From Woodstock to India isn”™t as far as it seems. And the journey can apparently be fueled by peace, love and music that create positive outcomes on both sides of the globe, even after disaster.
Mount Trempor resident Julian Lines and wife Wendy use their spiritual and commercial connections in the world”™s most populace democracy to both aid their small town business and help in fostering sustainable development at a site dedicated to world harmony in India.
“The whole theme here is East-West connections,” said Lines, who owns Pondicherry, a retail gift shop in Woodstock specializing in crafts from Auroville in India as well as music, books, meditation mats, organic clothing and spiritual aids and art objects.
Pondicherry is a village in India most famous for being the home of Sri Aurobindo, an Indian educated in England who left Cambridge University and became a leader in the revolution for independence from Britain, and a poet, philosopher and spiritual savant.
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Julian and Wendy lived in Pondicherry for six years and have kept connections there and in nearby Auroville, an experimental village founded in 1968 by colleagues and disciples of Sri Aurobindo, as a way of driving conscious evolution. There are now some 2,000 residents from 35 countries living in Auroville.
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So the Pondicherry store in a far off Catskill Mountain town is at once an American small business, a reminder of cosmic possibilities and an outlet for the crafts made by the global artisans who have made their homes in Auroville. “People who come into the shop realize our main focus is on things that are beautiful,” said Julian Lines. “The whole vibe is toward music and art made consciously.
“I consider a lot of the people coming to Woodstock to be on pilgrimages,” he said. “They are looking for something ephemeral and spiritual that has to do with peace love, music and art, those things that come under the category of pioneering.”
Lines has been a seeker of sorts since attending the original Woodstock concert in 1969. “I didn”™t know who Sri Aurobindo was, but I knew who Ravi Shankar was,” he said of the Indian virtuoso of the sitar.
He moved to Mount Trempor in 1972 and opened Pondicherry in 1992. The couple has maintained close connections with Auroville over the years, supporting reforestation and eco-restoration efforts in the area, which had been historically denuded of its tree cover. The Lines also assisted Auroville to develop sustainable economic underpinnings by helping widen the market for its signature incense and candles, voluntarily arranging national distribution that provides artisans with no profit, but that returns valuable capital to Auroville.
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And then on December 16, 2004, the great tsunami swept across the Indian Ocean and left destruction in its wake. Auroville is located far enough inland so it was spared and in ideal position to help; it called upon its global connections.
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“We knew the local conditions; we had contacts with social workers we had computer networking; we got to work,” said Lines, who journeyed with his wife to Auroville 10 days after the disaster. “Auroville was able to set up computer networking and work with all the other nonprofit relief agencies. We were one of the most effective NGO”™s working in disaster relief.”
Even now, those efforts continue, though in a different form today.
The wave changed lives, costing fishermen their boats and changing social dynamics. To help spark economic recovery, Auroville helped set up schools training local women in producing sewing crafts, providing a means for making a living. And there are handmade dolls from the region including Tsunamika, a handmade doll that symbolizes reverence and recovery after the wave.
“People only care about the disaster, not the work that comes afterward, but something positive can come out of disaster,” Lines said. “After the wave swept through the bay of Bengal, a wave of love and compassion swept through and that was really important.”
