journal d'une transition

1346

I know very concretely that, despite the tremendous difficulties India must overcome, there is no other land and no other people upon this earth where true divinity has a home in such a complete, essential and living way. I do not renounce the understanding I have gained through my experience of being born and raised in France, for it has become one offering which I could learn to make at Her feet, towards a more integral realisation. Auroville, the creation of the Mother based on the foundation of Sri Aurobindo’s teaching, is a challenge at once terrible and formidably rewarding, as it will necessarily bring about a real change of consciousness, the very change that the Mother and Sri Aurobindo have been working for, and India alone is great enough to shelter and nurture this very difficult and very crucial endeavour. This is the dharma that has been given me when my being turned to Her, and I pray and trust that in Her I shall always find the refuge and protection needed to undergo this change. Note: It was also in April of that year, I think, that Kumar, Manikandan, Gajendran and I took a trip on two bikes to a place in Tamil Nadu called Kovakam to attend the last day of a week-long festival dedicated to the mythical godlike figure of Aravan. In India for many centuries “hijras” or “alis”, that is, transsexuals and homosexuals, have been segregated into separate communities, which have evolved their own customs and means of survival. For some years, there had been relative improvement in the tolerance shown to them, and there is a small temple in a far-off village inland of Tamil Nadu where they had been gathering in increasing numbers, year after year, during a week of open celebrations. This was the one occasion when they could be publicly what they are, meeting one another from various parts of India, and going together through the symbolic rites of formal wedding, enacting the story of the Lord Krishna who had taken the guise of a beautiful young maiden to initiate the young warrior Aravan, before he went to the final battle, to the depths of joy of sexual coupling, as His boon. We found ourselves swept in a tide of thousands upon thousands of gentle and radiant people, and I felt entirely at home with and among them. This experience went very deep in each of my three friends, who had never been exposed to that reality. Each of them, once we had returned to our work at Matrimandir, wrote a poem about it; I have translated two of these poems from the Tamil, while Manikandan wrote his in English. Divakar” ***

*“Inner Perceiving”, poem by Gajendran:

“Along a rough-hewn path winding Into a golden eve