Further Proof of (Non-)Adjustment

I have been cleaning the shit out of this place. (It doesn’t stop the ants.) I’ve swept, I’ve mopped, I’ve replaced soaps and sponges and rags, and I’ve cleaned every dish in the house.

I spent an hour tackling the refrigerator. Still not as clean as my fridge in Paris, and nothing remotely close to something my mother would use, but it’s mold- and dead-ant free. And that’s a start.

By the way, I keep all my food products in the fridge…including my cornflakes, which I’ve thus far avoided eating for fear of soymilk. But it’s the only milk available in Aurvoille.

And I almost cried because this morning’s shower was so cold. (Although it finally works!)

And I haven’t worn jeans or heels in almost two months and it’s starting to wreak havoc on my mental state.


Ok, ok, I’m still an American Francophile at heart.

My Daily Battles

Apparently the woman who envisioned this community proclaimed that all inhabitants must be warriors. She was on to something.


Life is almost perfect at the farm. Almost.

Each morning greets me with sunlight and bird song. The bed is large, soft, comfortable. The bathroom is clean. Mine. I even have a fridge and modest kitchen, and I have a desk at which I work. The Tamil neighbors and workers are friendly even if we can’t communicate; the Aurovilan leaders are attentive and charming and try to meet my many needs. Life is good.

But not perfect. There are five main battles I wage every day, and I spend long hours in the afternoon devising new strategies to win the wars.

These are my enemies:

• 1) The smell of cheese. An obvious foe: I do live above a cheese factory. Still, the pungent scent of warm dairy and the occasional whiffs of the workers’ B.O. fill my apartment and settle into my senses. I fear it will seep into my sheets, my clothes, my hair. My current weapon of choice: incense. Current scent: Mattipal, a gift given weeks ago and finally put to use. Progress: As long as I’m here to burn the precious sticks, I’m winning. But the number of precious sticks is quickly diminishing…


• The onslaught of ants, 2)large and 3)small. Upon arrival I noticed a very sweet heart near my bed in white powder, which I assumed was a misplaced kolam or other well-meaning decoration. “No, no,” the cheese man said as he settled me in. “It’s poison. For the ants.” Boric acid, to be exact. He told me to sweep it up, which I promised to do.
  
  Until I saw the ants.
  
  For those of you who’ve seen Indiana Jones IV, consider the scene where the man is eaten by giant ants. That scene slipped into my dreams the first several nights.
  
  I’ve bought more acid and am filling whatever holes I can find and drawing lines with it wherever I see appropriate. But the weapon is weak; they burst through my barriers with relative ease. The most I can do is delay their arrival every night.
  
  Luckily they keep to themselves, marching in one solid train from window up wall across ceiling to a safe warm place where they will build a new nest. As long as they stay out of my bed, I’m learning to live with them. And as long as their stinky eggs take longer than six weeks to hatch, I don’t care.
  
  The little guys, on the other hand, are getting to me. Small, red, and quick, they pile up on my computer and chew away at my pillow. I unmake my bed every morning so I have clean sheets to sleep on at night.
  
  These guys, apparently, are after food. Yesterday I made the mistake of leaving my cookies (tightly bagged!) on the counter. After a few hours I noticed an increase in ants around the desk area and quickly threw the cookies into the fridge. Last night when I arrived home at 2 a.m. and wanted a snack, I immediately thought of the baked goods.
  
  Pulling one out, I noticed a few ants fell from it. I examined the disk carefully. It looked fine. I bit in slowly and chewed. Inside I identified dates and nuts, but no ants. So I ate with relatively little hesitation.
  
  But then I reached into the bag for cookie #2. The plastic was lined with frozen, dead ants.
  
  Now I keep everything in my fridge.
  
  And I’m seeking some magic chalk, which apparently keeps all bugs at bay.
  
  At least I have a plan.


• The non-functioning shower. The bathroom is beautiful. (Pics available on Facebook, ladies and gents.) In the corner stands a large shower with a shiny metal head, begging to be used and lingered in. It even has two knobs, one of which boasts a red sticker… a promise of hot water, perhaps? The trouble is, I can’t tell. I turn the knobs, I twist the head, and nothing emerges but a pitiful dribble. I have a shower I can’t use. And it’s torture.
  
  I have been nagging the head cheese maker since arrival. First it was because the tank wasn’t full. A worker filled it. Then it was the connection. Someone resecured it. Today it’s blocked, and a man will come to fix it later. This is a battle of persistence, a battle from which I will eventually emerge victorious.


• The lack of a western toilet. Again, the bathroom is beautiful. But my toilet is a hole in the ground.
  
  Maybe it’s pride. Maybe it’s culture. Maybe it’s both. But every time I have to pee, I look long and hard at the hole in the corner and wonder if I can hold it until I make it to Le Morgan, the French café with fancy toilets and toilet paper.
  
  A spider lives in the hole, and sometimes it jumps around the pee area.
  
  But really, what can a girl do but learn to squat?


• The have-it-but-don’t internet. The other thing about La Ferme is it’s far from everything, including internet connections. The torturous part is not the distance, however, but the fact that every time I open my computer my airport bar eagerly alerts me to five full bars of high-speed wifi perfect for uploading pictures and chatting and blogging and facebooking and having fun—if only I can enter the correct password. And, of course, no one here knows the password. And no one knows how to shut the protection off.
  
  It will come. Once again, it’s a matter of persistence. And I will triumph.

These battles exclude the ongoing war with transportation (I’m now on my seventh bike, and I still require rescuing almost every other day.) and communication (The cell phone has a mind of its own, and it’s a lot sneakier than me.).

I’ve long been a fighter, but Auroville is making me a warrior. Just like "The Mother" hoped.

A Day with the Witch Doctor

The doctor’s office lies beyond a battered blue gate, beneath a battered blue porch, behind a beautiful garden.

Inside giant, torn pleather chairs wait to engulf and cradle you while you wait. A fan whirs overhead. Beneath the swinging half doors you watch patients’ feet twitch beside His.

This is what purgatory feels like.

“Come, come,” he calls.

You enter.

I entered.

“First time?” he asks.

I nodded, and it began.

I was immediately impressed by the correct spelling of my name. When I told him my age, he was shocked—physically gasping as he jotted the modest number down. “Old soul, ancient being” he concluded with a wink.

I like it when safe men wink at me.

“Yes,” I teased, “I’m remarkably mature for my age.” We laughed.

Thus the fun began. For being a “witch doctor,” Dr. Raichura is remarkably qualified. When I told him I was from Boston (but quickly explained I lived in Paris, which drew questions about how I actually lived in India, which I insisted I don’t), he told me he spent six years there studying. “And teaching,” he said, “at BU.”

I smiled. “That’s where I went to school.”

“I taught,” he clarified. “Medical campus. Different.”

It was still of comfort.

He’s a playful man and I enjoyed our jokes. He has the same wise laugh as the Dalai Lama. But beneath the silly façade he had a mission.

“You’ve had great traumas. Two. Now you are stuck,” he explained. Traumas at 7 and 20, he guessed.

He guessed right.

The story went on… but it sounded strikingly familiar to the stories I’d heard of those who’d seen him long ago. He game me little direction, and my heart began to sink. “You are very spiritual. Very special. Use this gift well.” He’s not the first to say so. We spoke of family, and his readings were remarkably accurate but not enlightening. We spoke of love and he told me nothing I didn’t already know. We spoke of the future and he spun broad stories impossible not to come true.

His only advice was to stay away from the burden of others’ expectations and to nurture my spiritual self.


I left impressed by his intuition but disappointed. I learned nothing new.

“But what did you expect?” Thomas asked as we left.

“Answers.” Obviously.

I was hoping I had found an easy way out…a loophole like so many I’ve leveraged in the past.

Free Rider

These are the adventures I’m used to.

Bike with no keys. Cell phone with no credit. Trapped in a lovely home in a gorgeous setting inconveniently located far from everything. Important meeting in 45 minutes beyond walking distance (like everything else). And no one to turn to. No one to help. No one claiming responsibility for me.

It is when left to my own devices that trouble begins.

You’d think I’d learn from previous adventures, but I don’t. (It takes me at least three times.) So I grabbed my belongings and an extra shawl, locked the door and checked it twice, and marched down the steps ready to hitchhike across the community.

It’s Auroville. City that the world needs. What could possibly go wrong?

But there was something about the scrawny Tamil worker that stopped me. He must be at least 20 but doesn’t look a day over 16; his English is hardly there but he’s considered the resident expert. I watched him slave away in the kitchen through the screen door.

“Vanakam,” I finally hollered over raging cheese machines.

He hurried to put a button-down over his wife beater. I almost blushed for him.

“You go soon?” I asked.

“You need ride to New Creation?” he responded. I smiled. It’s that answering a question with a question thing.

“No, no. Thank you.” It was worth a shot.

“Where you going?” he persisted.

“Visitors’ Center.”

“Ok. No problem,” and he waggled his head at me.

“Really? You don’t mind?” My Catholic guilt reminded me they can’t say no.

“No problem!” His smile was irrefutable. “Just 20 more minutes work, and I take you.”

I returned the cheek-trying smile, waggled my head and thanked him.

(As Martanda says, Thank you doesn’t exist in Tamil. There are other ways to express appreciation or gratitude.

As Dhruv says, I’m American. I thank everybody for everything.)

When I saw the cycle in the parking lot, I immediately realized two things: 1) I was in trouble; and 2) it was too late to turn back.


Luckily he surprised me with a fancy motorbike, which I mounted quasi-gracefully and settled into sidesaddle. Zooming through the main drag of Kuilapalayam, I laughed at the scandal I’m sure I’m causing.


His name is Bolou. We talked the whole trip. Sometimes we understood each other; sometimes we didn’t. At one point he said, “There was a foreigner staying there Sunday.”

I thought he was confused with the guests who used the apartment last week and told him so.

“No, no. Sunday. One foreigner too.”

I recalled the easy isolation I’ve discovered at La Ferme, and the two lonely nights. “Just me.”

“Jussme? That’s his name?”

“No, no, no!” I quickly clarified. My prudent reputation was on the line. “It was only me. Since Sunday, only me who has stayed.”

“But Sunday there was one foreigner.” I could hear his frustration growing.
Then: “He spoke good Tamil.”

“Ah, yes.” The Tamil charm all the locals remember.

(Tag.)

“What’s his name?” Bolou wanted to know.

There was no point fighting it, so I told him the truth.

“I see him everywhere.” So does everyone else.

I smiled wryly, a smile Bolou would never understand. “But he’s not a foreigner,” I clarified without knowing why. “He was born here. He’s always lived here. In Auroville.”

“Yes, Auroville.” It was a satisfactory fact. Being from Auroville meant he could still be a foreigner. “And he speak good Tamil.”

A common story for which I’d run out of words. “He’s a big fish,” I concluded.

Bolou laughed because he didn’t understand. I laughed because of a million unsaid things. It felt good to share such separate amusements.


And then we were at the Visitors’ Center, and we waggled our heads goodbye.