Deja Vu is the name of a Tibetan restaurant in Auroville.  It is owned by one of the young guys that I hang out with from time to time, and I had dinner there last night with some friends.  Two friends in the group are siblings; the guy is 25 and the girl is 24.  They moved to Auroville from Moscow fifteen years ago.  When I asked them how their mother came to know of Auroville, they said that it was really quite random.  She knew she had to get out of Moscow; the dog-eat-dog city life just wasn't going to do it any longer.  "But books were not so accessible to us," the girl said.  "Actually, they were quite difficult to come across. My older brother (who is now 40) came across Sri Aurobindo's name in a pamphlet or something.  And eventually, my mother stumbled upon one of his works.  She visted India with a friend.  They were in Kerala, but they heard of Auroville and decided to come check it out.  And she liked it, so she brought us here."  And that was it.  They gave up everything they had and moved to Auroville. 

They both were forward about expressing their frustrations with Auroville.  They complained about the number of people that seemed to get screwed over by the Housing Committee, which handles th housing arrangements here in AV.  The housing situation here is ambiguous, although sometimes scandalous seems to be a better word choice.  Maybe that is a bit harsh, but  the criticisms I heard last night were quite harsh as well.  The girl told me that there were several times that her family would return to Moscow to see family, and everytime they came back to Auroville,they were homeless.  They never had the money to build a house here, especially since they had to support themselves financially for the first two year entry period before becoming qualified for the AV Maintenance (for all Aurovilians that contribute to the community work, such as teaching, health services, contruction,etc, a maintenance fee of 6000 ruppees per month is paid, which is equivilant to $130).  Currently, both of them are struggling to maintain housing.  They were recently kicked out of their house because the ownership was changed, and from what I hear, they are living in some sort of shack.  

 The first line of the Auroville Charter is, "Auroville belongs to nobody in particular."  This statement is supposed to hold true for everything in Auroville, but it makes for complicated situations when it comes to housing.  Needless to say, there is a bit of a housing crisis here right now, especially for the youth.  I have no idea how Auroville expects its youth to have the money to build houses.  If they live in Auroville their entire life, only receiving money from the Maintenance fund--that is, without independent finances, which should not be a necessary condition for one to support themselves here--they are not able to save enough money to construct a house.  When asked what they expect the youth to do, the girl replied, "They say that we are confused and lost because we like to drink sometimes, that we need to get out of Auroville and decide if it's really the place for us.  But this is my home.  It's not some ideal about human unity.  Maybe that was the dream, but it's not here.  My home is here."  Then she asked me why Auroville was such a fascination to tourists.  I told her mostly because of its spiritual and idealistic facade, or so I think.  That's not to say that it's all a facade; there is certainly a few characters of integrity here, but there is certainly a gap between the visitor's introduction and the inner workings to this place.  I am sure it is also because it's a bit of a Western oasis in the Indian economy.  Regardless of what it is exactly that brings tourists here, she admitted that she doesn't talk with many tourists, and I think that is a reasonly fair statement for most Aurovilians.  It only makes sense that tourists see a different Auroville than the Aurovilians do.  

 So back to the housing, what I have pieced together so far is this:  nice houses are exchanged by money under the table through friends while other community houses are exchanged through the Housing Committee Funds.  You can put you AV house for sale in the News & Notes (which circulates bi-weekly), and if someone wants to buy, the money stays in the AV Fund, but the seller is then able to use that money to re-invest in AV (buying another house, building a new house, etc.).  Once you build a house in AV, that money is invested in AV! And this is all worlds away from the way that AV started, but I will save that for the next post.

 The conversation evolved into horrendous road accidents:  women being hit by trucks and cars without the car stopping (if you stop, you can get in big trouble, or even beaten to death, so they keep driving), drunken motorbike accidents, and so on.  I'll share one.  The Russian guy said he was driving back from a party a few kilometers north of AV.  He noticed something laying on the side of the road, and then noticed something flapping in the wind.  As he got closer, he slowed down and noticed that it was a woman laying on the side of the road, her sari flapping in the air.  From his description of her head injury, she was definitely dead.  About 100 meters down the road, he noticed a truck pulled over on the side of the road.  There were about six men standing outside of the truck, scrubbing away a blood stain.  There was clearly nothing for him to do (if he stopped, there would be way to much risk of the men beating him), so he continued home.

 I read in the Delhi paper that India has the highest rate of death by road accidents in the world. Based on the statistics of those that are reported, which surely do not include all of them, 13 people die per hour on the road!  

**Quotations are paraphrased.  I would feel uncomfortable recording my friends during conversation, or taking notes for that matter.  I've conveyed their word and tone as best as possible.