Volunteering at Sadhana Forest, Auroville turned out to be a nightmare!
A critical take based on my 4-day experience.
Long post alert!
In this article, I will share my observations and honest experience at Sadhana, covering the good and ugly.
The good part
Met different people
People from across India and the world come to volunteer. It was a good opportunity to meet & connect with new people.
Experienced kindness of fellow volunteers
A kind soul gave me her portable small fan so that I could sleep. Another volunteer helped me to dig holes in the forest, looking at me drained. I was happy to meet many warm, pleasant, and generous people.
No work on Sunday
As there were many volunteers, I had no allocation for Sunday. Got some time to explore Auroville.
The ugly part
Unwelcoming reception team
I was not aware of how the food arrangement works here. I knew the food cost was Rs 600 per day but as I fast on Mondays, I asked if I could pay for only the meals that I eat.
My question agitated the lady who checked me in and she condescendingly replied that it’s not how it works and you’re not just paying for yourself, the money goes to the community for buying food.
It could have been conveyed politely as I just wanted to know if that was an option. It felt weird and unwelcoming. Guess, that was my first clue to leave the place.
Later, when I asked if it was okay to send my driving license or PAN card for ID verification, she mandated on Aadhaar, which I did not carry. She then took a rude tone to say “ Didn’t you read the email that we sent?”
This sort of inhospitable behavior was unexpected. Because this is not my first time in sustainable community living spaces.
I have been to 3 places in India — Sapna Ranch, Maharashtra, Petrichor, North Bengal, and Yahnai Kadu, Tamil Nadu.
They all are off-grid communities growing their food and living in harmony with nature. People were warm, friendly, and deeply grounded.
Especially, Petrichor and Yahnai Kadu communities answered every little query patiently. I could see the contrast between Sadhana and all the other places I’ve ever been.
The condescending and unwelcoming attitude here was shocking!
Exhausting schedule
I reached around noon and right after my check-in, I was allocated dinner prep work from 3 PM onwards. It was tiring after traveling but managed to complete it by 6 PM.
Let me walk you through a typical day.
Weekdays start at 5.30 AM with a bell.
- You need to brush and attend nature calls by 5.50 AM and be there for the morning circle at 6 to do some basic stretches
- There are 3 shifts during weekdays: 6 to 8.45 AM | 9.45 to 12.45 PM | and 3–6 PM
The 1st shift is decided right after the circle is over. Teams are split for breakfast preparation, firewood, etc. and the rest go to the forest.
I took breakfast prep one day and forest work the other day.
Breakfast prep
- It was mostly fruit-cutting work. But, the giant tables, vessels, knives, boards, etc. need to be cleaned and kept ready for the lunch team. It was still manageable.
Forest work
- The forest work involved loosening the soil with a shovel and removing the excess with a garden spade to plant trees. Two people were allocated per hole. A fellow volunteer from Mangalore, helped me with this as I couldn’t dig after a point. Grateful to him. There was a banana break post which we dug a little and completed the first shift
Breakfast is served at 9 AM and you can relax till 9.45 AM. There’s a bell and the second shift starts at 9.45 AM.
We eat in a well-constructed bamboo main hall. It’s also a no-technology zone. The idea is to encourage mindfulness and talk with fellow humans.
But the management allocates tasks while you’re having breakfast. That’s when mindfulness flies far away.
Toilet cleaning, accommodation, tea hut prep, lunch prep, etc. are the various tasks that you can pick.
I made the grave mistake of choosing lunch prep for 2 days.
Lunch prep is intensive.
After cutting and peeling pumpkins after pumpkins, chopping veggies, and washing the giant utensils, I became tired. I left for the area where there was a fan for some air.
There’s a guy named Xander (a long-term volunteer) who came looking for me and spoke very rudely.
“ Did you ask permission to leave? You need to wash one more vessel, come my friend” were his exact words.
I was exhausted but he asked me to move to the kitchen and complete the work.
Only after this incident, I got to know that there was a lead and you’re required to inform him before leaving anywhere.
There was no briefing or explanation about tasks included in lunch prep.
On the last day, I was in back-to-back shifts from 9.45 to 3.30 PM. I did both lunch prep and post-lunch clean-up. I was told that the latter was a two-person task and a long-term volunteer was with me.
Let me list down my tasks:
- Throw leftover foods ( sabzi & salad) in the compost
- Empty and refill 6 buckets in the plate washing area
- Feed dogs and cats — 3 plates inside the forest and 3 at the entrance
- Fill water for dogs
- Wash plates, cups, spoons, and tumblers and they have to be dried in a particular fashion the lead demonstrates
- Arrange the dry plates in the eating area
If these are my tasks, I’m not sure what the lead did.
This was right after my 2nd shift where I had to finely chop 10 cucumbers, 3–4 pumpkins, and 20 tomatoes, peel garlic, clean the table, racks, floor, and utensils.
Food waste
As I did lunch prep and post-lunch clean up back to back, I noticed that they make so much food.
My task was to empty the salad and pumpkin sabzi in the compost, which my team and I cut with our hands.
Why to cut so much and waste so much?
Long-term volunteers aka control freaks
Just listing what I observed
- If you touch your dress, you need to wash your hands (The kitchen manager watches you)
- I ate peanuts while chopping veggies and was asked to wash my hands
- By mistake, if you spill drinking water, they keep asking you not to waste water
Conflicting ideologies
Work shifts romanticized in the name of sacred Seva
They call each shift a “SEVA”, a selfless way of serving others.
How the fuck is this seva?
In my understanding, seva is when you help someone who needs it without any expectation in return. But, this is absolute slavery!
It’s an extremely process-driven community with protocols to even wash and arrange utensils. They just need people to get loads and loads of work done.
Volunteers are the scapegoats and free laborers. Social media helps bring at least 3–4 volunteers a day. So, the management finds no need to treat them well.
A lot of them I met knew about Sadhana forest through this and similar IG reels https://youtube.com/shorts/nDWGtgGtwkQ?si=CU8jrfWkM3CpKsEE
Preachy talks on gift economy, generosity, & community living
Gift economy
I experienced a community sharing circle that spoke about the gift economy and how the pay-as-you-wish model triggers generosity within.
If the gift economy is what they believe in, why volunteers are charged 600 Rs a day? They can just come, work, and go. Food can be a gift for volunteers’ physical work.
Also, volunteers need to pay a 1000 Rs refundable deposit for the pillow cover and bedspread provided.
Generosity
The next preachy thing the long-term members and management folk talk about is how we all should be generous and kind to each other in a community.
I emptied and refilled water in 6 vessels, exhausted with no energy left in me. That too after back-to-back shifts. It happened that long-term volunteers near me were just watching.
At one point, when I openly showed displeasure to a lead. He asked if I was okay and I said “No”. But he did nothing and talked about the tasks I needed to do after a brief pause.
That’s when you know that generosity flew across the Bay of Bengal.
I found many fellow volunteers to be inherently kind and generous without any preachy talks.
A lot of the time, I saw long-term volunteers just taking workshops and giving campus tours. I did not spot them in the kitchen doing any hard work.
Those that we were in the kitchen were managers who just bossed around short-term volunteers.
Community living
So much on community living and this is how we lived in the olden days and now society is driven by money.
How will I pay the 600 Rs that Sadhana Forest mandates if I don’t work?
In the past, communities also had the power to ostracise individuals if failed to have mob mentality and thought for themselves.
Just because we lived that way in the past, doesn’t mean it is the perfect living arrangement.
I’m not against community living but everything comes with pros and cons. Like any other set-up, communities also have problems of hierarchy, envy, etc.
Plus, to be in a community like this, you must be useful to them. Will they take in someone with Dementia or Alzheimer's or who needs care in their community?
Preaching it to be a utopia is absolute BS!
Contradicting actions
- As the community was eco-friendly, I carried camphor-infused coconut oil and tea tree oil as insect repellents but was surprised to notice 2 long-term foreign volunteers use Odomas
- Only one area has a fan and you can find long-term volunteers (mostly foreigners) after breakfast and lunch. What happened to the body getting accustomed to living without a fan?
Horrible conditions
Dorms
Long-term (those who stay for more than a year) and the management have private huts. But, the dorm for short-term volunteers is a nightmare
Auroville being closer to the Bay of Bengal is humid. Even the trees weren’t moving near the dorm. I was in the lower deck the first day.
The deep inverted V-shaped hut wasn’t letting air come from the sides and there was no fan. I felt claustrophobic and did not sleep the entire night.
I wouldn’t complain about red ants and mosquitos because it’s expected in a forest, but at least a fan is needed when there’s no ventilation.
Bathing scenario
There’s some time after lunch and the 3rd shift for bathing and freshening up.
There are no taps in the bathing stations.
I had to make 3 trips to fill water in one bucket and bathe. These are metal buckets.
Holding the handle and carrying was painful. My hands became red.
I had to bathe in one bucket if not I needed to make more refilling trips. But, I was too tired for that.
Before coming here, I checked the experiences of a few YouTubers and checked their website.
These YouTubers aren’t sharing the reality. One girl even said that there was not much work and she completed reading a book lying on the hammock.
The Google reviews and articles I read portrayed the place to be a goody-goody, radical community that’s making an impact on the planet.
But, it felt unsettling to me. What I experienced and read was extremely contradicting.
Based on my personal experience, there wasn’t enough time to take care of oneself, let alone read a book.
I did not do this earlier but I think it’s a good idea to open Google reviews and sort by lowest reviews before visiting any place. Whatever people have written here was my experience. There are more on Google.
Conclusion
I stayed 3 nights and 4 days but left the place as soon as I could.
The nature of work is demanding, laborious, and intensive. It turned out to be one of the worst experiences of my life. I mean who rings a bell for reporting to work?
The hectic working hours of the corporate world get replaced by hard manual work in this eco-cult community — Sadhana Forest.
At least, you get paid for work in corporates. But, here volunteers pay and get treated badly. They gaslight everyone to believe that this is Seva.
Be wary of extremist cult communities like this.
Do thorough research and speak to people before visiting any of these eco-stays. What we see on IG and hear from YouTubers is not the reality.
One doesn’t have to undergo such torture to serve nature. We can take various steps right where we are and contribute to the environment.
Walk away at the first sign of moral superiority.
Thanks for reading!
