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Auroville is an alternative international community in India that began in the 1960s. What happened there? Where are the children who were raised there? Why did the Indian High Court twice have to rule on whether it should exist as a community at all? Why has it survived to this day?
This meticulously researched account of Auroville, written by one of the children raised there, seeks to answer these and many other questions. Better to Have Gone has become a popular book. There are Book Club offerings, readers notes and discussion groups. Auroville has already been the subject of several books, a film and television documentaries but Better to Have Gone is the most thoroughly researched account of the community.
The young adventurers at Auroville sixty years ago hoped to form a community that would reject the past and create a pure, sharing and caring community. But then they went a step further. Many of them believed the body could mutate into a more advanced human form. The foundation member from France became known as ‘Mother’. She believed she could transform the cells of her body to bypass death. She intended to do this by not using medicines, not seeing doctors and near the end, not even eating.
And people believed her, even after she died. Educated, well-travelled, worldly people believed her. How could that be? This well-written, page-turner describes what happened in detail, but not the ‘why’. There is no way of ever knowing ‘why’ people are willing to believe the unbelievable.
John Walker was a wealthy privileged New Yorker. Diane Maes was a beautiful Belgian hippie. They fell in love and shared dreams of a brighter future for the entire world. They helped establish Auroville to demonstrate how that could happen. John had the money. Diane had the dream.
There were fights between rival groups in the community, court cases, scandals, disputes with the local Tamils, financial difficulties and even claims of paedophilia. Schools were closed. Doctors and medicine were forbidden. Intestinal worms were left in people’s stomachs in the belief that if you had the right frame of mind, the body would cure itself.
Two decades later John and Diane both died on the same day in a humble hut leaving behind a teenage daughter, Auralice. Akash Kapur, the author, was raised there. Both he and Auralice eventually made it to America, went to university, married and then decided to return to Auroville with their two sons. They are still there.
Now 3,273 people from 59 countries live there. Half are Indians. There are 671 children. There are 454 people from France, 258 from Germany, 176 from Italy, 113 from The United States, 105 from Netherlands and significant numbers from Russia, the UK, Spain and dozens of other countries.
At the 50th anniversary of the founding of the community, Akash was bemused that 7,000 people, mostly unconnected to Auroville, attended the bonfire ceremony marking the anniversary.
The ceremony was on Instagram, FB, YouTube and Twitter. Akash wondered where all the people come from and ‘Why are they taking selfies of themselves by the graveside of the founders? What do they think happened here?’
If those 7,000 had read Akash’s book, they wouldn’t have gone to celebrate. Auroville was another utopian dream that became a nightmare. Today it really is just a suburb of Pondicherry. And so it goes..
Published by Simon and Schuster, 2021
