893 / 1424
893
… I am very moved by the insurrection in Romania; more so, in a way, than by
what has recently happened in East Germany; I don’t know why, mentally…
*26-12-1989, Auroville:
I had tried to make room for the Auroville people to come and join in the
concreting. I had hoped they would. It had been announced in advance.
But by 9 am, still no one had come. John H, Selvam, Ramalingam, Catherine, Su
and our new friend Frank were the only ones present apart from our regular team
of “workers”. So I just started with them. And they were all happy.
It went well, as far as one could tell until one opens the shuttering. Gopal didn’t
come either, though he’d said he would, and I sensed Krishna’s condemn and
judgement behind his absence; of the rest of the Matrimandir people, only Yan
came and helped; the others arrived on the site as usual around 10 am and left
around 1 pm, talking away, going up to the Chamber and generally making a show
of being unconcerned…!
But so what! Between us present there was much tenderness; I am relying more
and more on “the boys” and feeling more and more at home with them. And I am
glad of the coming of this whole “tribe” (from Corsica, all friends of Catherine);
Frank particularly feels very familiar, and the children are lovely, very present and
wakeful and trusting and unspoilt…
*27-12-1989, Auroville:
I am cooking dinner for Selvam, who has again left his wife… There’s a bit of my
responsibility there, since I had pressured him to be always truthful, whatever the
consequences…! But he is learning to value deeper things, and becoming more able
to face what comes to him…
… I am not sure how to adjust, at Matrimandir. I tend to be too impatient, and
perhaps too exacting. With a couple of exceptions, individual commitment to the
work hasn’t improved, while the amount of work ready to be executed has much
increased…
And so once more there is the question: can Matrimandir be built with mostly “paid-
labour”, or must one accept that it can only be built by freely committed
individuals…?
I haven’t yet found a clear answer to that…
*28-12-1989, Auroville:
I got mixed up with Selvam’s life again and invaded by its confusion… His wife is
pursuing the high drama of it and Mary is applying pressure in her own clever ways,
by falling seriously ill, and had to be hospitalised… I spent part of the day with him
in Pondy… He’d been doing so well the past several weeks, learning through
experience the joy of self-giving, and he knows it and now he is so unhappy again…
I try simply to be an agent of his own true growth, but it isn’t easy; it takes time
and it necessarily implies an amount of disharmony…
*31-12-1989, Auroville:
Dinner is cooking for Su and me. She will move in here with me in a week or so,
before Ch.J and F.J arrive; and C will join us a few days after that…