{"id":3033,"date":"2021-03-18T09:21:57","date_gmt":"2021-03-18T04:51:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adventure.auroville.com\/?p=3033"},"modified":"2022-05-06T12:58:33","modified_gmt":"2022-05-06T08:28:33","slug":"always-close-to-auroville-surya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adventure.auroville.com\/index.php\/2021\/03\/18\/always-close-to-auroville-surya\/","title":{"rendered":"Always Close to Auroville: Surya"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Being born and brought up in and around Auroville makes it like a larger home for me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I was born in the green belt area of Auroville, in a village called Edaiyanchavadi. I lived with my parents and the extended family, about 15 people, and then in summer many cousins would come and visit \u2013 it was always a full house. My father was not really ok with the idea of Auroville, and there was a difference between the two families, mom\u2019s side and dad\u2019s side. On mom\u2019s side everyone is into Auroville and most people have joined already, but my dad didn\u2019t like it. She even applied to become an Aurovilian, but my dad told her to stop her process. As long as he was alive, he was against the idea of Auroville.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite this, I started schooling in Udavi School, an Auroville Outreach School where they had been taking in students from the villages surrounding Auroville. Udavi School offered different perspectives on education apart from academics. We had theatre improvisation, dance, carpentry, electronics, swimming, Awareness Through the Body, Play of Painting, languages and so much more. After 6th<\/sup> grade, I slowly moved to After School, because my uncle was running it. He insisted that I join after Udavi. I was not on good terms with my family at that time, so I lived with him for a year, in his guesthouse, and I got to meet more Aurovilians. Then around 15, I went and stayed with other friends from high school. I was making pizzas in different places for years, so I had some money to put in and altogether we could rent a place to live like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All the schools from Auroville had a common sports ground called Dehashakti. I started playing basketball there, got really into it, and made friends with many Auroville kids there. It made me feel part of this place even more. We would come for lunch at Solar Kitchen on Saturday and volunteer in different places, it was warm and welcoming all the time I was here. At some point we had a team registered with the Basketball Association of Pondicherry, the Blue Stars, so we could enter organized tournaments. After two years of playing basketball, we were registered for the national selections. Two of us from our team were selected to represent Pondicherry at the National levels for the next three years. Unfortunately I tore a ligament in my knee; I miss basketball, but I can\u2019t run anymore like before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n