Better to Have Gone - Akash Kapur

It is strange how our lives can contain remnants of others' that we remain completely blind to. Sri Aurobindo and The Mother have been present in my life in many ways that I never noticed, or rather never showed a curiosity for even if I picked up on these things - tiny packets of 'Blessings' tucked into my wallet by my mother, my late grandfather's library that has an entire room dedicated to literature on Sri Aurobindo which we summer-break-visitors would momentarily gawk at before our child-like curiosities took us elsewhere, the many opened-unopened newsletters and pamphlets from the Ashram strewn all over his house in various stages of scrutiny and abandonment, the cashew candies my grandparents brought back for us kids from their annual visits to Pondicherry, the Sri Aurobindo Center that they operated from the first floor of their house. So many links that went unnoticed came into the light when years later, us kids-but-kids-no-more visited Pondicherry with our families for a trip around the town and to Auroville.

What was presented to us tourists felt very much like an ideal, sanitised image of the community, and to be fair how much can you really cover in an hour or two that also includes a visit to the Matrimandir and a walk around the gardens? How much strife, conflict, spiritual beliefs and their consequences could you really delve into? I get the feeling that Auroville is more than happy to let individuals perform their own research before being approached for membership, rather than using the tours as a medium to preach their history and beliefs beyond a cursory introduction.

It is as part of a deeper read into the community's origins that so captivated my grandfather and made him an ardent believer in Sri Aurobindo and The Mother that I picked up Akash Kapur's Better to Have Gone, a deeply personal family tale of Auroville pioneers that lays bare the utopian vision that brought people together, and the dangers of fanaticism that ultimately created a schism between the residents and ended in many a tragedy. Hints of this fanaticism have often appeared in other Ashram literature I have read in the past month on my quest to learn as much as I can about Auroville and its history, such as Pranab Bhattacharya's I Remember which stood out for his unquestioning belief in The Mother's word, as well as Nirodbaran's An Extraordinary Girl where the existence of the book is just as tragic as some of the events in the eponymous girl's life (Esha Roy "strongly objected" to her life story being published, Nirodbaran writes in the foreword, and when the story started coming out in serialised form "she insisted more than once that I should stop it." Nirodbaran ignored her wishes citing "Sri Aurobindo's sanction." The book's first segment was published in December 1989. Sri Aurobindo passed away in December 1950.)

At its core, Better to Have Gone is a cautionary tale of unflinching belief in any spiritual or religious doctrine, and the constant need to assess one's own thoughts with a rational viewpoint. I imagine this only becomes harder as one grows older and belief systems become rigid, the concrete ideas poured into the mind of the youth setting in later years.

In Better to Have Gone, purposelessness and disillusionment with the nature of the modern world conspire to drive individuals to the new ideas and experiments promised by Auroville, as do varying degrees of suppression which strip one of autonomy in life (John being dissatisfied with life despite possessing all the material wealth a person could hope for, an overbearing religious presence in Diane's life which she wished to escape, Satprem's past in concentration camps). For all three of them, this leads to complete submission to The Mother's yoga (who in turn took over the task of transformation through yoga left behind by Sri Aurobindo after his demise) to disastrous effect. None of the three, as you can imagine, manage to achieve immortality through practice of this yoga as many in the community believe The Mother was close to unlocking before she passed.

Integral Yoga is where the spiritual teachings upheld by the community really begin to test one's belief. The long and short of what I have gathered is the idea that human evolution, which would normally take millenia, can be brought on quicker through transformative yoga. The next stage of evolution will have to do with our consciousness, the final goal of this practice being to emerge as a superhuman who is connected to the "Divine Consciousness" and free of the desires and impulses that keep us suffering in this mortal world. There are dark, "asuric" (demonic) forces as well which bring about bad events to stop The Mother's agenda from advancing.

As bizarre as this may sound to the rational mind, the world of Auroville that Kapur paints is one where the residents are not only receptive to this but wholeheartedly believe in the power of Integral Yoga, going so far as to reject all modern medicine and placing their trust in the eventual cellular transformation which will heal them of all maladies if they are only able to remain patient and receptive to The Mother's teaching. I am quite sure the Auroville of 2025 does not push their vision of Integral Yoga to such extremities (I would hope not), as opposed to those early days when free will collided with legal culpability so often.

Adults would often let their children roam free (they were all under The Mother's watch, after all), including in situations that most would consider downright life-threatening. When the inevitable accidents do occur, the events are twisted to conform with The Mother's agenda - surely, there must be a greater plan for all this suffering. In this way, the attitude is not too different from what is seen in many organised religions, despite Aurovillians' protestations at being compared to a religious movement.

As for the writing, the story is well-paced, well-researched, and moves along at a lovely pace that keeps you wanting more. It works best when it is focused on its central protagonists and the story of their lives in Auroville. That said, Kapur has a tendency to jump ahead and tease the ending ('There was much more to this story than we ever knew. Those deaths were far more complicated than we could have imagined.') so many times in the narrative (for this is a narrative book, despite the non-fiction tag) that it becomes anticipatory and almost like a gimmick. Rushdie can pull this off with flair in Midnight's Children simply because his prose is too beautiful, and the story so captivating that I would happily be egged on by the writer to get another page of the tale. This being a non-fiction re-telling of real life events, the desired effect didn't materialise for me - I wished for more showing and less telling.

As the summaries suggest, Kapur's account of Auroville ends with John and Diane's deaths. It functions well as a thorough examination of the events, people, and beliefs that lead to a tragic end. His own research into his wife's family history has raised questions about my own. Who introduced my grandfather to Sri Aurobindo's philosophy? What events in his life aided his transformation into a believer? What did he get up to during his visits to Auroville? Did he believe in Sri Aurobindo and The Mother's vision of evolution and cellular transformation through Yoga, and to what extent? I fear, unlike Kapur's cathartic writing experience, many of my questions may go without answer for a very long time indeed.