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And today Selvam was in the Chamber ahead of me, for one, all sweet and ready;
he said he’d worked all day yesterday casting the slabs for the raised platform we
have devised together for his room at the beach…
*8-8-1989, Auroville:
I was striving hard to control my own demands, and my apprehension that I might
well have botched it, yesterday evening, by blurting out to Selvam the very longing
that was troubling me… There was a tension in him too, but it was sweet and
determined to see everything right and moving… We did good work…
Su had reported to him how Ina and Babu were carrying on about Selvam and I
and wanting me to get away from him… Selvam had told me just yesterday that he
felt something would try to come between us through other people, but that it
would be a test of trust, to make us grow “bigger”… It was so simple and real the
way he said it…!
… This afternoon I spent time with Ramalingam and Manavelan to work out how to
build the shuttering frames for the pillar extension; Ramalingam was in a mood to
tell me all of how he feels about Matrimandir and the people there: there is so
much bitterness in him about what Auroville has become…
… A good letter has come from JYL which allowed me to trace this emotional
opening in me to that last time he was here and the experience we had together,
working in the Chamber, true brothers belonging to You, to the Force, with the ease
and perfect, untroubled intimacy we knew then… It was that experience which
opened me, and in that opening Selvam came…
*9-8-1989, Auroville:
I triggered an explosion this morning at Matrimandir. Bhavani and Narayana have
been carrying on for some weeks now, and there hasn’t passed one morning in the
Chamber, lately, that Narayana, teased by her constant prodding, didn’t blow at
one person or another, screaming his long tirades with that hurtful energy that fills
him at those moments…
For the last few days Bhavani had particularly focussed on me, wanting to find fault
with me, or any sign of offence; but generally they have directed their venom at
the Tamilians…
So, this morning, they were both intent on detecting any hint of disrespect or
misbehaviour… Selvam and I were working on the scaffold to reinforce it; we had of
course to be very careful not to drop anything, but we couldn’t help some dust
flying; at one point we both had to come down to the Chamber floor, and we each
jumped the last level; I saw Bhavani’s close watch of Selvam’s movements; I
jumped right behind him, and clapped my hands free of the dust: that did it!
Actually it was quite deliberate on my part: it isn’t possible to work like that, and in
the Chamber of all places; it seems to me that Bhavani shouldn’t be allowed to
come up when she is cultivating such moods…
But the issue of racism is hanging like a boiling pot of oil, and so everyone tries to
keep quiet and ignore it; and as a result the atmosphere only worsens…
They both exploded during the tea-break; Bhavani dipped her hands into cement
before coming down and clapped them right in my face; that was alright with me
and I told her to go ahead… Beyond a spate of insults in Hindi, that was all… But
when Narayana followed suit, it got nasty; he worked himself into a frenzy and
spilled all the rubbish he’d heard or thought about me – from Your supposedly
forbidding me to be here to my supposed cruelty to Diane – and called me all the