Since arriving in Auroville, three months ago, I have felt myself shifting. Just being away from home, in a place built intentionally for human development I noticed that I was changing. As days have gone by, I have continued to learn and grow in so many ways. There have been days where I’ve felt more free, natural, and happy than I have ever felt. As I sit here in the common hut of Sadhana Forest, I realize that this is one of those days; early wake up for two hours of work in the comfortable morning sunlight, an amazing breakfast of fruit salad, two more hours of solid work, another amazing vegan meal, and finally an afternoon of relaxing, reading and talking with my boyfriend. Truly, it has been one of the most amazing days. And as I analyze this day and wonder what has made it feel so perfect, I realize that it is the lifestyle in which I can embrace while living at Sadhana. Ave Ram says that living at Sadhana is “living simply” and I suppose that’s true. But perhaps living simply is exactly what I have needed to do. And although it is considered a simple life, in ways it is far more complex than the life I left three months ago. Suddenly I have all these new spectrums of awareness. Sure I knew about peak oil, knew that the world is in dire need of changing to more sustainable energy sources (my dad has a Prius, I know the deal). I also know that the way the average American, and more specifically, the average American student going to university (if we can call anybody average) has a lifestyle that is in one way or another disintegrating their mind and body. Be it alcohol, gorging on pizza, classes, a relationship, a group of friends, etc. we are absolutely running ourselves (mind, body, soul) into the ground. When comparing the college lifestyle to the routine I have come into now I can’t even recognize who I was before. I feel that in this place I am capable of “just living” as opposed to constantly distracting myself with tasks, people, and substances.

As I think to what the future holds, the changes that will take place as soon as I leave Sadhana, and then as soon as I leave India, I get so anxious and nervous. I fear that I will fall back into the person I was before I came here; not that this person was so terrible, she just feels so far away from where I have come. Though in ways I know that I must go back home and return to certain people and projects that are important to me, I strongly want to hold onto all that I have taken out of this experience here. I therefore must consider the parts of this lifestyle that has drawn me in and see what I can carry back to the states, rethinking and revamping the routines I have fallen into there.

The first thing to consider, as I always tend to do, is the way I eat. All of my research (through literature, internet, and real-life experience) has been based around the topic of food. In Auroville I have had the amazing opportunity to eat locally. This is something that had already become important to me in the states but that seemed harder to follow through with there (mostly due to the convenience of grocery stores that have absolutely everything). In Amherst MA it is quite feasible to continue eating local foods. I am therefore determined to refocus myself in terms of where the food I eat comes from, hitting up the farmers markets, looking into the community supported agriculture in my area, and simply reading labels.

I have also started to analyze what food I eat. Going to “Peas verses pills” yesterday, a workshop sure to convince its students to change their eating habits, I was nearly persuaded to give up meat and dairy. Coming straight to Sadhana, a project that only serves Vegan meals, I was given the perfect opportunity to practice. Here I have been doing fine on the diet, but I cannot say assuredly that I will stick to this veg-based diet. The workshop has certainly affected my mindset though, and I am committed to severely lessening the meat and dairy products in my diet. I feel comfortable with this commitment and feel now that I can find the support I need (mainly the recipes) to be mostly vegan/vegetarian. I see now that not only does it destroy the environment and is completely inhumane for animals, but it also affects my body and mind.

I have also been converted into a biker. At the beginning of the semester, each Living Routes student was given a bike to be the primary method of transportation. I fell in love with this bike immediately and it has since brought me on so many adventures and I share with it so many amazing memories. When I return home, I want to trade my casual car rides, well even my dependency on my car in general, in for a new road bike. Amherst has some great bike paths and though it is much hillier than Auroville, the town is completely bike-able.

Greeno, the co-op that I work for back at UMass, is a huge part of my life; I love cooking, I love being apart of a student-run business, and I love the sense of community it has brought me. It is the main place in which I have learned to work within a community setting. But there are aspects of that community that I would really like to change. Or at least, it is time that I find other communities that will accommodate.

The main problem I see around Greeno in the business sense is that there sometimes is such a focus on money. To be fair, it is mostly to do with keeping prices low for our student-customers. However, I sometimes find that we are supporting companies that are so not-co-op-mentality just so that we can get the best price. I really want this attitude to shift, and for my co-managers to find a way to sell our food at a fair price to students while also supporting projects that these customers would also want to be supporting. Something I would really love to look into is buying all of our supplies from other co-ops (before this trip I had no idea how many co-ops actually existed in the US!).

I want to surround myself with people who are inspired by the idea of “living simply”. Of course I want to be conscience of the way I use energy (I don’t really need a TV and I can certainly start using an energy jack which I can turn off when not in use) and I have always been pretty good about water use. But beyond that, I want to live in a way that thinks in terms of Permaculture: everything has a use. I want to work a garden that (in its own New England way) allows its plants to grow in one seemingly jumbled group.

Truly, I see myself coming back to this very spot: my head against a pillow, my back against the floor of the common hut in Sadhana Forest. Sure, I will bring what I have learned and who I have become back to the US for the next year. But I feel that this kind of lifestyle is exactly what I need right now. I think that if I can bring myself back to this kind of situation, I can really start to write a concrete plan of how I’m going to bring practices of sustainability back to the US.