It was in the last quarter of ’94 when I first visited Auroville. This was also my first entry into South India and the immediate reaction was that I have landed in no-mans land. I had got off a bus on a roadside, wanting to do the last leg to Auroville and no one could understand what I wanted. Getting directions was like playing dumb charades.

It took a good long day to gear-up the nerves and get comfortable with the idea of going for a communication adventure in the jungle. The immediate agenda was to get a hold on the languages – any - with which I could communicate my most basic needs. Trying to understand or speak Tamil was about the most difficult of the adventure.

Despite the language issue, I still managed to make friends – national and international and there was a strong undercurrent of an aura of freshness. In a few days, Auroville, I could sense, was a place where concept and reality were not running entirely in tune with each other.