I Love You TWO
(For people not aware of what is happening within Auroville, not everything here might be relatable.)
I met Rakhal and the rest of the Aspiration Programme team in 2015. By then I had lived almost a year in Auroville and I experienced first hand what Egle beautifully shared in her post “How to distinguish between newcomers, guests, and aurovilians, an anecdote”: I was tired of seeing the “Auroville face” from the old aurovilians who kept repeating how glorious the past was and how pitiful the current situation is, with no sign of hope for progress.
Rakhal is an old aurovilian but he didn’t carry the burnt-out “Auroville face”; rather, he was full of energy and excitement as anyone who reads the Dream for the first time! The Aspiration Programme team in general, and Rakhal in particular, were for me the biggest inspiration and showed me the hope. Seven years later, today Rakhal or anyone in the Aspiration team might not even remember my face or name. I would be surprised if anyone remembers me. Not because I doubt their memory but because I never shared how much influence they had on me when I joined Auroville, and how bad I was at keeping up the communication with them. Nevertheless, I have shared with countless people how inspiring Rakhal was for me, and encouraged many to attend the Aspiration Programme (and now the Yucca programme).
I met Srimoyi, Dhanya and many others in the Aspiration programme and felt very enriched by all the experiences and views that they shared. Over the last 8 years, I have come in contact with several other Aurovilians including Pashi, Alan, Antim, Aravinda, Arun, Carel, Chandresh, Deven, Divyanshi, Egle, Geeta, Hemant Lamba, Hemant Shekar, Induja, Jasmine, Joseba, Lakshay, Manas, Manoj, Sangeetha, Sauro, Selvaraj, Torkil, Uma, Ulli, and have been inspired by each of them in one way or another. The list is not exhaustive. I know I have left out so many other friends. Let’s keep that aside. Like Rakhal, all these people might not know me, or know that they have inspired me. I have never shared it with them. However, they all collectively contributed to the “Auroville baby” that I carry in my heart today. A fun trivia: “Talam” was named in the Town Hall cafeteria by Manoj, in the presence of Manas, during breakfast time.
Now, the baby in my heart seeing the very same people who “mothered” it in conflict with each other, I have no words to express. To me, it was a paralysis at one level, where I’m unable to “move”. Who does the baby in my heart choose to “love”, and who can it even think of ignoring? Paralysis of this baby is too small an expression for what it goes through. At the same time, I have learned through my life experience “to work” through difficult times despite being crippled emotionally. In my smaller family, and among friends and relatives, so many incidents of “either you are with me or you are with them” have come up in the past. This reminds me of two famous quotes, one from the Bible and another from the Maha Upanishad:
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
One is a relative, the other stranger, say the small minded. The entire world is a family, live the magnanimous.
What is the way forward for the baby that was collectively mothered in our community? Matthew 6:24, or Maha Upanishad 71–73?
Personally, for me, the Maha Upanishad is the way to go. I feel, and I say: I love you two.
I wanted to write this message for a long time but, due to various reasons, I kept procrastinating.
I don’t have enough knowledge of all the backstories of the events that have been happening for quite some time now. I didn’t invest myself in digging through all the backstories, events, facts and myths to contribute to a meaningful discussion.
I see my work at Talam (be it the Y-Code that we started recently, or Talam Pay that we have been running for over a year now, or the 35+ different services that we do at Talam) as my contribution to the community and the development of the baby. To invest myself in digging through the backstories, myths and facts didn’t seem practical for my schedule at Talam. I stayed away from the heated discussions on various channels but was nevertheless pained by the incidents that are happening. I didn’t act or share my views except under two compelling incidents. For an outsider, this might seem like I’m least interested in Auroville, but that’s not the truth. Recently a friend called me home and asked where I stand. I couldn’t share much in that meeting, for lack of words and expression.
I wanted to write and share with the larger family how I feel and what I stand for. By now, you know how I feel; but before I share what I stand for, I want to narrate three anecdotes from my life:
- I have had serious conflicts with my wife, to the point of breaking away from the relationship, but even in those moments of conflict, we both took care to contain them and not let them outburst in front of our kids. Our kids do know that we were in conflict, but they never carried the scar of our fights. Because deep in our hearts, despite all the seriousness of our conflicts, both my wife and I believed that the conflict was a passing cloud and that we cared for each other. Any outburst in front of our kids would create a deeper scar for them that wouldn’t heal even after we healed our own conflicts. As a couple we believed our own differences would merge or dissolve, but to highlight them on big screens in front of our kids would stay longer in their memory. Apart from these reasons, we believed our kids are a symbol of our commitment to a life larger than our own bigger egos.
- I have had serious conflicts with a dear friend in the midst of struggling to run a business that I was learning to manage. I had given commitments to companies that I would deliver results on various terms. These conflicts with my friend could not stand in the way of delivering my commitments to the companies that trusted me with their projects. Moreover, I had a team to pay. A problem with my friend, however emotionally disturbing, could not disturb the lives of my team members who were depending on my business for their salary, and the companies that trusted me with their work.
- I have had serious conflicts with my parents, to the point of not speaking a word with them for a prolonged time, but I never got into bad-mouthing them to my friends, wife and kids, something I would regret later in my life for doing.
Of course, I’m highlighting only those instances in my life where I handled the situation with a bit of maturity and balance, and not sharing those incidents where I screwed up. I now have a very healthy and loving relationship with my wife, my friend and my parents. In each of the above instances, one can find a common thread that kept my relationships from going beyond repair:
- Recognising that fights are temporary passing clouds between two people, not making them a permanent memory by building monuments over them.
- “Whatever happens, life has to go on.” There are things that I, that we, have committed to that are larger than me and us. This “larger than me/us goal” cannot suffer because I, or we, are “not in a good mood”.
- Genuinely acknowledging the gifts that they shared in my life in several forms, and being grateful for them even in times of hardship.
There are two phases to my feelings: one at the time of conflict, and another after the conflict is resolved. The one during the conflict is short-lived, but the damage it causes outlives the lifespan of that feeling.
When I’m in the middle of a heated fight with my wife, and my kid suddenly shows up saying he is hungry, my wife suddenly leaves the fight wherever it is and goes to cook or serve food. At this point, my ego can get hurt; I can think, “What the hell is she doing with that food when the relationship is on fire? Does she care for the long-term relationship with me, or that silly everyday snack time for the kid?”
When I’m in the middle of a conflict with my friend, attending the business meetings at my company and running the business as usual may trigger my friend to think of me as being very indifferent to his emotional needs, and portray me as selfish, someone who thinks only of business and money.
When I’m in serious conflict with my parents, it’s very tempting to say all the negativity I have for them and justify how good I am in all things and how bad they are in everything, so as to secure “my image” in my social circle as a good guy. It can feel foolish to acknowledge that my parents are indeed good while I’m still in conflict with them.
However, all these feelings seem “correct” only when “in the midst of conflict”. They are proved absolutely irresponsible when one is on the other side of the dark tunnel. On the other side of the tunnel, I’ll be thankful to my wife for caring for and nurturing our kids even in times of conflict, and not starving them. My friend will see that it was not for money, nor did I value him less, when I had to take care of the business in the midst of an emotional storm. And I will thank myself for not shaming my parents, when I later reunite with them.
With those anecdotes from my life, I now come back to share what I stand for:
- Taking care of “our baby” both inside and outside our master plan. Our baby lives in the hearts of millions of people outside the master plan as much as it lives in our hearts inside the MP. Not creating a scar in the hearts of people that will live longer even when we come back together as one.
- Serving the community as a whole, and running the show no matter what happens. The various services that each of us are doing need to go on.
- Treating everyone with respect, and not being tempted to justify my “correctness” by spreading negativity about the other, but rather acknowledging the positivity wherever it is.
Thank you for your time in reading this lengthy letter. I love you TWO.
Anbudan,
Shankardevy