Day 3, Stitches, Slices, and Shopping Sprees.

Day three started with a trip to the Auroville Village Action Group (AVAG), one of the main interfaces between Auroville and the surrounding villages. The director Anbu, an Aurovilian who has been part of AVAG since the very beginning 1983, gave us a detailed history of the relationship between Auroville and the villages and the current challenges in their work.

We also got to see the workshop where AVAL, a social enterprise run by AVAG hand crafts beautiful clothing and crochet items. All of the proceeds from AVAL products go right back into AVAG’s women empowerment programing. We spent some time browsing the selection outside the workshop and chatting with Anbu and the women sewing and working in the workshop.

After all of that learning and shopping we had worked up quite an appetite, so we headed over to Tanto’s in Kuilapalayam, for a casual pizza lunch meeting with Avinash, the Aurovilian engineer who had attended our presentation the day before. Avinash gave us some great insights into our project approach and shared with us that part of his decision to join Auroville had stemmed from his experience working with a previous SURP 827 group when he was an intern. We kept the conversation flowing and headed over to another Aurovilian owned Kuilapalayam business, Bread and Chocolate, for a delicious coffee before heading back to the guest house to digest our lunches and research findings.

Later in the evening, Dan, Caley, Maeve, Tara and Ajay ventured into Pondicherry to visit Ajay’s favourite store, FabIndia where Dan picked up a snazzy shirt (see below). 

The group then enjoyed cocktails and appetizers at  “La Villa”, a fancy patio that reminded us of Musiikki’s patio in Kingston. 

Good times update: Dan has been promoted to emperor of good times.

Bad times update: Chloe’s tummy was hurting. She's better now.

Music of the day: Every genre but jazz, to Ajay’s dismay.