Who would have thought that travelling could be so benumbing and delightful? We rented two honda activas to get to Auroville. I was not prepared for what we were about to witness. On the way to Auroville, you will find the motorists turning friendlier as you get closer. Trees on either side of the road stood in steadfast harmony as if in a wedlock. Through the mystic shade- slightly daze, for the last night's Black Label was still not worn off- we drove into one of the by lanes that seemed deserted at first notice. If not for the powerful 2 stroke engine, we would have found it difficult to ascertain our minds of the silence. We were out in the open; we drove in and out of the broad shadows cast by 200 metres long tall trees, but were gasping to make a grasp on the nature's irony. We felt claustrophobic in the forest, the thick and dense forest, so dark, it blithe fully stayed calm. Not a whiff of air entered the thick forest. We pulled over, made futile attempts at apprehending the moments in our camera. Then, as we drove further into the forest, for we had the whole day ahead of us, with no resonating purpose, we drove and found behind the tall trees, a glimpse of what could only have been made by a man. A rusted gate and beneath it, a guest house. For my life, I have never seen anything so beautiful. It was the sense of wonder, that deep in the forest, through a bygone lane that was superbly camouflaged by the crawlers that had grown so tightly round the original tree that the original's trunk was now encumbered. As we drove back, through the rickety road that was riddled with shed leaves and dead branches, we could not resist but kill the IC engine one more time to take a pause and look at the white trunk of a tree that had grown into the shape of letter 'V'; or a tree that sloped into the road allowing one slanted ray of light from the sun, an indescribable desire to look up skywards in amazement to find the red giant dwarfed into a white dot, here in this forest; or a drooping fence under the weight of a trunk that had grown too large; or a tree that was so pale that one is almost convinced of its death.
At Auroville, sitting in the middle of French Café, sipping tea and patting a white shaggy dog whose skin was spotty and you would take him for a statue if he were drowsing or a sheet of blanket if he were sitting by your side. A travel writer sitting before me by the table was reading up from the leaflets. A group of French lassies walked into the café; of rare beauty, so beseeching of import that even the spotty dog ran to one of them to get patted. Under the green netted mat, we sat and gossiped for a while. Curiously, everyone who sat there in the café spoke softly, gently, unobtrusively. It was French café alright, not a tempestuous Indian tea house. There was one lassie, in macabre coloured denim knickerbockers and a black top. Her hair, she had rolled tightly into a chignon exposing the delicate nape. Her slender figure and adorable bosom; short legs and glossy shins; puckered arm pit and a mole on the right shoulder; I had to swap my eyes between her engrossing beauty and the French architecture of Auroville. She must be in her twenties, sort of playful, had a naughty demeanour of quipping, like an antelope from the dense forests en route, she hopped on my mind; with the figure hugging top that embraced her bosom tightly on two black cotton straps, she frolicked as a fish would in a serene pond a bright sunny morning. She had a stately charisma about her, a divine nonchalance, effortless in her curiosity. She read out of the engraved writings in French, posed fantastically like a fairy that had shed her wings back in the forest from where she rose up and decided to dabble her angel legs in the sumptuous waters of Auroville, just for a day, that day.
On our way back, we found a small café where we lunched and munched with pints of beer; then drove back, for one of us had found some place elegantly camouflaged as a mere nothingness, but was, as a matter of fact, humble abode for gorgeous French lassies. We had chocolate and ice-cream, three ladies, posed for the pictures we took. With almost symmetrically shaped features, all the three differed but in the dimensions, like mannequins, they sat up in the sofa beside us. One was facebooking, one was petting a cat and the other, the one with a smile that would freeze any young man in his trot, was just smiling. I can never forget that smile.
We ended the visit with a margarita at the Asian Hotel. Blowing away the flame, as I sipped the hot spirit, I could make out the features of my throat pipe where the molten tequila dabbed with its corrosive claws. Heading back home, we had Black Label in our bag and an invisible black lid overhead that had been ripped and thrown apart. The trip had put out before us, the buds of travelling, the spring time, I have decided was here, in the heart of travelling. To get away from the madness of tourists, to get lost in the woods, and crawl back into the femme French world was more than what I had in my mind at the time of the beginning.
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