1346 / 1424
1346
I know very concretely that, despite the tremendous difficulties India must
overcome, there is no other land and no other people upon this earth where true
divinity has a home in such a complete, essential and living way.
I do not renounce the understanding I have gained through my experience of being
born and raised in France, for it has become one offering which I could learn to
make at Her feet, towards a more integral realisation.
Auroville, the creation of the Mother based on the foundation of Sri Aurobindo’s
teaching, is a challenge at once terrible and formidably rewarding, as it will
necessarily bring about a real change of consciousness, the very change that the
Mother and Sri Aurobindo have been working for, and India alone is great enough
to shelter and nurture this very difficult and very crucial endeavour.
This is the dharma that has been given me when my being turned to Her, and I
pray and trust that in Her I shall always find the refuge and protection needed to
undergo this change.
Divakar”
***
Note: It was also in April of that year, I think, that Kumar, Manikandan, Gajendran
and I took a trip on two bikes to a place in Tamil Nadu called Kovakam to attend
the last day of a week-long festival dedicated to the mythical godlike figure of
Aravan.
In India for many centuries “hijras” or “alis”, that is, transsexuals and
homosexuals, have been segregated into separate communities, which have
evolved their own customs and means of survival. For some years, there had been
relative improvement in the tolerance shown to them, and there is a small temple
in a far-off village inland of Tamil Nadu where they had been gathering in
increasing numbers, year after year, during a week of open celebrations. This was
the one occasion when they could be publicly what they are, meeting one another
from various parts of India, and going together through the symbolic rites of formal
wedding, enacting the story of the Lord Krishna who had taken the guise of a
beautiful young maiden to initiate the young warrior Aravan, before he went to the
final battle, to the depths of joy of sexual coupling, as His boon.
We found ourselves swept in a tide of thousands upon thousands of gentle and
radiant people, and I felt entirely at home with and among them.
This experience went very deep in each of my three friends, who had never been
exposed to that reality. Each of them, once we had returned to our work at
Matrimandir, wrote a poem about it; I have translated two of these poems from the
Tamil, while Manikandan wrote his in English.
*“Inner Perceiving”, poem by Gajendran:
“Along a rough-hewn path winding
Into a golden eve