A portrait of Dhanapal
Few people in Auroville have constructed
more buildings than this unassuming man. “Probably about 150,” he thinks, but it
is clear that Dhanapal hasn't kept an exact tally. “At present
I have nearly finished the building of the collective housing
complex, Creativity, and the new Ilaignarkal School buildings.
I am busy with the extension of the Village Action building
in Irumbai. The Multi-Media Centre is scheduled to be ready
in February. Then I am involved in the student hostel behind
the Town Hall. Next month I plan to start a construction outside
Auroville to see how it is to work in that environment.” He
grins. “Though I have now about 350 people working for my unit
Auronirmatha, I still have to refuse some new projects.”
The story of how Dhanapal got into
the construction business starts when he was about eight
years old, son of one of the headmen of Kuilapalayam village
and very curious about the developments next door, where
vellakara men and women were beginning to build a city. “That was in 1976,” he remembers. “There
was practically nothing, and people who wanted to see the Matrimandir
construction site would often stop in the village and ask for
directions. For us kids that was great, we would jump on the
hood of the car and tell them where to go.” Contacts with Aurovilians
were a natural consequence, and that brought the young Dhanapal
to his first job as tambi in Dana, planting trees and milking
cows. “They asked me to come and live in the community, but
my father did not like the idea, so one of Dana's gardeners
would pick me up and bring me back home when the work was over.
Soon afterwards, Gerard asked me if I wanted to join school.
I said ‘yes!' and was admitted to a school run by Gordon and
Jean in Kottakarai and in Fraternity, together with boys such
as Selvaraj and Rathinam and other Tamil Aurovilians. But Kottakarai
was a bit far away. Soon afterwards, I joined Meenakshi's evening
school and came to stay there in the hostel. I must have become
an Aurovilian at the age of ten or so.
“Then I joined Last School in Aspiration. It was a great time.
I worked for half days with Ruud, Lakhsminarayan or André,
and would be at school for the other part of the day. But after
about 3 years, I stopped Last School . I was more interested
in working at Matrimandir.”
He became a bar-bender and welder
and began living in the Matrimandir Workers' Camp. While
living in Camp he married a young Auroville girl, Vijaya. “There was a lot of pressure
from the family. I was senior to her, rather fat at the time
and could not believe it when she said ‘yes'. But she did.
She moved into Camp with me. Because we were young, we decided
to wait before getting children – even though the family did
not like that very much. Eight years later our son Pradeep
was born. Pradeep is the Sanskrit word for ‘Light' and we chose
that name because he brought light and joy and happiness into
our life.” When the Camp was razed to make place for the extension
of the Matrimandir gardens, the family moved to Prayathna.
Vijaya is now working at Solar Kitchen. Says Dhanapal, “We
have decided that one of us will work in an Auroville service.”
Like many other Tamil Aurovilians,
money was a problem. “My
family owned large plots of land, and they sold much of it
to Auroville. Sharnga is largely built on land once owned by
my father; the land of Prayathna belonged to my uncle. But
the sales did not make us rich. So around 1987, before my marriage,
I decided, like many others, to go to Saudi Arabia and earn
some moneyBut when I got my passport doubts came up. Did I
really want to go outside? I decided I did not, and instead
started my own construction unit, benefiting from all I had
learned at Matrimandir.”
The year was 1988. Dhanapal started
doing small works, until Prem Malik asked him to build a
room in his house in Auromodèle
for a fixed price. It was his first big job in interaction
with the architects Roger and Raman. “Every day I cycled down
to Pondicherry to buy the materials, and sometimes I had to
go twice,” remembers Dhanapal. “But the work I did was seen
by Prem's neighbours, such as André Hababou, who liked
it.” Soon afterwards, André asked him to help build
the ferro-cement roof panels of the Auromode factory. “Work
kept flowing in. In 1992 we renovated a building in Pondicherry
where the Kalki shop was to come. I was asked to build houses
in Auromodèle and built the Information Center , the
Vikas community and elsewhere. Life was good, and my company
was flourishing.”
The turning point came in 1998 when Dhanapal was constructing
the entire Surrender community consisting of 21 units and a
water tower. When the project was coming to a close, the costs
had soared beyond estimates and the prices at which the units
had been sold appeared to be too low. Various occupants complained
about the bad quality of construction and faulty design. The
Auroville Fund and Asset Management Committee investigated.
It allocated equal blame for mismanagement to the contractor,
the project managers and to the architect, though it found
that of all the parties to this debacle it was Dhanapal who
had suffered the most and had the least resources either psychologically
or financially to address the situation.
“I still don't like to talk about it, even though the issue
is now over and good relationships have been re-established,” says
Dhanapal. For the blow had been a crushing one. “I was very
depressed. I had lost my work and my savings, and my tools
had been sold to meet the debts. I wanted to close my unit
and give up. But Vijaya gave me unfailing support. She urged
me to start again and show my talents, as it was not all my
mistake. And also, unexpectedly, I received a lot of emotional
support from many Aurovilians.”
And so Dhanapal started once again,
now, with Anupama as architect, building SAWCHU at Bharat
Nivas. The errors of the past became lessons for the future.
No longer would the estimates of a project's cost be left
to the architect. Instead, Dhanapal hired his own quantity
surveyors and accountants and became professional. “Today I know what I am doing in all details.
And this works so well that nowadays I work on contracts, on
the basis that all the designs are final. It is a fairer system.
The client knows the price, and will only be charged extra
if the designs are changed. The other system, whereby the contractor
charges 15%, has always created the suspicion that the contractor
has an interest in increasing the costs.” Dhanapal points out
that a good contractor cannot be a desk manager but needs a
daily interaction with the workers, suppliers and architects. “You
have to be a worker yourself. I come to the site regularly,
and will be there when any concreting or any other work goes
on at night. You can't play the ‘I am the boss' game.”
The Surrender experience also opened
Dhanapal's eyes to a deeper reality of Auroville than he
had related to before. “Many
people had supported me throughout the experience, and I started
to realise how many Aurovilians have a truly Auroville spirit.
They had a faith in me and helped me to start again. One day,
Roger Anger saw me walking on the road when I was very depressed
and he said, ‘Look, you will come back, believe in Mother.
Don't worry.' I started to learn a bit about Mother, and slowly,
I got more involved with Auroville as a whole. You see, many
Tamil Aurovilians feel inferior to the Westerners. We do not
have their level of education, we do not master English well
enough, and we are not so good in expressing ourselves at meetings.
So there has always been a tendency to only stick to one's
own work . But especially in the last years, this attitude
has been changing.” When, during the discussions on the management
change of Matrimandir a signature campaign had been launched
warning that Western Aurovilians were taking over the Matrimandir,
Dhanapal and other Aurovilians launched a counter signature
campaign stating that the Indian Aurovilians were happy with
the proposed management changes. “Many Tamil and other Indian
Aurovilians signed this petition. It was the beginning of the
awareness that we, the Tamil Aurovilians, should be more actively
involved in Auroville. We called a meeting which drew more
than 180 Tamil Aurovilians. Soon after this event, the Mira's
Women Group was created and we started the movement ‘What we
can do for Auroville'. Even though we have our difficulties
with each other, the awareness that we Tamilians have to play
an important role in manifesting Auroville is growing.” He
points at the increasing importance of commercial units that
are run by Tamil Aurovilians. “They will increasingly contribute
to Auroville. But you should be aware that Tamil Aurovilians
also have responsibilities towards their villages and their
family members who are not Aurovilians. My unit sometimes donates
to the Auroville schools and monthly to the Auroville Central
Fund, but I also make donations to village sport groups and
the temple, and I help my family whenever needed.” The fact
that Dhanapal is the son of a former headman is also a factor
in this decision.
The ‘What we can do for Auroville' group has not only been
successful in organizing some festival events, but is now also
dealing with Tamil people accused of embezzling money from
Auroville. “In coordination with the Auroville Council we selected
ten Tamil people to deal with the issue. It was very difficult
and a lot of other problems came out as well. We are still
working on it.” Reflecting on the process, he adds, “I think
that this has been a good development, creating a pride in
Auroville and in us being Aurovilians. Now more Tamil people
will be willing to come forward and over time the feeling that
Tamil Aurovilians are inferior to North-Indians or Westerners
will disappear. For this attitude has to go. We have to live
and work together. And a greater Tamil involvement will also
help to address the problems of admission that Auroville now
faces of people who come from the nearby villages.”
Asked for his views on the future
of his son Pradeep, Dhanapal insists that he be given a full
education and be taught discipline. “I
did not study much; I only received what Auroville gave me.
But it is my dream that he becomes an architect or an engineer
so that he can follow in my footsteps and join my unit Auronirmatha
in due time. But all that is for the future. He is now in the
Kindergarten, and I have heard good things about Transition
School 's education. But the Auroville High School must be
such that he can enter a university afterwards, otherwise I
will have to send him to some other school to get a diploma.
I want my son to study at a university, just like the children
of many Western Aurovilians who go back to their home country
to study at a university. It is only by providing equal education
that feelings of inequality between Western and Indian children
can be dissolved from the beginning. I am confident that our
new generation will work together, probably better than we
adults do.”
