Temple building

I recently met a young Indian here. He comes from Delhi and for him, South India is also a foreign world, although not as foreign as it is for me. He doesn't speak Tamil and his spirituality is also a bit more serene or enlightened, as you might say. I met him again on the street and we went to the afternoon school Thamarai on the outskirts of Auroville, which offers an afternoon program in a village that has a lot of social tensions. That was exciting, I will try to support it.

After that, he asked me if I wanted to see the temple he had told me about. He helps build it and the priest is a fortune teller. It was around the corner, on the piece of land the family had bought and had just officially received the documents from the local court that day – after 14 years. The family has been building a temple for 14 years. They don't want official support or donations; they have almost nothing themselves. The living conditions are abysmally poor, a shelter serves as living space, which is shared with the animals, there are no doors or windows, a gas stove and refrigerator are signs of modernity.

The country

On this piece of land in Alankuppam approximately 15 cows live there, which they raised themselves, starting from two cows that visited their land and with the help of the family multiplied splendidly, plus 9 dogs, 40 Parrotswhich are in a large walk-in shed just to give visitors the opportunity to interact with the birds - plus geese, turkeys, chickens. To celebrate, we were offered fresh boiled cow's milk from a cow that had just given birth to a calf 5 days ago. This milk, they said, was something very special.

The center of the temple is finished, but the monkey god has not yet moved in; he also lives in a tiny shed next to it. We received the blessing there. The drop of water I was supposed to drink seemed very suspicious, but I tolerated it well. There are eight pillars on the site, made of a very pure white stone, interspersed with an even distribution of small black dots the size of seeds. As there are no wave patterns or anything similar, this stone is considered to be particularly pure and powerful. They drove 700 kilometers to get the stone. Now a sculptor from Mahabalipuram come and carve the figures. The 7 chakras will be at the base of seven pillars, with figures from mythology above them.

The temple is intended to stand for 2000 years, unlike the many quickly built temples made of concrete and plaster.