Status Contemplation

Written on January 10th

I am staying in Auroville, because I like it here.

Written on January 12th

Anatoli has gone back to Sevapur, so now only Nino and I remain on the loft and I must say it is rather nice. We've visited Pondicherry and as I write this we're making our grumbling, bouncing way to Chennai to visit internationaly reknowned reptile specialist Romulus Whitaker. A very cool dude.

On Wednesday I'm planning to work at the Buddha Garden. 6 - 9 a.m. with other youth volunteers and then breakfast all together. If not I've had my eye on an organic, permaculture, natural farm called Solitude. I might go there later. But so far we've only been getting acquainted with the area, getting oriented, travelling around to sort out practical things like phone top-up's, money withdrawals, keeping the India Wardrobe stocked up (somehow I lost a lot of my clothes somewhere along the way) tiffin containers, using internet to sort out other travels and so forth, and meeting Aurovillians and interesting guests, mostly randomly at La Terrace.

Marc's organic café has become one of Nino and mine's favorite hang-out spots.

We mostly walk the far and wide distances of Auroville now, the roads alternating between the dusty cracks that make people tie handkerchiefs around their faces, to the muddy red tracks that seem less and less like actual man-made roads once it's been raining. All my clothes have red mud streaks on them after the last two days of heavy rainfall. At night we'll make our stumbling way through the forest after having had supper somewhere.

Cobwebs stick to our faces and hair, and our torches are really rubbish and don't really illuminate anything. The forest is filled with the sounds of creatures, of slithering, of hissing and cawing and mooing. (Yes, there are cows in Auroville as well. They are very well fed and have bright shining faces and intelligently observant eyes.)

Now we're on the road leading to Chennai. Simple shops line the side of the road, houses and buildings made out of scrap-metal and other roadside junk. We pull over for a chai break in the middle of nowhere and when finished, throw our papercups in a hole in the ground that is either going to be covered up with soil and forgotten about, or burnt and become part of the morning smoke, which rather than mist, covers and enguls entire trash burning cities and countryside with the putrid odour of stuff that shouldn't be burned.

I had a conversation with Nino yesterday regarding whether or not it is possible to continue being as socially, morally and environmentally conscious in Sweden as we have been in India. For me it's nothing particular though, because this is to a great extent how I live my life. Organic food is a good example to lift up in this case. In my world organic food isn't expensive because there is simply no other alternative for me. Conventionally grown food isn't an alternative, so I don't even compare the prices. What I pay for organic food is the price of something real, and in this instance particularly I truly believe in getting what you pay for. This isn't a difficult for me but something that has become a priority in my life. So I prioritise it over other things. It's not expensive to me, just a matter of priority. I hardly ever buy alcohol and I don't buy clothing regularly (and when I do it's second-hand and all that jazz).

Not to mention the fact that the kind of food I do buy is actually, cheap. Beans, sprouts and veg. I eat a lot of Living foods and Raw foods and I consciously buy certain items of food that are cheaper and thus make the reality of living off completely 100% organic food all the much easier.

Often I find that life becomes a battle of priorities and EVERYTHING depends on just how you choose to prioritise things. Down to your economy, your lovelife and your environmental footprint on the world. I hope youth today and the generations to come especially choose to prioritise Earth. It's our only home after all.

Make one small sacrifice, eh?