A view from outside the fence
Before I begin, let me be honest with you. We are not yet Aurovillians. I live in the bioregion — technically my address says Auroville — but I am an outsider watching something beautiful from outside the fence. The intention to explore is real and alive. But we have not yet walked that path fully. So please read this as exactly that. My experience, my perspective, from where I stand.
And where I stand has a story.
What is Auroville, really?
Most people, when they hear Auroville, think of Matrimandir — that golden dome you see in photographs. That is one part of Auroville. But Auroville is actually a 5,000-acre land. There is the township itself, then there is the bioregion which is connected to it, and then there is what is simply "outside Auroville." My address falls inside that boundary. But we are not yet Aurovillians — though the intention is to explore, we have not yet become.
This is the first thing I had to learn. Anyone is welcome to come to Auroville and there is a process to becoming an Aurovillian. It is not just about where you live. It is a choice, a commitment, a journey.
Auroville is Mother's vision. An experimental township where people from all over the world come together to explore what humanity can become. That idea alone is something. But more on that later.
The real first seed — a spiritual tour with Prakash Anna
Before any of this, there was a quieter beginning. This was before 2008.
Prakash Anna brought me to Pondy — along with Nair Uncle, our family astrology master, and a small group of seekers. It was a spiritual tour, exploring Pondicherry together. I did not know at the time what this city would one day mean to me. I just came along, open, curious.
And then I saw the promenade. The beach. The quality of light on the water. Something landed in me that day — a first connection, faint but real. The kind you don't analyse at the time. You just carry it forward without knowing why.
That was the true first seed. Everything else grew from it.
The second visit — Sunil's wedding, 2010
The next time Pondicherry came into my life was through my dear friend Sunil. In 2010, he and Karla were getting married in one of the villages of Pondicherry. Me and Sripriya drove down from Bangalore in our little Chevrolet Spark. Long drive, good company, open roads.
For Sripriya, it was love at first sight.
For me? Honestly, I was a bit unmoved still. I was born into a Tamil-speaking family but grew up in Kerala. My reference for Tamil Nadu was always — hot place. Very hot. Dry. The kind of heat that makes you not want to go back. I carried that childhood bias without even realising it. So while Sripriya was soaking in the French Quarter, the calm streets, the sea — I was noting the heat and filing it away.
That seed landed deeper in her than in me. It took time to find me fully.
The slow life we were looking for
When you have children, something shifts. We have a son and a daughter, both still young. Life in Bangalore was good — I had my office, my network, my work was going well. Sripriya had her circle. My mother had also moved in with us by then and had found her rhythm. My son was growing up in a lovely neighbourhood, his best friends still there.
But Sripriya kept asking — gently, persistently — can we explore smaller cities? Slower places? Places where the children can just be?
We explored many options. We looked at the south. We looked at the north — the hills, the mountains, places that called us for very different reasons. We were not dreaming — we were actually checking practicalities. Schools, connectivity, cost of living, healthcare. We were serious people making a serious decision.
The real trigger — my daughter kept falling sick
The moment that broke the indecision was not one big event. It was accumulation.
Bangalore's water. The pollen. My daughter would repeatedly fall sick. We were in and out of hospitals. Same city, same food, same air — she was not getting better. As parents, that creates a quiet kind of trauma. A helplessness. A voice that says: something has to change.
We wanted a place where our children could run freely. Where the air was cleaner. Where we were not constantly managing health crises.
That need became louder than all the practical reasons to stay.
Sripriya's decade-long pull
Here is what I did not fully appreciate until much later. Sripriya's connection to Pondy was not new. From 2010 she had been quietly certain — if we ever move, it will be here.
And then from around 2015–16, when she was doing her Masters in Yoga, her teacher was based in Pondicherry. She would travel from Bangalore, stay in a guest house, practice, soak in the place, and come back. Trip after trip. Visit after visit. She was already building a relationship with this land while I was still navigating my heat-bias.
Her thread was longer and quieter than mine. I just had to catch up.
The banyan tree — where something shifted
My turning point came on a weekend trip from Bangalore. Five of us in the car — me, my colleague Leon, Venky, our friend Yogen, and Yogen's wife Monica. We drove down for the weekend. We went to Matrimandir. And near Matrimandir, there is a banyan tree.
Something about that banyan tree. Mother had originally wanted Auroville to come up there — at that spot. It is the heart of the whole vision.
In 30 or 40 minutes of sitting there, everything quietened inside me. I was taken to some other dimension in spite of the heat, in spite of the noise in my head.
Sripriya had been sitting there for years in her visits. Her connection was deep. Mine got established that afternoon, with the four of them around.
I also want to mention Griselda and Dilip here. They are old friends, family friends, also workmates. They had moved to Pondicherry much earlier. They were one of our anchors in this unfamiliar place. Dilip is an architect — a Tamil Brahmin, born in Kerala, who had lived in Bangalore before finding his way here to Auroville. When I eventually met him, I smiled. Same roots, same migration path, same landing place. Some things are not coincidence.
The chaos of actually moving
When we finally decided to move, the universe immediately tested us.
The school we had identified — Evergreen — was shutting down. We had no other connections in the area. Our only reference point was Griselda, who is also not yet an Aurovillian, also finding her way. We did not know whom to call, whom to trust, where to start.
I remember thinking: if it is a matter of donation, I can organise something. Maybe the school can restart. Me and Sripriya drove down anyway. The intensity to move was stronger than the uncertainty. We met people connected to the school. We had conversations. But the situation was more complicated — there were plans, agendas, other factors. The donation idea did not lead anywhere.
So we reached out further. Monica, who had come with me to Pondicherry — her teammates were connected to the Ashram school. They helped us connect to someone. We ended up meeting at The Spot, a pub on Promenade Street — this mix of spiritual searching and very practical panic, in a pub on the promenade. Coffee, conversation, a few more connections. Gratitude to everyone who took time for us during that period.
Back in Bangalore, I also sat with Yogen — a dear friend, very grounded, very logical. He listened to our whole situation. His sense was clear: the decision to move feels right. The details will follow. Figure out the details, but don't let the details stop the decision.
When one door closes
We came back to Bangalore with something we did not expect: not answers, but a feeling.
A feeling that this place is a bit magical. That when one door closes, something else opens. That people there are genuinely willing to help. That Pondy has been holding families, spiritual seekers, and slow livers for many decades. That we would find our way.
We told ourselves: yes, there will be challenges. There will be difficult days. But the city is offering us something real — for the children, for our family, for ourselves. We said yes to the feeling even before we had all the facts.
A call I had been delaying
I want to be honest about something else. Beyond the family. Beyond my daughter's health and Sripriya's pull towards this place.
There was a call I had been postponing for a long time. To explore my spiritual side. To give it real time and real attention, not just weekend retreats or occasional reading. In my career, in the busyness of building things and leading teams, that part of me kept getting pushed to later. Auroville, and the bioregion, felt like a place where later could finally become now.
That was my quiet, personal reason. And it mattered as much as all the others.
Two cities, one life
I want to be clear about something. We did not simply leave Bangalore behind. My office is still there. Our home there continues. I shuttle between the two cities regularly — my work life, my professional world, remains centred around Bangalore. Long hours at the screen, brain-heavy work, the rhythms of a global technology role.
And then I come back here.
The bioregion works as a complementary energy to all of that. Trees everywhere. Birds at every hour. A quality of air and silence that you simply cannot manufacture in a city. Most mornings we are woken not by traffic or notifications but by peacocks.
Now, when you read that, it sounds romantic. And it is — the first time. Even the tenth time. But let me tell you what nobody puts in the brochure. When a peacock decides to announce itself at 4 in the morning, right outside your bedroom window, with full commitment and full volume — that is a different experience. That is a lesson in acceptance. A crash course, delivered at 4am, by a bird that does not care about your sleep schedule.
In Bangalore I was woken by crows. Here I am woken by peacocks. I will take the peacock. I am still learning to be grateful for it at 4am specifically, but I am working on it.
And where there are peacocks, there are snakes. This is simply how nature works. My mother spotted a poisonous snake recently. So yes — it is beautiful. It is also real. When you visit somewhere like this on vacation, it is magical. When you actually live here, it is all of that, and also a daily negotiation with nature on nature's terms.
When we lived in Bangalore, we used to go looking for dirt bike tracks. Here, you come back with dirt whether you went for a ride or not. In the beginning that bothered us. Fifteen months in, it does not. The dust, the mud, the unpaved paths — they have become part of the texture of this place. You stop resisting them. They are just nature, doing what nature does.
That is the real integration. Not the romantic version. The actual version.
Fifteen months in
It has been fifteen months as I write this.
We are in the bioregion. Still discovering. Still navigating. Looking at ways to root the children locally — most of the time it is okay, sometimes it is genuinely challenging. We are learning. All of us, together.
I do not know exactly how our relationship with Auroville will unfold over the years. The intention to explore being here more fully is real. But for now, I am sitting outside the fence, watching, learning, feeling a deep resonance with what this place is trying to be.
That is enough for now.
