IMPOSSIBLE ROAD TO SOMEWHERE

In his memoir, Akash Kapur reminds us why imperfect utopias are better than creating none

- SNEHA BHURA

IT WAS Oscar Wilde who said, “A map of the world that does not include utopia is not worth even glancing at... Progress is the realisation of utopias.” But panning the concept of utopia has a long-standing intellectual tradition. The word, coined by the English humanist Thomas More, means “no place” or “nowhere” in Greek etymology; it is a pun which asks if a perfect society or a self-contained community with a common, cohesive culture and a way of life is even realisable. In 1872, novelist and critic Samuel Butler wrote about a fictional country “of eternal progress” in Erewhon, which is again an anagram for “nowhere.”

But of the many reasons one should read Akash Kapur’s Better to Have Gone: Love, Death and the Quest for Utopia in Auroville, one is to learn how to appreciate utopia as a rationalist. That one can arrive at a renewed understanding of the mysterious workings of faith. That broad-brush dismissals of so-called cults and “hippie-dippie” communes are hardly fun. That there is really no single reality. And while most utopias fail, some can endure with its many fractures and factions.