It took 37 years to complete, looks like a flower in bloom, and its exterior is clad in 1,400 discs made with several kilograms of gold. But you're not likely to find the architectural wonder they call the Matrimandir on many tourist itineraries in India.
Hidden in the forests north of Puducherry (formerly Pondicherry) amid immaculate landscaped gardens, the edifice is a world away from Tamil Nadu's frenetic Hindu temples of antiquity further south in Thanjavur and Madurai.
The 20-metre tall Matrimandir - completed in 2008 - is a secular meditation space that forms the centre of a curious international village called Auroville, a progressive collective focused on experimental, sustainable living.
It's the kind of place that anti-establishment types dream about. It has its roots in an ashram in the nearby former French colony of Pondicherry. The direct translation of Auroville from French is 'city of dawn', but the 'auro' actually comes from its status as an (increasingly distant) offshoot of Puducherry's Aurobindo Ashram.
When founder Sri Aurobindo died in 1950, control of his ashram - which is dedicated to yoga and work, and opposed to religion and politics - passed to a French woman endearingly known as 'the Mother'. She searched for a site on which to create Auroville, a settlement dedicated to realising human unity in diversity, and settled on a patch of degraded land a few kilometres north of what is now Puducherry.
About 20 metres away from the finished Matrimandir (literally 'Mother's Shrine') and partly shaded by a banyan tree, is a marble urn that contains the community's written charter alongside handfuls of soil brought from 124 nations and all 23 (at the time; there are now 28) Indian states for Auroville's opening ceremony at dawn on February 28, 1968. The 'flower children' were the first to arrive, with farmers and engineers joining later.
