[ 18.10.2014 [ Saturday ]
No wake up calls at 5.30 in the morning, no morning circles at 6am. Today is Saturday. Yay. Sevas were for those who had community shifts, breakfast cooking, dinner cooking etc. I didn’t have any. So I was free for the entire day.
On Saturdays and Sundays there won’t be any lunch in Sadhana. One need to go out for lunch or else can cook for themselves.
After breakfast I made plans to go out. In the mean time I made friends with someone in the main hut.
She is French and doesn’t speak any English. But we became friends. It was again a realization that we really don’t need any language to understand so many things. There is a communications that doesn’t need any language. Like Santiago, the shepherd boy realized this fact, I was realizing that truth.
She became my model and helped me to try the panning shots 😀 Later with the help of her mom as the translator we talked! She is a naturally curious girl and wanted to know a lot of things! it was a fun experience.
There are many kids in Auroville and Sadhana forest. I know that the kids are super intelligent and creative! But I have seen their creativity while I was in Auroville. One day I was sitting somewhere near the Solar kitchen in Auroville. There is a long stretch of road. It is one place where kids play. Two guys were riding a moped and coming that way. Then these two kids who were standing on both sides of the road, suddenly pulled a rope across the road and shouted ‘watch out’! Those guys were terrified and thought the rope was going to strangle them. They suddenly applied break and somehow stopped the moped before the rope could touch them, just to realize that there were no rope at all. The kids were just acting that they were pulling a rope across the road. They are some naughty kids with some serious creativity!
And kids at Sadhana surprised me with those amazing toys, masks and stuffs they made from scraps.
At sadhana, they believe in the philosophy of Unschooling. According to Wiki
Unschooling is an educational method and philosophy that advocates learner-chosen activities as a primary means for learning. Unschooling students learn through their natural life experiences including play, household responsibilities, personal interests and curiosity, internships and work experience, travel, books, elective classes, family, mentors, and social interaction. Unschooling encourages exploration of activities initiated by the children themselves, believing that the more personal learning is, the more meaningful, well-understood and therefore useful it is to the child.
I envy those kids at Sadhana. The experience and exposure they are getting at this very young age is quite amazing. All day long they play and learn new things, they take part in all the activities happening there and they are getting ready for the real world better than their school going counterparts!
Anyway it was time for us to head out. This French kid and her mom was new volunteers, so they were not familiar with the place. So they wanted to come with us.
Tabea was ready with her moped, and we four went out for lunch. We helped the new volunteers to get an Indian sim card and exchange some Euros. After that one of our friends joined us for lunch.
We all had our lunch together and separated our ways after that. Tabea and myself went to Auroville and explored the place on the moped. We continued to explore till 5 pm. At 5 she wanted to go for a yoga class. There are a lot of yoga, meditation, acroyoga classes going on in Auroville. This class was one of them. It was 250 rupees for 2 hours class.
So I decided to continue my exploration. I went to meet Gaurav, my couch surfing friend. That day I met one more couch surfer at his place. His name was Bom, from South Korea. He came all the way from South Korea with his bicycle. Oh no, he transported it in the airplane 😉 But he was planning to do a cycling trip across India. He came from Chennai airport to Auroville by cycling. We talked a bit, had tea and by 7 I went back to pick her up from yoga class.
Then we went to have dinner. During dinner we found out that there was a Japanese movie screening at ‘Cinema Paradiso’ which is a part of Town hall. After dinner, we went there. Enjoyed the movie even though it was a bit dragging. And then we returned to our forest. End of another Sadhana day. Once we are enjoying doing something, the days appear to go faster than boring, normal days !! WHY!!?
If you miss the previous day