A humorous and sardonic piece showing one way to respond to the situation in Auroville.
Published June 2026
That’s the awkward question.
Who can still dare ask us how we are doing? Of course we’re doing fine! We are finally happy to know our fate. We are Permitted Occupants. Idiots that we were – we did not know it. After so much dynamic meditation here, transcendental inspiration there, integral aspiration under hellish temperatures and a purgatorial climate.
Of course we’re doing fine! People are deported, banned, expelled, excommunicated. Relocated. It’s fun. It’s a blast. We laugh about it. This is our own peril. We tremble. We freak out. We panic. We are afraid. There is suspense. It’s adventure. We must draw from our reserves of saddak , from the blind faith of the charcoal burner and the deaf musician. The faith of causeless bliss, without reason. Simply the joy of being without appearing.
But in reality, within the subjective heights of our objectively wise cells: we do not care about triumphing. We do not care about glory. What we want is to conquer: Victory. That’s new. We had never thought about it before. We are not used to demanding or invoking Victory. We act and let come what may. That’s just how it is. No headaches. And so we are plunged into peril. That famous “they,” responsible for the destiny of the world. Distress screams inside our mystical heads and runs through our central, peripheral and borderline nervous systems.
For a Frenchy, this is normal.
We learned it in public school. A black-feathered bird of high intelligence and strong urban social presence, by the name of Corneille, proclaimed it to us: “To conquer without peril is to triumph without glory.”So yes, we’re doing great!
They triumph, they boast, they swagger around. They show off. They are heartless posers. They pride themselves on being self-appointed elites without consensus, blessed with the benedictus del dius. But they do not possess glory – the glory of the united people of the administrated and disaster-stricken. Sooner or later, opportunists become very sad, trapped in a full-blown parapsychosomatico-fliporianus crisis, an Aristotelian illness caused by the impermanence of power. And those who abuse power eventually fall.
So yes, everything is fine. Okay, let’s stay cool now:
Tell me: Comment ça va ?
By anonymous
Published in Letter no. 21, Winged Guardians of the Forest