When I came to Auroville 30 years ago, I worked with village ladies digging catchment ponds, building roads, harvesting and threshing rice and millets, milking cows and preparing cow feed, and cleaning the cow shed.

These ladies showed me how to plaster the floor with cow dung and how to build walls with red earth, how to save seeds, to eat edible weeds, to follow the changing seasons, and how to share what food there was to eat.

Along with my great teachers, such as Fukuoka and Krishnamurti, these humble village ladies have shown me the fabric of their rich culture, and I know what I know because of them.