Honoring Bryan Walton
On March 8th, 2022, the soul of beloved long time AVI-USA Board member Bryan Walton left his physical body. Bryan was an early Aurovilian, a social entrepreneur, a devotee of the Mother, and a friend to many around the world. His ready smile and wry humor were features of a patient, humble, and sincere personality.
During his final days, we asked Bryan and his wife, Fanou, to share with us how they would like his legacy to live on. They did so in a letter. The letter is an invitation to support a project, The Malarchi Boarding School, that was dear to him. It grew out of his initial work creating livelihoods for his Tamil friends in Fraternity community in the 1970s.
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Support Malarchi Boarding School!
Bryan’s letter is an invitation to support a project that was dear to Bryan. It grew out of his initial work creating livelihoods for his Tamil friends in Fraternity community in the 1970s. The project is called Malarchi, a boarding school for Tamil youth coming from difficult situations, seeking self development and higher education.
Please join us as we honor Bryan, and make a one-time donation today, or sign up to send monthly support for Malarchi Boarding, as Bryan did for years.
GORDON KORSTANGE: LETTER TO BRYAN
It’s up to the living to talk for the dead,
to finish their stories, then let them slip away.
—Wittgenstein
“I’ve lived a good life,” you told us by phone
trying to explain away its unexplainable ending
knowing that it might not be an easy exit.
Indeed, your life was about doing good.
Your cred is as solid as the wood
you cut for winter each year. You were
the most responsible man I’ve ever known.
I remember how, when we returned
to Auroville it was you who offered us a house
and wanted us to make a school for workers’ children
in your beloved bustling Fraternity
where the clack-clack sound of weavers,
who had not worked in years, now echoed all day
along with voices of other villagers at work.
As you wrote, “we were in a tender moment
where everything in Auroville was so new and intimate.”
We lived just across the dirt road from the huts of Kuilapalayam
and our daily lives were filled with its people and children
warm and trusting. It was a time that lived on within us.
I remember later, when the moment was not so tender,
how we talked on the phone about the closing
of Fraternity. How long it took to convince you
to return to an Auroville where you would have to look upon
the shuttered workshops of Fraternity,
but you and Fanou went back to feel red dust again on your feet
and found the Tamilians who received you with love,
knowing the good you had done
in that tender moment now so long ago.
I remember when the four of us slipped
into our swimming pool on a rare warm night
in Vermont to float in the darkness
and talk the way families talk
and look up at the radiant galaxy,
the way it had been in tender Auroville.
Bryan, “There is something eternal in what we say
and feel for you who was here, will always have been here.”
This is my letter to you, because I couldn’t bring it in person
and because I have to write it in poetry.
You were a tender man: kind, compassionate and generous.
You are loved and will have been loved forever.
“We say a big goodbye to you today and let the Mother take it from here. There’s no way to track her energy’s flight. All we can do is speak these poor words.
Your friend, Gordon
BRYAN’S LETTER
Dear Friends,
Greetings from Fanou and I. As we sat together in snowy Wisconsin during this past birthday week, we couldn’t help but long to be in Auroville. And as much as we miss Auroville, we also miss you, our friends and fellow Aurovilians who have come and gone from the City of Dawn over the years.
So many bonfires we have shared together. We remember when there were so few of us welcoming the sunrise at the bonfire, and when Auroville’s birthday years totalled those of a young child. We all felt like Mother’s children back then – just learning how to walk the dusty red roads of young Auroville.
Fanou and I are especially grateful for those early years that we got to spend getting to know so many of our Tamil friends from the village through the handicraft unit at Fraternity. We still fondly remember Fanou sitting with all the women crocheting as she breastfed Aurelia and the other women tended their babies. We didn’t know it then, but we were in a tender moment where everything in Auroville was so new and intimate.
Thank you to those of you who shared those times with us and to all the new friends who have shared our adventures inside and outside Auroville over the years. In the blink of an eye, it seems that almost half a decade has passed since then, and Aurelia has grown into a woman and so much has matured in Auroville.
I am not as young as I used to be and my health isn’t as good either. As we contemplate life’s long arc and eventual ending, Fanou and I would like to invite you to help us honor a project dear to our heart so that it can live on way into the future.
The word Malarchi means “blossom” in Tamil, and it’s the name of a project that is very dear to our hearts. Malarchi is a family-style boarding facility for children from the local village outreach school, Aikiyam, who need more stability and support than their families can provide. Usually they are identified by their teachers as students with great potential who come from a challenging home situation, such as single parent homes, or some other family struggle like alcoholism and/or poverty.
The kids stay at Malarchi from age of about 9 until 17, when many of them go to college. Malarchi usually helps its kids apply to college and finds funding for college too. Many of the kids come back to visit once they are adults as Malarchi remains their home.
Since 2008 Malarchi has been run by Tixon and his wife Vanita who are both graduates of Malarchi. They live on the top floor of Malrachy with their two children, and the 7 other children live on the lower level, with one room for the 2 girls and one room for the 5 boys. They eat all their meals together, do chores together, and study together as a family.
Tixon and Vanita have some very simple ideas that could help make Malarchi even more nurturing for the kids who come through there. They would love to have a van to use for field trips and bulk shopping, as well as a separate study room so the kids could study outside of their bedrooms. They can also always use more funds to support higher education costs for their children.
Auroville International USA has offered to match any donations up to $10,000 that come in for Malarchi. I have been supporting this project for years, sending monthly donations, and I would love to see Tixon and Vanita have the resources that they need to provide these kids with the education and nurturance that they deserve.
So I invite you to give generously and from your heart, knowing that for every $100 you give, AVI-USA will give another $100. Thank you for considering supporting this project that has meant so much to me and that I believe in so wholeheartedly.
With Love,
Bryan and Fanou
