Looking for a good French restaurant – part 1

One seeker’s serendipitous encounters on the way to Pondy, The Mother, and Auroville.

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Originally published 2008 

A conversation with Francis

On October 3, 1968 I landed in Calcutta, India. I had a tremendous amount of toys at the time; when I say toys, — record players, tripods — we never travelled with clothes, we always travelled with toys, and we would go from place to place and set up a base, set up a game room with all our toys. Full stop. We had a lot of cameras and stuff, also. I was travelling with a friend of mine, called Roger D. He just turned 62 years old and is in California now. We sold our cameras and tape recorders and all that stuff. Calcutta was hungry for anything they could get their hands on along this line. So they paid outrageous prices, and we had to take it; it was too good to pass up. We were hanging out in Calcutta for just a few days, and we decided to go south, because winter was coming. We talked about going south to Sri Lanka or north to Nepal. We had come from Bangkok to Calcutta and we wanted to get out of India.

We always heard about 3rd class trains, so we thought,  let us take a 3rd class train from Calcutta to Madras. Three days later, we had the experience . . . never did we have to do it again, it was definitely a cultural trauma. So we landed in Madras, checked into a hotel, and were waiting for another group of people coming in from Singapore. We were supposed to meet with them. But they got delayed. And one day (you see, we were just coming from South East Asia. If you go to Laos or Cambodia or Thailand or Malaysia, one thing you can always find is good French cooking. The French did well in training them how to cook), so one day I came out of the hotel in Madras, and I started asking around for a French restaurant. And they told me they were sure I would find a French restaurant in Pondicherry.

“How do you get to Pondicherry?”

“Well, you get on this red and yellow bus and it will take you to Pondicherry.”

So I get on this red and yellow bus and I ask how long it will take. The guy speaks of something like three rupees, so I thought it was just a short drive. Seven hours later . . . (laugh) and after a number of enquiries (what I did is that I had got on a local bus which must have made three hundred or four hundred stops), I got to Pondicherry. I got mobbed by rickshaw wallahs and everything else. I made it understood that I was looking for a good French restaurant. So they took me to a place called  the Hotel de l’Europe, and I met a fellow named Guy, who was one of those French Tamil gentlemen of the old era. He said he would be happy to put me up for three-four days, but then his hotel was booked with people coming in, and I would have to find some place else. So I stayed there, and I called up Madras and spoke to my friend: “Listen, I am in Pondicherry, make sure you take the express bus, and meet me here. Bring all the gear, all the toys.” So we spent two-three days at the Hotel D’Europe and then Guy said, “Hey! I told you, you have to go.” I said yes, but where. He said, “Why don’t you go to the ashram?”

“What ashram?”

“The Sri Aurobindo Ashram.”

“Oh, Okay!”

And I went off to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, and actually while I was walking in the gate, I looked up and it said “Sri Aurobindo”. And I said, “Look at that, they spelt Sir wrong!”

Then they marched me into Madhav Pandit’s office. Madhav Pandit was sitting there in his perfectly starched white outfit. And basically… I am in rags. Something you would throw away. And he is telling me, “No, no, you can’t stay in the Ashram.” I said, “Why can’t I stay in the Ashram? I understood that anybody can stay in the Ashram.” So we got into a discussion that quickly turned into an argument. Both our voices seemed to have been raised. And who comes storming in the office but Amrita. And he says, “What is going on here? Mother is right upstairs!” So Madhav Pandit replied, “Oh, this fellow, he wants to stay in the Ashram, and he has no money!” And I had just come out of Calcutta, a 27 year-old arrogant American, and so I dipped my hand in my pocket and I came out with a roll of hundred rupees notes that would choke a horse. “What do you mean I haven’t got any money, I am loaded!” So Amrita said, “You find this young man accommodation”, and he turned to me:

“You write to the Mother asking her permission to stay in the Ashram.”

“Okay, who do I address it to?”

“The Mother!!”

“Okay, okay. You don’t have to be so uptight about it!” Madhav played with me, he sent me off to Regis’ Guest House. I went into that guest house and there was nobody there. I walked into the kitchen and Regis spotted me, and I said “Hello, they just sent me here to . . . ” and he said, “Out, out, out!” (gesture as if chasing mendicants). It was one of the fancy guest houses and, as I said, I was dressed in rags, so basically he threw me out.

Finally, after bouncing off about two or three guest houses, they sent me to Parc à Charbon. And there I met Dhaibhai, and I said, “I want to have a room for me and my friend who is going to arrive”. He takes me into a large dormitory, and tells me for a rupee a day I can have a rope bed. “Sorry, do you have anything a little . . . ?” So he shows me his little six rupees room, which is a little cubicle, and then he shows the family room, which is a nice size room but with about six beds in it. I said, “Okay, I’ll pay.” He was also very suspicious of me, until I paid one month in advance, and then we were the best of friends. I asked him if we could rent two bicycles from him. We were the best of friends then. 

My friend from Madras came, and we set up our game room, and we were a hang-out place where foreigners came all the time to hang out. At the time in Parc à Charbon, there was Gene Maslow, and they were trying to get him out of Parc, to Auroville where Mother said he was supposed to go. So I hung out there maybe two-three weeks, eating Ashram food, clean, pure and healthy. And one day Maggi Lidchi comes, looking for Gene Maslow. She was told that he hangs out in this room. I said, “He’s not here right now but . . . ”. She said, “I have a problem.” She described the problem to me, and I said, “Well, I can help you with this problem, I have experience in dealing with these matters.” So she said, “Okay, come, please.” So I went. It was a long ordeal and we worked it out. It was a Swiss couple, and the Swiss guy was having a little difficulty, and we worked it out, and afterwards Maggi, being sociable and polite, said to me, “Why don’t you come tomorrow for coffee and meet Nata?” I said, “Sure, great, thank you very much.”

The next day I go and meet Nata, and we were talking, and Maggi said,

“When is your birthday?”

“Yesterday, when you came”.

“And did you see the Mother?”

“No.”

“But you’ve got to see the Mother on your birthday!” “I am sorry, er . . . I didn’t know that.”

“You have got to see the Mother,” she said. “You come tomorrow afternoon at 3 o’clock, this is my time to see the Mother; you come to the Samadhi and we will go upstairs.”

So I said, “Fine, great!”

So the next day I went to the Ashram, and I was waiting at the Samadhi. And at the time the Samadhi always reminded me of a movie, 8 ½, by Federico Fellini with the white and the incense. And I said, “Wow, this guy had to be here, this is it!” Maggi came out and told me to come and follow her, and I was trying to get the same excitement across to her, that I discovered that this was where Fellini got the idea for the movie. She didn’t particularly care for my attitude as I was going towards the Mother. My attitude basically was, as I was going up the stairs: I saw the Great Wall, I saw the Pyramids, I saw the Taj Mahal and I am going to see the divine Mother, no big deal! I didn’t understand why Maggi was a little annoyed with me.

So I walked into her room, and I walked in front of her, and I am standing there, and all of a sudden somebody comes up behind me, a very strong fellow, and puts his hands on my shoulders and just pushes me down. I had this thing: “Oh, oh, we’ve got a problem here”, and I was about to get on my feet and give this guy a piece of my mind, and . . . the Mother catches my eye. And she is laughing. She seems to think that whatever it is, it is very funny. I don’t think it is very funny but she thinks it is very funny. And she kept on looking at me and talking to me, I presume in French. I did not understand a word of what she was saying, and basically from that point on I don’t remember a thing. The next thing was that I was standing outside the post-office, with a gigantic bouquet of blood red roses in my hand. And this Indian fellow came to me and said, “Oh, I know, I know where you’ve been!” I had no idea what just happened, but I understood that something significant just happened. And I thought I had a great imagination and a great history of experiences that enriched that imagination. But I was wrong, because whatever happened went way beyond.

So I was walking around in a daze for a couple of days, and then Gene Maslow came to me and said: “Do you know something about building houses?” “No, nothing.”

“Why don’t you come out to Auroville and help me?” 

“What’s that?”

“Auroville, the City of the Future!”

From a conversation with Francis

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Excerpt from Turning Points: An inner story of the beginnings of Auroville (Auroville Press, 2008, pp. 37-41)

Turning Points is one of the best-selling books by Auroville Press, and available locally through these outlets. The book features twenty-one true stories recounting how in the sixties some men and women’s lives changed radically the moment they entered in contact with the Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and they discovered a place called Auroville.