This banyan tree is the centerpiece of the Sharnga guest houses - its broad branches extend shade over the whole area. The Frenchman who built this place, Bernard, who came here in ‘68, said that he planted this tree in ‘79, from a branch taken from the big banyan tree in the middle of Auroville (next to the sun sphere). The three buddha heads nestled in the crooks of the branches were “rescued” from Laos after the revolution there - the communists beheaded all religious idols and Bernard snuck these heads out of Laos in a fish barrel. Appropriately, Buddha was said to have sat under a banyan tree (cf. Siddhartha by Herman Hesse). I guess that the Laotian communists had a different vision of utopia than the Aurovillians (probably following Marx’s view that “religion is the opiate of the masses”).

This banyan tree is the centerpiece of the Sharnga guest houses - its broad branches extend shade over the whole area. The Frenchman who built this place, Bernard, who came here in ‘68, said that he planted this tree in ‘79, from a branch taken from the big banyan tree in the middle of Auroville (next to the sun sphere). The three buddha heads nestled in the crooks of the branches were “rescued” from Laos after the revolution there - the communists beheaded all religious idols and Bernard snuck these heads out of Laos in a fish barrel. Appropriately, Buddha was said to have sat under a banyan tree (cf. Siddhartha by Herman Hesse). I guess that the Laotian communists had a different vision of utopia than the Aurovillians (probably following Marx’s view that “religion is the opiate of the masses”).