Monday, January 5, 2009

A Saviour, a Miracle and a Little Science Fiction: Christmas in India (part two)

To make the most out of having Christmas away from home (and especially in India) its critical to follow the most important rule of holiday travel: Don’t expect that it will be remotely like anything you know of your family holiday tradition. Don’t even presume to compare. The golden rules in place, you may never experience a more creative and unique celebration in your life.

This can be my only explanation for waking up at 7:00am and fogging around for a cup of coffee in the empty Pondicherry streets on Christmas morning after falling asleep around 2:30am the night before. With a dose of caffeine inside, I warmly welcomed the navy blue ambassador that drove up to the front of the Raj Lodge (why they didn’t spell it Raj Laj will only bum me out for ever). I loaded in with my crew and drove off to Auroville.

Auroville is an intentional community just outside the city. It’s based of the teachings of Sri Aurobindo (from my brief research a weighty and thoughtful Indian freedom fighter turned yogi from the early 20th century). The vision for the community is a place where human unity can be experienced; a new vision for living together with spiritual values as the premise. The community purchased about 20 square kilometers in the 60’s and have developed a global village that today consists of over 2000 people from some 40 countries. Passing by the bungalows, I tried to shoo away the rumors I’d heard of it being a refuge for criminals on the lam. I believe that everything deserves a fair shot from the beginning.

Our highly mechanized entry (including pre-registration through a contact days before and a secure checklist) led us to a viewing room for the official Auroville video. It glossed all the good stuff, human unity, responsibility and freedom, utopia stuff. It skipped all the grime of community, but I couldn’t blame them for that, hoping I might get it later on in the tour. From there we got in some electric people transport (which my friend related to the jeeps in Jurassic Park [fairly I might add]) to the center of the premises: Matrimandir.

The massive golden orb raised out of the manicured garden like Epcot Center in Orlando. I dropped off my bag, camera and phone at the coat check and listened to a kind Frenchman explain to us all about Matrimandir. It’s here that it all started to get a little more interesting for me. At Aurobindo’s passing, a woman (who later became known as The Mother) got hold of the band of devotees and took the ideas forward for the next 25 years. She held onto some of the teacher’s principles, but also took a hectic turn by introducing a good dose of her “visions” into the philosophy of the place. She dreamt up the massive golden orb (some 7 to 8 stories high) and its entire inside design, which included long indoor waterfalls, tricked out blue and red lighting, circling staircases and a meditation room centered around a huge crystal ball. My friend said as we walked into the orb “This all just went a little Star Trek on us.” I agreed, It looked like we had just jumped onto the set of TRON. When I heard that one of the six main reasons for creating Auroville was to hasten the arrival of a more highly refined species to earth, I decided to cut my losses and try to focus on what positives could be taken from the place, even if the philosophy seemed to go crack.

Redemption came in the form of the most beautiful piece of landscaping I’ve ever encountered. An epic Banyan tree, carefully manicured to create a most spectacular grove. As a Banyan tree grows, it rains down rootlike vines from its branches which grow into the ground and serve as new sources for nutrients. Typically, this process takes over and the tree grows in a spectacularly untamed jungle of tree. But in this case, the gardeners had pruned these bundled vines, keeping only one each at various points on the tree. These once-thin vines had now grown into the size of tree trunks and supported the extremely long branches of the tree that now stretched horizontally from the main tree trunk up to 50 or 60 feet. With careful attention, this tree could continue to grow in such a manor for hundreds if not thousands of more years. Ah! A Christmas Tree for the Ages. Sweet redemption and definitely a signal to bounce.

Leaving the compound, I laughed to myself. Is this where I really spent my Christmas morning? I thought about the hundred times my family used to think about going to watch the re-enactment of Washington crossing the Delaware on Christmas and always turning it down, placing priorities on food, family and chilling with our new gifts. Ha! I never imagined my first big Christmas Day outing could be this!

But the redemption of Christmas continued with a quick stop at the beach to dip in the Bay of Bengal. Watching the fishermen finish their lunch and take their outboard motor long boats straight into the rolling tide.

Exhausted from the strange morning, we met the rest of our crew (Auroville could only accommodate a small number of us at a time) for lunch and splashed together, meeting up from very different mornings. A classic restaurant search upped the tension, followed by some so-so food and the need to plan for a presentation we would give later that day. A couple of verbal outbursts jolted the group and a classic Christmas drama started to boil.

But at the height of the dis-ease, we received a small Christmas miracle. The crew from the East (Chinese, Taiwanese, Vietnamese and Malaysian), not used to celebrating Christmas, provided the desperately needed Christmas spirit. In a flurry of activity following the meal, they played Santa Claus to our restless crew and transformed the rest of the day.

Impeccable timing. The whole day turned on the moment. We laughed and traded gifts with the joy of children. In total, I received three gifts this year, each one as lovely as the next and providing me with big smiles.

A Bookmark. Which hysterically reminded me of the last time someone gave me a bookmark as a gift. At the age of 6, I received a bookmark from my parents to mark the pages of my bible. A year later, my Mom recorded something like this in a family notebook: “This year, Chris (now a thoughtful boy of 7) decided to give out Christmas presents. He gave Andrew a drawing, Lindsay a marble and a bookmark to me and Dad. On the note attached to the wrapping paper, Chris wrote the following: ‘To Mom and Dad. Love: Chris. I thought you could use this more than me’. When we opened the package, we found a bookmark with the inscription: ‘To Chris, Love Mom and Dad’.”

A Polo Shirt (which would actually come a day after Christmas, but not a moment too soon for my hurting laundry situation). This of course delivered the most classic of all Christmas subtexts: The old “I think your clothes make you look like a hobo and I’m buying you something in the hopes it will help you clean up your act” gift. Good to have a surrogate Indian Auntie around for Christmas

A Pair of Black Athletic Socks. Which reminded everyone of the time I soaked my only pair of socks at Yercaud, a cold and wet hill station near Salem. In a desperate (and what I thought at the time was a rather clever) move, I lit the prayer candle in my room (was staying at a convent) and draped my socks over the edge and above the candle so as to use the generated heat to dry the socks. Smart enough, until I turned up from my journal some 10 minutes later to a smell of burning. I looked back at my socks, which seemed to be fine. But upon closer inspection, I realized that the socks were a synthetic blend and the materials were, in fact, melting! Actually, they had melted to a point of crust and when I tried to scrape away the hardened surface, I accidentally tore a huge gaping hole in the toe. Socks finished and worse, feet still cold!

With the sprit renewed, we took a siesta and gathered again to sing Christmas carols – it has been a real pleasure to teach the tunes to those unfamiliar with the traditional songs. We brushed up “Silent Night”, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing!”, and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” (which coincidentally is a very common musical theme in India for giving the alert that a truck is in reverse) and took our massive cheer to a convent on the other side of town. By this point I had completely lost my mind, drunk on the eggnog of what can only be described as the fully international Christmas Spirit.

We delivered a presentation to about 100 high school girls who loved the whole event. The Sisters as well. It was tough to claw myself away from their over-eager attention when we finished, but I managed to escape and take a phone call with the family who had just sat down next to their Christmas morning.

When we returned to the seaside, another Christmas feast ensued at “The Bamboo Hut”. A big dinner of chipatis, rice, fish curry, mutton biriyani, mutter masala and palak paneer. I fine way to close out a spectacular day of culture and celebration.

I feel asleep listening to Sufjan Stevens sing “Joy to the World”. My newest favorite Christmas Carol.

Joy to the world
The Lord has come
Let earth receive her king
Let every heart prepare him room
And heaven and nature sing

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