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that the now official one as regards the needs and the experiences and the
orientation of this collective development called Auroville. Kireet even gave the new
“News” their motto: the same truncated message of the Mother’s – Harmony,
Goodwill, Discipline and a quest for the Truth – while the Mother’s original message
had been: “Harmony – Goodwill – Discipline – Truth – I can work with you only if
you do not say a lie and are at the service of Truth – Blessings”
So with this motto, every future issue of the News was bound to present the do-
gooders’ new image to the world, while it became simply impossible to express any
matter of importance with candid words anywhere, since even the Auroville
Intranet forum was strictly censored, basically by the same people and for the
same reasons.
***
Note: Our Kusum became ill in April.
She had gradually lost interest in this life. She had tried everything she could to
help us, she had even gone to meet the Minister in Delhi on our behalf, and she felt
that she had failed to make any difference and she could not come to terms with
the realisation that Auroville was rejecting from itself those beings she had trusted
and cherished most, and in whom she had full faith.
Kusum would give her good-willed solid and sober affection to everyone she met,
almost as a matter of discipline, just as she would sing every morning of her life,
and at every meals, the mantras for the welfare of all beings.
She had had to lead her life with the lonely strength and dignified resilience of a
single mother, and in India this is most difficult and requires heroism.
For many years in Auroville she had stood alone too, doing her daily service, being
firm and gentle with everyone she met, but keeping her thoughts to herself and
offering everything to the Mother as best she could.
When she met us, around 1990, she met a team of friends and she opened up and
began to expand and breathe and share. To each of us she could turn with
confidence and each of us could find her at any moment. With each of us she
developed a unique relationship, with varying degrees of closeness.
Her strongest ties formed with Arjun and with me.
With Arjun, she was also some of the mother he had not had since his early
childhood, besides being a real friend who could tell him more than most about
himself; and they shared many deep-rooted loves, such as the love for the pure
Hindi language, and they had magical conversations, and a lot of humour was
playing in it.
With me, over time, she found what she had been missing, or keeping sealed within
herself, for the largest part of her life; she would feel like a mother to me, like a
sister, like a friend, and I would also fill the hollow that had been left in her by the
early demise of her husband, so many years ago. She would be open to me as she
could not have been open to anyone as yet, and I became her closest friend, her
confidant, and her days would be the happier for it; she began to remember so
many songs from her youth, classical tunes and wonderful words of such poetry,
such spiritual longing, and she would want to sing them again; she began to wear
colours, pale pastels, or deep ochre tones, she who had wore only khadi cotton
white clothes ever since she had become a young widow. She would be happiest to
have to think of the dishes she would prepare that I would consent to enjoy (as I
usually had no particular interest for food).