Mohanam Kids and the Village Threshold

So, I have not told you about the Mohanam kids yet!
Every Wednesday, I am going to the Mohanam Cultural Center, to interview different villagers with my camera, and also to play with the kids! Every week, I am giving the children dance workshops. The kids are between 2 and 4, so these mostly consist of guided improvisations. We put on Indian music, and they mimic my movements and vocal expressions, like this: "Wave your hands in the air! Now dive down! Pat the ground! Now grow up, like a flower!" -It is so fun. The kids are SO cute, and they just come alive when we dance! At the end of each song, they all scream and jump and clap, "YAAAAAYYY!!!!" Sometimes it becomes very chaotic, only as expected when you have 20 three-year-olds running around, knocking into each other! Some of them get into fights vying for positions on my lap! They are all so adorable though, and it is so fun to dance and play with them. For all the kindergarten teachers out there, I don't know how they do it everyday! These kids have SO much energy, and consequently I am exhausted after being with them for three hours! But once a week is a special event for all of us to come together.
Going into the village each week is in itself an event. Since Auroville is such an oasis, there is a definite feeling of crossing a threshold when I enter the village. I go over this rough hilly pass, through two small lakes and a beautiful grove of trees. Then I enter the village, through a deep, ever-existing puddle of brown water.
People say that India is the fastest-developing nation in the world. I don't see that. Instead, I see: a man reading the newspaper barefoot on his porch at 9:30 AM. I see three women, sitting close together under a palm tree, braiding flowers into each other's hair. I see a gang of dogs and a couple of monkeys having a face-off on the corner of a dirt road. I see tiny huts made of earth and straw, and old women napping in the entrance.
I also see trash everywhere on the sides of the streets. I see standing pools of brown, algae-ridden, disease-laden water. I see about 10 mangy dogs on every street. I see beautiful trees overlooking ponds- eucalyptus, acacia, and other swaying types. But the trash at their feet impinges upon their naturalness.
In the village, I see people- living close to the earth. I see people living close to their sacred cows, and their stray dogs. I see people living a life that they know in their bones is theirs to live. Do they want to be living it? Maybe not. It does not matter- because they live so close to the earth, they can hear its wisdom thumping on their bare feet. It is like the Tamil-Indian Heartbeat to which they are connected.

Amazing Morning and Tibetan Monk Inspiration

Oh my god, I had so much fun today!!!
My groupmate Richie and I went off on an adventure bike ride, in search of the Mohanam Cultural Center. We had driven there before, but it is located deep into curves of a local village, so we actually ended up going about 30 minutes out of our way.
But it's okay! When we finally arrived, after many cows and MANY different sets of opposing directions from villagers, we were graciously and excitedly welcomed by Baloo. He ushered us in, and there was a traditional Indian dance class happening with a dozen local village girls. I instantly jumped in to join! They all looked back at me shyly yet intrigued; I was a huge, blonde foreign visitor who had no idea how to dance like they did! They laughed at my efforts and helped me to get the correct hand and feet positions. I actually followed along pretty well, but the dancing is HARD! It is very strengthening for the core. I will have to show you when I get home...
After we had danced - and I had sweated - (the little girls were very composed), we sat in a circle together. They asked my name, and then they went in a circle telling me theirs. Oh, it was hilarious- they had to repeat each one about three times, and I still didn't say it right! It was very funny. A lot of giggling ensued. I felt so yummily girly sitting with all these village girls with sparkly Indian clothes and flowers in their hair, giggling together.
I learned that thank you is "nandri", and that dance is "nadanam". Other than that, whatever I asked them, they would reply, "That is too complicated for you to say." They were so cute, and it was so fun communicating with them through the language barrier. They were all so welcoming, sweet and eager to help. They found me funny too. :)
After that, Richie came back from learning martial arts, and Baloo exclaimed to us excitedly, "You should come back here and teach the kids some modern dance and martial arts, and then we could have a performance before you leave at the visitor's center in Auroville!!" Oh what a great idea! This is exactly what I have been wanting to do!
SO we will see how this tentative plan pans out over the next weeks, but I know I will definitely return when I can to learn and teach dance with these girls. It was such a rich and heartfelt experience to communicate with these villagers. They were all so excited for us to be there, and to show us what they were up to. It was so invigorating to be with people who were so unabashedly welcoming. How often do you feel that...?
On the ecstatic bike ride back, Richie and I reflected that these people's "spirits are more intact (than westerners)."  That seemed like a good way to sum up the feelings we had interacting with them.
This set up the rest of my day for good-vibes, and I have been riding that wave of appreciation and happiness ever since. This shows you- judging from my last blog to this one- how many feelings I have been roller-coastering through here! What a testament to the Buddhist philosophy that all things are impermanent, all things pass.
SPeaking of which, last night at the Tibetan Pavilion we saw a Buddhist Monk give a talk on Buddhism and Ecology. He runs about 30 social programs, from ecological awareness to education. He was the sweetest guy with a great sense of humor. He said, "Enlightenment? Oh, that is very far from me. But I love compassion.. compassion is the force that makes me do what I am doing now." He also said of the growing environmental disasters, "It is all coming from greed- our desire to constantly have more. If I am not happy with one pair of shoes, how will I be happy with many? We have to go into ourselves. We have to start from where we are. Practice contentment. Try to minimize. It begins on a small scale."
Everything he said was very inspiring and comforting. I will end this blog with one of my favorite things that he said: "If I don't lose my heart, then yes, I can overcome. Building trust with friends, this is the way to survive."
I love all of you so much! Thank you for reading!

What is the Balance of Inner and Outer Connection?

Wow. Things here on the Auroville program have been BUSY! The past few days, we have biked around the entire area of Auroville and some surrounding Tamil Nadu villages, experiencing a little of what is going on in some organizations. They are all fascinating! We did some work on the “Buddha Garden” farm, we played with village children in their banyan trees and sand boxes, we strolled through the sprawling botanical gardens, we heard about what goes on at the Healing Center for village women, we learned about natural herbal remedies, and we got caught in a late-season monsoon!

Tonight, we finally went to the Mohanam Cultural Center! I feel like I already had a connection with it, since my friend Allexa volunteered there last year, and my friend Mario threw a, amazing benefit concert for it recently in Seattle.

The place was warm and magical- upon arriving, three beautiful little girls greeted us with fresh flowers and donned us with red bindis, which is both a spiritual practice and a celebration of friendship. Then they gave us a performance of incredible Indian dance and theatre. It was such a sweet place- yellow and bright in color, which mirrored the inspirational energy wafting through it. We were fortunate enough to speak with Baloo, the owner of Mohanam, who has an infectuously bright spirit, and is a local who has grown up in the very same village. His vision with the center is to keep the culture of Tamil Nadu alive and thriving through traditional dance, music, crafts, healing, and other ancient practices. He spoke about how the world- including the villages – is growing exponentially toward modernism. Some people want to keep forging forward at lightspeed, but it is so important to remember the roots of where we have come from, and hold our own culture as something to be celebrated. Mohanam aims to keep this culture alive through giving village children the freedom to explore different aspects of their own culture through learning from their elders, as well as giving them the freedom to express themselves in their own creative ways.

Being in the center, I felt alighted with a sense of expansion, culture, purpose, mystery, and “real-India”. This has been something the group has been grappling with since we’ve been here:  Auroville is very much an oasis within surrounding areas of poverty. It is unbelievable sometimes to see the inequality of wealth living so closely together. It is a very complex undertaking for many of the organizations that we’ve visited to work on weaving together the village culture and the western culture in mutually positive ways. One example is the Matrimandir: the towering golden lotus center of Auroville. It is huge, plated in real gold, and solely a place for Aurovillians to meditate and find their inner selves. If you scan about 40 yards away, you will find malnourished people living in rags and piled trash. They live in extremely close quarters, calling home to small straw and mud huts. Everywhere in the villages you will find many stray dogs, even more cows, and disease-ridden, stagnant water. There is a big question that the group is facing: are things like the matrimandir inappropriate and selfish if there is such obvious poverty existing right in its shadow? It is easy to turn away from these realities when you are surrounded by the comforts of home and western living, but it is not such an easy thing to deny when it is right in front of you. Can one fulfill their truest spiritual purpose better by “going within” to realize their inner self, or by giving of their self to help others who are in need?

  Like I said, these are big questions that we will continue to talk about this quarter. I personally have been staying unattached to any emotional conviction about the issue so far, because honestly, I don’t know the answer. I feel that if you put these questions in different lights, it becomes a lifelong question of balance between cultivating self-connection, and acting with empathy and care for others.

            So as of now, I feel really drawn to working in the Mohanam Center. I ask myself: When else will I have the opportunity to interact with village children in an open creative environment and go out to learn about the local village culture in hopes of helping it to persevere? I do love raw food and have great passion for it, but I feel that I can foster my passion for it at home just as easily as I can here. Mohanam seems to call to my sense of community building, desire to expand my horizons and deepen my understanding of the world, and challenge my comfort zone by exploring a very different reality.

So… wish me luck! J I hope you all are enjoying the first part of 2011! My love is with you all!