India Fall 2004
Student Weblog
(This weblog is in chronological order)
Looking Back at Orientation at Sirius
We’re finally online in India after a series of technical and electrical difficulties! We can hardly believe we’ve been here a month already.
It’s kind of tricky to summarize the past five weeks. We’ve done so much that we couldn’t possibly begin to write in this space all that we have learned and shared and seen and experienced, but we suppose we will start.
Time doesn’t exist here in quite the same way it does normally in the States. Orientation was blissful. We sat around in circles and shared our worldviews, our thoughts, feelings, hopes, and fears for our impending voyage to India. It was an intense, fast, get-to-know-you experience. And we ate really fantastic food. The people at Sirius are the best. Monique taught us all about how to stay healthy and well in a tropical climate where things grow a lot faster than they do in New England. Dagen led us through lots of games and activities that made us feel silly and uninhibited around each other. Julianne and Raven led us through all kinds of group-building activities: we took turns teaching each other about different learning styles and different educational methods and schools of thought.
- Phil and Jessica
Arriving in Auroville
Then we went on an excessively long plane ride, by the time we got to India nobody could remember their name - well they could, but we were jet lagging. Then we had an adventurous van ride through the winding streets of Chennai and arrived in Auroville some 3 hours later. We all needed rest so we crashed and woke up MUCH later.
The next week was a blur, we toured farms, businesses, opened bank accounts, sampled some Indian cuisine, and learned what it would take to survive the treacheries of the heat. Our second week here internships started. Four students are interning at Solitude farm, learning the ins and outs of sustainable farming in a community setting while incorporating Fukuoka’s philosophy into the design of the farm - these students come home muddy every day. Two students are digging ditches and cutting down trees (sustainably) at the botanical gardens - they come home with blisters and stories of playing with scorpions and building huge fires. One student is holding it strong at KOFPU, the organic food processing business - she comes back with flowers in her hair. Three students are teaching math and English at a school for young Tamil women (the Life Education Center) where they transcend all language barriers and have a great time. After three weeks of attending the internships everyone is still going strong and loving what they are doing.
In addition to our internships we have had some rocking seminars on permaculture, bioregionalism, culture, religion, chanting, cooking, instrument building, and sustainability in practice in India. We are all geniuses now...we spend lots of time in the library reading - however we can not deny that the fan in the library does attract us on hot days. Megan had her birthday. It was fun. We gave her a thumbs up and had a chocolate date cake. Raven had hers too, but there was no cake or singing. Instead, we went to dinner at a rooftop restaurant and drank lassis and lime sodas like it was 1999. Sometimes at night we find scorpions in our house. They come in to find cockroaches. Most of the time they just go to visit Iva and Andy, and most of the time they traumatize Andy. Dance parties are the norm in the kitchen. We all miss radio so much that we bust out into random acts of the classic 70’s hits that you might find on rock ballad compilation sets.
- Jessica and Phil
The Real Scoop
Emily H. wants emails from her friends and refuses to wear sunscreen. Megan says “uuuuhhhhh?!?!” and “give me a bowl of sugar”. Raven wants (and gets) proper tea. Jessica has boils and wants to become a raw foodist. Phil picked up a scorpion and has blisters on his hands. Andy broke 4 bikes - he has blisters too - but honestly, 4 bikes! Iva is a freelance herbalist and has the power of light. Amara is our doctor - and with success. Julianne is opening up to spicy food - psych! Brian likes giving away his sunscreen to Tamil kids at the beach. Emily WB gets all the mail and loves it. Megan McB is over her allergies and loves tofu - psych!
We love it here!
Jessica and Phil
Hampi!
Here we are in Hampi, a stunning place, one of the most beautiful and magical places on the planet. It reminded us instantly of the South West, but the feeling was older and more exotic. There were huge (and we mean enormous) granite boulders everywhere, strewn across the landscape, gathered into mountains and cliffs, and spread out wide across valleys. Below our vantage point we were situated quite high) we could see and hear the Tunghabhadra River furiously winding its way through the giant granite landscape, splitting into tributaries to accommodate the rocks and rejoining itself again further downstream to become a wide more mellow, meandering river. In the distance towered the huge white pyramidal (thousands of years old) Virupaksha Temple, indicating the edge of the village of Hampi itself.
The geological landscape of our location - the Deccan Plateau - is apparently one of the oldest in the world, around 4 billion years We could easily imagine dinosaurs hunting in the plateau below and pterodactyls swooping overhead. This place was the inspiration for Rudyard Kipling's "Jungle Book". Hampi (otherwise known as Vijanagar) is a World Heritage Site consisting of innumerable ancient temple ruins. Once the capital of one of the largest Hindu Empires in India, famous for its riches and spiritual tolerance, it controlled the spice trade for South India, but collapsed in the 17th century after a bloody Muslim invasion. Hampi is the site for several important Hindu mythological events. For example, in the Ramayana, it's the place where Hanuman (the monkey God of devotion and the wind) was born and met Ram. Parvati is supposed to have prayed for a husband here, and been given Shiva as her consort (they married in one of the temples).
The site of our student trip was the Open Island Center (OIC) in the Yamini Hills, a rocky-river wilderness area a few miles upstream from Hampi. It was established as a retreat space and students from our program have been coming there for the past few years. Accommodation was basic, consisting of about 16 caves (more being developed) - primitive living spaces dotted around the island. There was also a central adobe type building that houses a simple kitchen, storage area and communal outdoor eating area (basically a few pillars covered by a banana leaf roof, with a single light). There were some bamboo and banana leaf shack toilets (i.e. a hole in the ground), a water storage area that serves as an outdoor shower, a couple of water buffalo roaming around (providing milk curd) and a couple of organic growing fields for basic foods.
The intention for this week-long trip was for the students to experience a 40 hour sacred solo in their own special cave, fasting with just water. It was an immersion experience spent deep in the solitude of nature, a time for the students to contemplate their lives.
