Madhuban -- Sri Aurobindo Ashram, where I am one with nature, and all the different parts of my being work in harmony.

Madhuban is my favorite summer destination. It is an Ashram retreat spread over a mountain, overlooking a valley. Wherever you stand in Madhuban, you see the same panoramic view. A beautiful valley, dotted with huts and a small river flowing through it. The river has run almost dry over the years.

The estate is an orchard and usually the plum and apricot trees are fruiting in summer when we arrive and we help in the plucking. This year there were early rains, temperature dropped and so the fruits did not ripen during our stay.

As you walk around you see flowers everywhere. You see flowers of all colors and sizes. For example around Sri Aurobindo’s Samadhi there were huge spherical balls made of small purple and blue flowers. There were white and yellow lotuses blooming in a pond. Outside Prashanti, the workshop hall, the highest block of buildings in this campus, were red roses.

One of my favourite places in the ashram is the swing in the space below the dining hall. There is a large swing seat and a plum tree growing and bending towards it. You can gently move, pluck plums and eat them while looking into nowhere in the valley. In the night when you look up in the mountains, you can see bright lights twinkling and they merge into the sky and stars.

We come here every year for what has become known as the Family Retreat; this year it was five families. We are all from the Ashram school in Delhi and have known each other for many years. We come here the same time every year.

The atmosphere at the ashram is very playful because all the people there are very young. They  are chatting and laughing. When we go, they try to find who else is staying there and get them to share their skills with us. This time there was Markus who played the Ukolele and did Yoga. He would teach us music everyday for half an hour before lunch. Raie aunty who came with us did an art session with us in the mornings. But mostly we did nothing.

Still I got up at six in the morning without a wake up call. I don’t know if it was something in the air or if I was just plain tired and slept early and woke up early. We stayed at the Dhara block and it is half a kilometer walk to the dining hall. We also trekked up the mountains and sometimes went down to the valley to bathe. I managed to rachet up 26,000 to 30,000 steps in my tracker everyday.

Time went by really fast there. We often felt it was precious and we should not waste it. We had breakfast at 7.30. Even though there was plenty of food and four meals, I often felt hungry. One day we brought twenty packets of Maggi and chopped and onions and capsicums, but Didi did not let us go near the flame. She made us Maggi in the Pahadi style; she fried the onions and capsicums, boiled water separately and then added everything in a big vessel and let it mix. Though it tasted different, it was a wonderful treat as we were all hungry in the evening. The best part was that our parents helplessly watched us when we took our generous 3rd , 4th servings. That night, no one ate dinner properly and half the children were tortured in the night by the Maggi they ate.

Another wonderful thing were the treks. It was not like we reached somewhere after one, but just the walks. Those unpaved roads, winding up the towering mountains, into the clouds. Overgrown with flowers and covered with fruit. The whole trek was not also like this; in some parts dry pine needles made it difficult not to slip while in others, fresh and hot donkey dung was spread like a carpet.

We went down to the river a few times. Rocks, pebbles and huge boulders of all shapes, sizes and colors lay on the riverbed, which once overflowed with water. In the a few pools of water left tiny tadpoles were moving about excitedly and large fish were swimming around chasing them. One of our longest trek was to Mountain Paradise of 9km. It is another fruit orchard of the ashram on another mountain. There is a small cottage on top of a mountain from where the fruit that is plucked is stored and transported. There is no motorable road to reach this cottage. We started our trek from the top of the mountain opposite to it. Then we climbed down the mountain, into the valley, crossed the river which here had water gushing down and then  climbed up to Mountain Paradise.

Before we began our climb up we spent time in the river bathing and having fun. The trek up is straight and though this sounds tough, it was just breathtaking and I did not get tired even after trekking that much. The river, the greenery in the valley and lower part of the mountain and how it slowly merged into the brownish pine and colourful fruit trees in the upper part, was all clearly visible.

Because there was a lot fruit to be sent back to civilization, there was a ropeway which could only send fruits back. We were told that once the caretaker of the property was seriously taken ill, so there was no way he could have reached the ambulance, so he was sent by the ropeway, which was like an iron fruit cage.

Forest fires are common at this time in the hills. The pine needles in the summers are spread all over, dry and perfect for catching fire.Each time we are there, there is a forest fire around, but this time it came close. Dangerously close. This happened at tea time, we were in the dining hall when smoke started suddenly creeping towards us from the Samvit block area.

All the men were sent the douse it, and all the children were instructed to stay away. This was not  fair. I was no longer a small child, I was 12 years old, old enough to at least see what is happening and help from away if not go right in the middle and fight it. I think my mother realized what I am feeling and it is not fair so she let me go. I reached there and everyone was near the fire, except a few, who were arranging for supplies. There was a shortage of water so pipes and buckets were needed, so the whole evening we were running around bringing pipes, fetching buckets and calling people.

By evening, I was exhausted, muddy and greasy, but satisfied. I thought I had helped douse the fire but when I learnt that most of what I did was not useful, I was sad. I went to my mother and told her everything. She then told me that I should not be upset because it did not matter if what I did helped or not, what was important was that I showed the courage to go near the fire and the strength to run around, trying to help.

That night the sky was smoky and we could not do Star gazing at night which is so much fun. On normal days, the sky was so clear that all stars were visible. Mars, which is not visible in Delhi even with the best telescope was visible with the naked eye as a bright orange light in the twinkling sky. 

And the best part was that a special computerized telescope was installed recently which could find out over 40,000 objects in the universe and automatically turn itself towards it and show us the image, magnified 600 times. Every night we saw interesting objects in the universe and everyone’s  favorite mars which after adding extra lenses became as big as a pea. The moon would have been interesting to watch, but the mountains were blocking the view. On the last day of our stay, we finally saw the moon in the morning. It was so beautiful! All the craters were visible clearly, but unfortunately for a very short while as the sun soon rose and the moon became fainter and fainter till it disappeared.

This was the last day and it came so fast. Time travels fast when you don’t want it to. I was sad.All the serenity in nature, all the peace and freedom I had here was not there in Delhi. Whenever I come here I have no work so have a lot of time to think and reflect on myself. Here, I am one with nature, and all the different parts of my being work in harmony. My goal in Delhi is also to be this way  but in Madhuban it happens the way it should; naturally.

Krishna Vikrant Abrol

2nd June 2019