Which town?

Between those who lived and worked on the terrain and those who lived and worked in Pondicherry, at the ashram or nearby, a chasm was beginning to gape, this same chasm that will increase with the years between those who are engaged in the physical and practical tasks and those who believe they are competent to judge and decide for everybody how one will live, in which conditions and according to which laws. Whether it was to build a first dam in a ravine, to level the fields and edge them with bunds, to protect the saplings from marauding goats, to erect a first wind-mill pump or a first roofing element, to repair the van or milk the cows, to shore up a road or convey the food-stuff, whatever one did on the ground would put one in relation not only with the land itself, its rhythms, its roughness and its grace, but also with its inhabitants, its humans. And each one forged relationships with the villagers and learnt to know and respect them, just as these villagers, disconcerted at first, curious, reserved or hostile, through the exchanges and the companionship of plain, simple daily works, little by little discovered the intentions, the hopes and the weaknesses of these funny odd people who had come from so far away. These new inhabitants, so visible and singular, were thus closely and silently watched, with a discreet dignity and a quality of profound lucidity that goes straight to what is without stopping at what pretends.

*

The Dravidian people is a very ancient one, whose roots go deep and far, in time as in experience.

Its culture and its traditions are sometimes its one force of survival.

Those neighboring villages had for generations been deserted by the higher castes and this region was officially considered as one of the most backward. Each village had its character, its customs and its intractable

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