No drink. No drugs. No politics. No religion. No pets. So is this Utopia

[emad]

No drink. No drugs. No politics. No religion. No pets... So is this Utopia?

Amid the quiet, traditional villages of south India, 1,800 people from 38 countries live in Auroville, a futuristic city set up in the 1960s by one of the strangest spiritual leaders in modern India. By Justin Huggler
Published: 18 August 2005

Between the traditional villages of south India, with their thatched roofs and wood- canopied verandas, if you venture off the beaten track, you can stumble upon a strange township of futuristic buildings. It looks like the set of a 1960s science-fiction film. There are circular houses with roofs at bizarre angles, walls that slope outwards towards the ground, and slits for windows, like an artist's impression of a moonbase. There are square metallic houses held up on stilts over a smaller concrete lower storey.

And it all centres around a giant golden metallic sphere, with dimples all over, rather like a huge golden golf ball. This is called the Matrimandir, or the Mother Temple. A sign on one of the roads points to the "Evolution Laboratory". The neighbourhoods here have English names, including Aspiration, Certitude, Discipline and Grace.

A public drinking fountain advertises "Dynamised water", and a poster beside it explains that "dynamisation" is the incorporation of energies in water that make it healthier, and that one way of achieving this is to make the water "listen" to Bach and Mozart. Rural India, where cows and chickens wander through the villages, and life often gives the impression it has changed little in centuries, is the last place you would expect to find all this.

But this is not a film set or a theme park. Here, truth is stranger than fiction. This is Auroville, a living, working community of 1,800 people from 38 countries, who have given up their lives at home to come and live in what is a real-life Utopian project.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article306578.ece

[Coventina]

1. Sounds more like a Dystopia to me.

:puke:

[lisby]

4. Got to contradict you...

To me it looks like heaven.

Except for the lack of cats. There really needs to be cats.

:hippie:

:thumbsup:

Lisby

[emad]

5. If cats, then fleas, ticks and lice..... Maybe a small price to pay

however.

A feline-free life is like pretty dull though.

[newyawker99]

6. Hi lisby!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[ET Awful]

2. The town's own web site

http://www.auroville.org/gallery/index.htm

It's all well and good except the "no pets" I couldn't live somewhere with no fluffy little animal friends to make me smile :)

[ixion]

3. life in a void...

I guess for some people it must work. I couldn't deal with it. ;-)

[Blue_Tires]

7. wow...talk about being committed to an idea