Carrying Auroville within

Could you share a little about your beginnings, your family’s arrival in Auroville, and what your childhood here was like?

My father was in Germany when he first heard about Auroville. He met someone who told him about it, and with his best friend, he wrote to The Mother to express their interest. She responded warmly and invited them to come. They travelled across India, beginning in the north, meeting various teachers and holy men, including Babaji. Eventually, they met The Mother and decided to stay in Auroville.

My mother arrived later, in 1975. She had heard about Auroville through someone she met in the south of France. She never met The Mother, but she felt deeply drawn to the place.

They began their life in Aurogreen, and I was born soon after.

My childhood was truly beautiful. We lived very simply and closely with the land. My mother had a vegetable garden, and we grew our own ragi, millets, fruits, and vegetables. She was always present, always tending to the place, and there was a deep sense of being held and cared for.

My father, together with Charlie, supplied much of the food for Auroville at the time, as Aurogreen was one of the earliest farms. They milked cows every morning, and I remember wanting to be just like him. I was given my own goats, which I cared for with great pride.

I feel very fortunate to have been born here.

How did your path unfold beyond Auroville, and what brought you back?

The schooling in Auroville was quite fluid in those days. The older children mostly went to what was known as Johnny’s School, while I attended Transition. From what I recall, my mother and Samata were involved in starting it, creating something that was needed for the children.

Later, the system began to fragment. The French students went in one direction to the Lycee, and the English-speaking students were sent to Kodaikanal. I completed my baccalaureate in Pondicherry, but I found the experience deeply challenging.

Yet during those years, every time I returned to Auroville, I found myself drawn to planting trees. We would gather with older children and plant trees, and even in other places we continued this work. It remained a quiet thread running through everything.

After finishing school, I did my first Vipassana. That marked the beginning of a deeper interest in spirituality, although I was still quite lost at the time.

I then went to Europe, which was a profoundly difficult period for me. Many people are able to navigate the outside world with ease, but I struggled. At the same time, I encountered individuals who opened something new in me, including Dr. Roland Schutzbach, Dr. Madan Kataria, and Patch Adams*. Through them, I discovered a different dimension of being, rooted in laughter, joy, and connection.

I began working with Dr. Schutzbach, mainly in Germany and Switzerland, assisting with laughter parades and interviewing people about laughter. Throughout this time, I carried a persistent longing to return to Auroville.

It was in Schweibenalp, Switzerland, a spiritual centre for unity, that I came to a deeper understanding of who The Mother was. Growing up in Auroville, her presence is woven into everyday life, almost taken for granted. But there, something shifted. I had an experience that unfolded into a deeper perception, a sense of immensity, a vast inner opening that is difficult to put into words.

Alongside this, I had always seen Auroville as a place of ecological possibility. I wanted to work with the land, to plant trees, to contribute in that way. To me, ecological success is inseparable from economic survival. Without it, we are moving toward collapse.

So I returned.

I studied in botanical gardens and began small-scale planting projects. I started planting indigenous trees in the Greenbelt. For a time, there was funding, but eventually it was withdrawn.

How does Auroville live within you, inwardly? In what sense is it home, beyond being a place where you live and work?

I feel that because I was born here, because I grew up here and went to Auroville schools, there is no real separation. I am Auroville, and Auroville is me. Wherever I go, I carry it within me.

I remember being in Taiwan, for instance, living in a large house with people from different parts of the world. We were teaching languages to children and sharing a space across several floors. We lived together in a kind of harmony. There was very little conflict. It felt like a small Auroville.

In a way, it has often been easier for me to live the Auroville ideal outside of Auroville. When I return, there can be tensions, conflicts with neighbours, questions of control and authority. It feels as though we sometimes forget why we are here.

Still, wherever I go, I carry that aspiration. I am not a perfect Aurovilian, but I strive toward it. My aim is to develop the twelve qualities of the Mother, and to open myself to the different aspects of the Divine Mother, to move closer to those presences, to live something of that consciousness. That is why we are here, to live a divine life.

Has there been an inner thread that has guided you over the years? Something you could return to within yourself?

Yes, I feel it is the divine force, an invisible presence that guides us. It is about trusting that there is something guiding us, and believing in it deeply.

For me, it comes down to faith. To believe in oneself, and to believe that there is a guiding force. To hold onto that with steadiness. It is not easy, because the human mind pulls us in many directions. But to return again and again to that unshakeable faith is essential.

And in the present moment, how do you experience what is happening in Auroville?

Right now, it feels like a kind of psychological pressure. There is a great deal of fear. People are afraid to express their opinions. Some are struggling financially, losing work, feeling pushed to align themselves in certain ways. Others feel overwhelmed, even broken.

There is also a tendency to surrender and simply follow, to let others decide and govern. But I do not feel that this is why we are here. Auroville is not meant to function under conventional political structures. It is meant to move toward something else, something closer to a form of divine governance. We are not there yet, but that is the direction.

If we allow ourselves to be governed in the conventional ways of the world, then it ceases to be Auroville.

In times of uncertainty like these, we often encounter parts of ourselves we have not seen before. Has this period revealed anything to you about yourself?

It has shown me that I am human, the fear I carry, and the quiet uncertainty of not knowing if I will still be able to live here is present every day.

So the question becomes whether I will stand for what I believe, or remain silent. For me, it feels clear that I need to speak up.

For example, I believe in the Youth Centre, and I see it being dismantled. There are not enough of us asking questions, standing there and simply asking under what authority these actions are being taken, where the orders are coming from. These questions are not answered.

At the same time, narratives are created about the youth, about their behaviour. But I feel we need to look more deeply. If there are issues, we need to understand why, rather than remove the space altogether. The youth are the future, and they need to be supported.

If this moment were to be seen as a teacher, individually and collectively, what would it be asking of us?

I feel it’s asking a very simple but essential question: are we ready to stand for what we believe, or will we allow ourselves to be crushed? One can choose to wait, to let things pass, but at this point it feels important to take a stance for what we believe in, and against what feels unjust. That, to me, is the core of it.

Returning to the question of purpose, how do you experience your role or contribution to Auroville, both inwardly and outwardly?

When I met Dr. Roland Schutzbach, Dr. Madan Kataria, and Patch Adams, they revealed another possibility to me. One can remain in states of heaviness or depression, or one can choose joy, laughter, and lightness. Laughter became a kind of practice, almost like a meditation.

To me, when you are happy, you are also healthier. There is so much suffering in the world, so much heaviness, and I feel that part of my role is simply to bring more joy into it. To embody that, even in difficult times. There is always something to laugh about.

What are the small daily practices that help you return to yourself? Could you share more about laughter as a practice, and anything else that grounds you?

I have returned to laughter quite consciously in recent days. It has always been somewhere in the background, but now I am reconnecting with it more deliberately. Sometimes I join online laughter sessions, although I find that in Auroville, people can be quite serious, so it is not always easy to find that shared space.

Ideally, I would love to see a laughter club here, where even a small group could come together regularly. It does not need to be long, perhaps ten minutes a day or an hour a week, but consistently, over time. It becomes a way of releasing accumulated tension and emotion, and of observing what shifts within.

Recently, I felt overwhelmed, mentally and emotionally. My mind was crowded, and I found myself crying without clear reason. It felt like too much. That is when I realised I needed to ground myself again. I began a forty-day laughter practice, simply for myself, as a way of returning.

Alongside this, meditation helps me quiet the mind. To simply sit, to listen to the trees, to be with nature. That also brings me back.

What do you notice when the practice of laughter begins to take effect?

There is a sense of relaxation. A lightness. You begin to notice that laughter comes more easily throughout the day. There is a natural happiness that arises.

If you look at children, they move through emotions very freely. They cry, and then they laugh again almost immediately. They laugh up to 300 times a day. As adults, we sometimes hardly laugh at all.

Laughter as a practice can seem mechanical from the outside, but it is a process. You begin by engaging in it intentionally, almost as an exercise. Over time, something shifts. The body responds first. The breath deepens, the diaphragm engages, and there is a physical release. The body does not distinguish between what is initiated and what is spontaneous. And gradually, the mind follows.

When you imagine Auroville some years from now, what qualities or spirit do you hope will guide the community forward?

I return to something very simple. Goodwill.

Auroville was built on people who came with goodwill, who offered what they could, whether skills, energy, or resources. That quality feels essential.

I also hope we move beyond this division of “us” and “them.” It has existed from the beginning, perhaps everywhere in the world, but there is a need to move beyond it. To recognise that there is only “us.” Differences in perspective will always exist, but they need not create separation.

I hope for a movement toward unity, where the community functions and moves like one body. Guided by intuition, by a higher understanding, and by love.

At the moment, it feels fragmented, as though different parts are moving in different directions. But the aspiration would be to come back into coherence, into a shared movement.