rents it each year (since it's technically government land) so that the goats can be kept out.
But what about the people? We climb a far edge of it and there, in a field, are the stone markings for housing plots -- Pondicherry territory beyond Jipmer hospital; bustling Pondicherry beginning to lap up against Auroville, an intimation of things to come.
Ed tells me of the sinking water table. The rains don't come. AVians want lawns. But then there are the Tamilian farmers who get cheap electricity and pump water all day long, selling it on the sly to others in their villages. One such farmer was found to be pumping one million liters a day.
We climb out of the canyon. Once, Ed tells me, he came to blows with a local guy who destroyed trees in the canyon. The police were called in; the guy went to jail; his family came and pleaded with Ed to help get him back. Every greenbelt community has tales like this. Reclaiming the red earth of Auroville has been a tree-by-tree, day-by-day endeavor. I look back on the tops of green trees swaying in the sea breeze.
January 7
t's time to leave already. Am I ready? Yes and no. I spent seven years here. On the second day that I was back I looked around and said to myself, "This is really different." Then I looked again.
Beneath the big houses, the "paved" roads, the motorbike tires, the automobiles!, the Matrimandir, is the same red earth I remember, the same bird song in the morning, sunlight from the bay, sea wind, termite castles, thorn bush fences, bullock carts, bicycles, sound of a twilight volleyball game, cool evening, stars in a clear night, crickets, dangling light hanging from a thatched roof.
The land, the climate, the culture lay claim to this place. Auroville, to its credit, still exists within this context. In the
Auroville of 1996, even with its TVs, motorbikes, computers, noisy parties, is still the Auroville of 1971, 25 years ago, when the faint cries of jackals were borne from the bare canyons on the evening sea breeze.
January 8
ndia isn't going to let me get away without one more test. I'm in the Madras airport. I've said good-bye to Selva, surrounded by the hordes of people who seemingly wait in this airport all day and night on the other side of the rope, creating a certain frenzied atmosphere in which we look at each other knowing that it's time to say something important, but the crowd noise is swelling in upon us and we don't know what to say, and his eyes, those deep eyes that contain his soul so palpably, brown, liquid, flashing with feeling, looking into my own blue ones, there in the airport with a thousand people crowding around.
It's hot. No, it's sweltering. No, it's absolutely stifling. Outside, an exceptionally cool Tamil Nadu evening. Inside this airport the air-conditioning is broken and none of the widows can be opened. Sweat pours down my face. My polo shirt is soaked. No air. I hurry to the departure lounge, hoping that it will be cooler. No. The temperature must be about 105 degrees Fahrenheit.
* * *
I go to a shop which sells an incredible assortment of Indian gew-gads, from cheap musical instruments to cheap jewelry to gaudy clothes. As I buy an ankle bracelet and a kurta, the owner tells me that the air-conditioning has been broken for two weeks!
People are beginning to panic in this stifling heat. Especially the westerners. The fans don't work either. I'm pacing the place, heat-frantic, wondering how long until the plane is called. Suddenly, as they try to start the air-conditioning, the entire airport is plunged into darkness. Complete. I stop.
Outside, the jets are lit up, the only things, and they glow like galaxies. The electricity comes back on, stays for a moment, and then goes out again. No one moves in the darkness. Jet lights twinkle outside.
Soon I will be safe and cool on that British Airways 747 out there, but right now I am standing in the sweltering Madras airport darkness. I have been here before -- on a train so crowded that I had to walk out of it stepping on people's shoulders; in a meals hotel sleeping on one of the tables because the bus broke down; trapped in a cheap Madras hotel room because a Tamilian politician, MGR, had died, and his supporters were making sure that nothing moved in the city for three days.
India throws these extreme moments at you when you least expect them, to show you just how much you can stand and then stand some more. I am standing -- standing and waiting -- waiting for the inner quietude that will sustain me even through these moments. What else do they come for? What else did I come for?
* * *
End note: A massive snowstorm closed the Boston airport for three days, and I just managed to get a change of flight from London to Montreal, leaving my luggage behind, and arriving in 5-degree weather wearing only the light pants and polo shirt that I had put on in India.
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