Looking for a Good French Restaurant

Looking for a good French restaurant Interview with Francis Neemberry published in “Turning Points” 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 train, so 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. You go into 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 will it 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 I 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 myself understood that I was looking for a good French restaurant. So they took me to a place called l’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 de l’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 I was walking in the gate, and 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 envelope. 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 tumed 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 Regis’ 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 litle 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 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 afterward, 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!” "l 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 the Samadhi always reminded me at the time of a Fellini 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!” Maggie 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 Grand 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 this 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!” And 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!” He ... told me the whole thing, taken out from one of the Society’s booklets. I said “Okay, sure, why not? What do I have to do?” He said, “You meet me in front of the Sri Aurobindo Society office, and we get in a Land-Rover and we go out, we work all morning and we get back in the Land-Rover either at noon time or in the evening and we come back to Pondicherry.” It sounded good so I agreed. So the next day, we did go. It was just a question of who knew less about building houses, Gene or I. I thought I was going to be the helper, but we were both helpers, and what we needed was a builder. Anyway, I started to go out there on a daily basis, and one time I got hung up a little bit, and by the time I got back to the Centre the Land-Rover already had gone back to Pondicherry. There was a fellow at the time called Auroarindam who was a Canadian fellow. He said to me, “You can come down to the pump house, and sleep on the floor of my kitchen.” So I went down to his place, and there was a cow dung floor in the kitchen. I spent the night there and actually I had a great sleep, very nice. I enjoyed sitting out there at night watching the stars, in the quiet, no electricity; it was a very beautiful evening. So I went back to work with Gene and stayed out there sleeping on Auroarindam’s floor for about three-four days. Then I asked him, “Can I do this on a regular basis?” He said yes. And one day he came to me and said, “I have to go to New York tomorrow, I am the UN ambassador to Auroville,” and he brought out his passport that was a United Nations passport, and he said he had to go. At the time all I was doing was moving around, you see, so other people moving around didn’t seem unusual to me, and next morning 5 o’clock he got in a taxi and he went off. At 8 o’clock two workers showed up and asked me what they should do. So I asked them to do... whatever they were doing yesterday (laugh). I had no idea what they were doing! Then some guy pulled up on a bullock cart with a drum. “What does he want?” “Oh, he wants water; there is a drought going on and you are the only well in the area and you have to supply the villages with water.” That was behind the Nursery. This is the well they dug up to supply water to the 28 th February ‘68 ceremony, the first well, and it is still functioning. So all of a sudden I found myself there. My friend Auroarindam had built this house with casuarina poles, and then he made flower beds around the casuarinas poles with compost and everything. So it attracted a tremendous amount of white ants. Gene knew nothing, Auroarindam knew nothing, and I knew less. So it was only a matter of... I was there probably a week or ten days before the whole house went.. (gesture of collapse) So along comes a fellow named Constance, and we went out and found a mammoth big casuarina pole six villages away, and I thought it was fantastic that we could buy this for thirty rupees, and then have ten guys lift it up and carry it six miles for another thirty rupees. I thought it was the greatest thing in the world; it did not matter whether I used it or not. But I did, we made a house. I made this big house and I was there for a couple of weeks, and... it was May by that time, it was getting hot, there was absolutely nothing there. These people who I was travelling with did meet up and they did go to Sri Lanka, and coming back north, they stopped by me, and said: “Come on, we are going to Nepal!” I looked around and there I was, hot in the middle of nowhere, trying to grow things that weren’t growing. I said, “Great idea! Let’s get out of here”. So I went to Nepal; I think I lasted about two months there, and then I was confused. I thought the Darshan was not August 15, but August 24. So I got back here by the 20th of August and I was hungry for the Darshan, and I had missed it. So I went to see Maggi and I expressed my hunger and she said, “Sure, sure”. So she got me into another darshan. Then I went into a phase where I was trying to think of emotional and critical reasons why I had to see the Mother. I was having one crisis after another. And finally they said, “Enough”. I got a statement from the Mother that said: “Once the fire is ignited within the breast, it is your work to make that fire grow into a big raging fire, and too much contact with me does not serve this purpose.” It was just a polite way to say... I had money. I got caught up in this thing that something bigger than my own little personal life and drama was happening. I really believed that Auroville was going to be built in twenty years, and I really believed that we were all going to reach a level of consciousness that would be striking to mankind, and I thought that it was going to be a fantastic thing to be part of this. Money would not be needed any longer because... So okay, a new tractor! a new borewell! Let us spend money! People enquired, “How long are you going to stay in this place?” I said, “Let us see, let us see what happens.” I never made a commitment to stay here actually. I never said, “I am going to stay here for the rest of my life.” It was always a let-us-wait-and-see type of situation. I did have a crisis when Mother left her body. I took that as a personal betrayal, I got very angry, I was grouchy and was fighting with everybody, a real pain in the ass: the Ashram was nonsense, Auroville was nonsense.... Especially as I had to deal with Navajata, a cold slap of reality came in. I almost left at that point. What actually saved me was... I was working for Shyam Sunder at the time, running errands for him and being his information collector and stuff like that. One day I wandered over to the Matrimandir, and I picked up on a vibration that actually got me out of all this negativity that I was manufacturing (l was manufacturing negativity at an unbelievable rate). All of a sudden I was not in that space any longer. So I decided I wanted to hang on at the Matrimandir. It was just around that time that there was a conference of the Sri Aurobindo Society in Pondicherry that I attended. Navajata was presenting a situation where he was saying how well he and Shyam Sunder were getting along. He was doing this to six or seven hundred people there, and he was going on and on and on. Then he made some statements about Auroville and I stood up and said, “You know, if you and Shyam Sunder were getting on, you would know that what you just said is not true.” This marked me. I didn’t realise at the time, but Navajata put a check after my name. So then in 1975 when the revolution1 began, Savitra and I got quit notices. Just the fact that they wanted to throw me out, made me want to stay all that much more. I probably would have wandered off myself if they didn’t do that to me. The divine play of things. So we were thrown out. A political game was taking place. I had said the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time, but I felt that we had made a deal with Navajata in a hotel room in Delhi, and the deal was that we would not any longer object to leaving, and in three months we could come back. That is the deal that I understood that we had made, with Kishorilal and another person present in the room. So when Savitra and I were deported, we went right to San Francisco and we applied for visas instantly. We thought we would get there before any notice that we were persona non grata. And we did get visas, and we spent the three months there and then we came back in, and this is where we made a mistake. Savitra got a name of a travel agent from Tim Wrey who was living in London at the time, and we went to this fellow; we wanted of course a discount flight. He kept on delaying us, and we didn't understand. What happened is the fellow we went to was a member of the Sri Aurobindo Society. So he informed Navajata that we were returning, via this flight, and so on. So we entered into Bombay, and we felt just so happy to be back, and all of a sudden this troop of sol- diers comes in front of us. "Are you so and so?" "Yes, we are." "Well, you are under arrest." They were trying to get us out by the next flight, but JRD Tata blocked the whole thing and came to our res- cue. He was my patron for a x number of years getting my visa which always impressed the guy at the RRo office. I came back into Auroville and got into what I call the Joan of Arc syndrome, where you are fighting for the truth, and then... somewhere around 1978 I ran out of

1 against the Sri Aurobindo Society. (Ed’s Note) money. I just had no money at all. I came in after an all- night concreting into a little hut I was living in and kicked over a kerosene lamp, and the glass broke all over my bed, and the kerosene... lsaid okay, that's it! lam not eating this food, I am not in the sun all day, I have to get electricity, that's it. I had to borrow money for a plane ticket to get me back into America. I thought it would take me a maximum of one year to get refinanced. But I discovered when I was in America that the Mother gave me something that I could least afford to have. And that was a conscience. Up to that point I never had a conscience. lf it was good for me, it was good; if it was bad for me, it was bad. Very simple. Life was easy. All of a sudden I found myself saying, "Oh I can't do that, that's not right, I don't want to get involved with that," and stuff like that, so it made the refinancing thing much more difficult. Also I was out of America for about thirteen years, and the whole price structure changed, what cost 50 was now 500. The one who saved me actually was Lila. Lila and I were living together at the time. Lila insisted that everything I did was legal. So this restricted me. And the conscience. The two things really were terrible, definitely a burden. So it took eight years before I had sufficient funds. We were moving all over America. I couldn't fit in anywhere. I was an outsider all the time, and one day Lila came to me and said, "l want to go somewhere, I have been following you all over the country for the last eight years (we lived in ten, twelve different places), I want you to come with me now." (l used to walk in the door and tell her: pack up, we are going to Virginia, we are going to California, we are going to New Mexico) But this time she said, "My turn." "Okay," I said, "where do you want to go?" "l want to go to Auroville." "No, no, any place but Auroville!" We had fights over this, then she said, "Listen, one year. We will go to Auroville just for one year." I said okay. But we had to sell the house, we couldn't carry the mortgage on this house for one year. The market was down, as it is today. My brother-in-law came to me and said, "Hey, what are you doing? You are moving to lndia?" Ten days later a guy knocks on the door: ,,1 want to buy your house." I put everything out there to block him. I insisted on this and on that, but he just sat there nodding his head. I did everything to discourage him, but he hung on, really hung on, and so finally I sold him the house. Lila and I got on an airplane and we had this stop over in Hawaii, and I said, (tempter's voice)"Lila, look at this place! Come on!" "Auroville. You promised." "Okay, okay." So we got into Auroville at about 3 o'clock in the morning, after a terrible ride down in an Ambassador car, exhausted. I got out of the taxi and I instanily knew that I wasn't going anywhere. I wasn't going anywhere, I was here. And from that time to this time, the one emotion that keeps coming forth is gratitude, that I have been allowed to be here. I really feel that ... yes, grateful.

Even now?

Mostly now. Yes, absolutely, everyday. lt radiates of that, of gratitude, to have this experience. you have to understand. Basically, you see, I am a New york street kid, with minimal education, absolutely zero family; family was a dysfunctional family, and everybody in my neigh- bourhood was either a policeman, a fireman or a gang- ster. That was it, so somehow I was able to get out of that and have a different experience, that I really feel grateful for. That is how I came to meet Mother. Auroville survived in spite of us. Aurovilians have done their maximum to undermine Auroville and yet it persists - and yet right now I can see the dangei of it becoming institutionalised, but either She is who ihe said She was or she isn't. I have got so much time invested in it now, I can't think any other way. I have to believe that She is who she said She is. I don't see an option. Often my mind plays with the game: "Well, if you don't believe this then what do you believe?" There isn't an option. I don't have an option. I am so totally involved in the process in her teachings and her dream, I don,t have an option. lf Auroville has survived the AuroVilians, I also believe it will survive the Indian government.