The city of my life
Interview with Poppo
It started with my being a pakka Catholic. I was 24, and I wanted to help the world. Simple.
I wished to travel to Pakistan where I had been invited by somebody. My father had a friend who was a doctor, and who said, “You are an architect, you have undergone five years professional education. If you just travel, it may be just a waste of time. Why not apply to an organisation where you can work in the particular country you want? You will help.” He convinced me. I applied to that organisation. A German governmental organisation: German Volunteer Service (GVS). It had been started by John F. Kennedy in 1963 when he visited Germany. My wish was to go to Afghanistan. We had three months training in self-survival, baking bread, stitching, English, etc. They asked me whether I would like to go to India. I didn’t know anything about India, except the name of Nehru and Tagore. I imagined from childhood stories that India must be a big jungle, and I wondered whether they had roads! India was next to Pakistan, so I said okay.
Finally I landed in Hyderabad in Osmania University Engineering College, in 1966. We were a group of thirty people. I was posted there by the state of Andhra Pradesh without them informing the Department of Engineering College. I was there for six months. They gave me a big table, a chair, a pen-holder, plus red ink and black ink. I kept myself busy.
In 1967-68 there was a famine in Bihar. The whole countryside looked like this [bare field around]: yellow, brownish, nothing, dust storms. During the college holidays I went there, with UNICEF. I got a Japanese Suzuki. I was in the Samanway Ashram of Vinoda Bhave in Bodh
Gaya. I wanted to go to Bodh Gaya because I felt connected to old Buddhist relics, scattered around, 1,500-year-old relics. The first job was sinking borewell concrete rings with a diesel engine, in villages. One day rice, dhal and pyaaj [onions]. Next day, pyaaj, rice and dhal. There was nothing else. I lost fifteen pounds, but it was a very big experience, and when I came back to Hyderabad, something had happened within me. I could not accept the world I came from anymore. In those villages, people were happy, sleeping at night on charpoys, working day-time on the land. People were simple, friendly. I said, “That cannot be! All this building up of professional academic references – no!” Especially religion. Overnight, I dropped my Catholic rucksack. Finished with that. I had come for that purpose but...
With that empty rucksack, the next year I went back to the same place (that was in 1968), building a school from electric poles in a jungle. It was 50° C. We paid the workers with wheat (at that time America had donated wheat). This changed my life fundamentally.
I always had an attraction for Gautam Buddha sitting and meditating. It always impressed me. It is why I went to Bodh Gaya in the first place. When they made pits to put compost, they picked out relics, artifacts, sitting Buddhas. I couldn’t believe it! These were lying around. Thirty 1,500 year-old Buddhas sitting in one-line like you can see in Buddhist temples. I didn’t dare... I asked an Englishman who operated a big diesel generator in the same ashram. He said, “Oh, take it!”
Do you remember Carlos? He was Consul General in Chennai. He had invited all Germans of Hyderabad, about thirty to forty. We met for the first time and we talked. He said, “Oh, you are an architect. You know, they are building a new town, an international town, near Pondicherry.” And he asked me whether I would be ready to go there. I said, “Yes”.
I had gotten so many promises in India, including four or five tiger skins [that I didn’t believe in that proposal]. Suddenly I received a telegram from our office in Delhi, “Go to Auroville for the inauguration, if principal agrees.” I said, “It is true? I have been invited!" Then I felt that it was better to know about the place where I was going. That was in January. In December our German organisation had given a Christmas present. Everybody had gotten two pocket books, in German, to read. You know what I got? Kiss-Kiss from an American writer (l never read it), and then a biography of Sri Aurobindo in German! Which you can’t find anymore. It was written by a professor of philosophy.
I never read anything. I read Time magazine, just to learn a bit of English, but reading books for learning, no. I felt like I was wasting my time. But I said, “It would be better to read that book before going to Pondicherry and to know a little bit beforehand at least.” I read it. There were certain quotations of Sri Aurobindo: I felt ripples on my skin. Goose pimples. But I didn’t know what to make of those goose pimples. I was still reading the book on the plane from Hyderabad to Chennai. The airport in Chennai was like a tea-shop at that time [so small]...
They put me in a hotel in Chennai. I had to go to the Consulate and meet the German girl [invited for the inauguration], who was also from our organisation. She was a nurse in the Nilgiris. We went to the old bus-stand in Chennai, took a bus to Pondy. We got so much money! You see, we had only living allowance, enough to live here but not much. But for the first time we got a lot of money, for five days only! (On the return trip I went straight to antiques shops and bought antiques.) At the bus-stand I met the first person from the Ashram. It was Bibash Mutsuddi, a nephew of Nirodbaran. We talked all the way to Pondicherry. They dropped me at Corner House from where a Mercedes car driven by Udar drove me to Shyama and Frederick’s house. I asked Udar, “What are you doing here?” He said “I am an engineer.” That’s all he said. Shyama was so beautiful, – long hair, like a Swedish Brigitte Bardot. I liked the old colonial atmosphere, beer, coffee, baguettes. The colonial French roads, the beach, I loved it. Vincenzo was there also, in and out. Swapna also. They had started working already in Auroville. There was Frederick’s mother and then Shyama’s children. But the German nurse with whom I had come already felt ill at ease.
One morning we were called to practice how to put the soil [into the urn] in alphabetical line, A B C D. It was next to the school. All the hundred and twenty nations had to line up; it took time. I had gotten the German soil in Chennai (it was carried by Lufthansa I think). I was close to the French, because in alphabetical order G comes after F. So we started talking. There was a creeper with blue flowers near the Foyer du Soldat. I went to pick some flowers, small bell-shaped flowers, I gave some to the French people and I kept some. And then I placed my two flowers in the French soil and they put their two in the German earth. We had been always enemies, so it was symbolic, and it was very strong.
The inauguration day came.
We boarded the bus, four or five buses with these hundreds of people. From Jipmer onwards there was nothing: a desert. Edayanchavadi was a sleepy village of mud huts. Only fields with probably malate [peanuts], palm trees in line, and not so many. You could see everything from here to Pondicherry. Then we stopped in the middle of nowhere and were told to get out. It was about 10 o’clock, already hot. They had put shades. We had to sit there. The atmosphere was vibrating. I could feel the enormity of this. I was young. I had just been called to be invited to participate, but the greatness of that moment... What I did feel was the human unity, the international atmosphere, like what you may feel in the Olympic Games but there it is very much vital, while here it was bright, it was of another quality.
People told me, “We need people like you with Indian experience.” I had only one year and a half of experience!
After 1 o’clock, we went back to Pondy feeling very thirsty. Went to Quality Hotel, and of course we got a bit tipsy.
We were nicely taken care of by the Ashram during those five days. Lunch, dinner, all organised at Corner House. I liked the people there, the international atmosphere. I saw the Soviet Union representatives, small children: as soon as the function was over, the security guards took them away, back to Chennai. They didn’t have any contact with anybody.
The next day there was another trip to Auroville. They showed us the first buildings in Promesse. Nicely white-washed, clean. You know what I said to myself? “That would be a place to live.” And two years later I was in that house! Really strange.
I remember I was talking with Frederick and I told him: If Sri Aurobindo has experienced all that, he should have written it down, explaining at least in a form that we can understand. Frederick said, “He has written it down.” (At that time I did not read; I wanted to experience, to live – not read books. Now I am just the opposite, I am reading a lot.)
During the inauguration, I had not talked to Roger Anger. He was busy and I did not feel a connection. But Bratslavsky, I talked to him for two hours in Society House. Pierre Bratslavsky was working with Roger. I was impressed by him. He was speaking from the heart.
On the 1st March 1968, I wrote a postcard to my mother, “I feel strongly that this city will be the city of my life, because it cannot be otherwise. Auroville, the town of the future...”
That same day 1st of March, we had to leave. We saw the Consul again and took the plane back to Hyderabad. I told everybody in the school about Auroville. I stuck the first publication about Auroville on the notice-board.
I asked our organisation for an official business trip. You could do that once or twice a year for your education. You could choose the place where you wanted to study, you had to explain why, and they paid for the trip. So I said that I wanted to go back to Pondy to study whether this place was good for me. No problem! So I went back at the beginning of August ‘68 for one week. I stayed in a guest-house.
I definitely wanted to go back to the urn where I had dropped the soil, but I never managed it. I often met Gene Maslow. I wanted to talk to Roger. I wanted to have answers: I wish to work, but how do you get paid? Navajata said, “We give you everything, food, clothing and housing”; but I said that I wanted to go back to my family once a year. “No”, he said, “that, we cannot pay.”
That was the first block. I talked to Roger but he had hardly any time.
Once I was ready to go to the um, but there was only the pickup van and one Land-Rover, which only went to the place which I later recognised as Frederick’s place, to do a borewell there. There was nothing: fields, sand, no plants. I couldn’t manage to see the um. But Frederick and Vincenzo went to Auroville everyday to build Auroson’s Home. After one week I left for Hyderabad. It was the 14th of August. People told me, “But why are you leaving? Tomorrow is Darshan.” I didn’t put much value on this: “It’s all right.”
I had been at the Darshan of 29th February. Navajata had taken me to his house. From there you could see very well. On other roofs, there were also people, many photographers, etc. Mother came out, and I saw a guy standing like that (hands in namaste), I found it all so strange, after leaving Christianity.
My term was over in 1968. I left India in September. I met Helga in Pakistan (she was also with the GVS in Kabul) in some friend’s house in Peshawar. She stayed with the women, I stayed with the men. They all hated India. I told them: you are the same, why are you fighting?
Then Helga and me we went overland and arrived in Germany in November. I met friends and family in winter, after having been in the sun almost everyday. I said, how can I live here? I still had my little room. I changed it according to my new Indian vision. Everything on the ground, no furniture. I had lot of Indian stuff (l had thirty-five parcels of antiques sent from Hyderabad). But then what? There people knew nothing of what you had undergone in those two years, the psychological changes you had been through. I was eager to tell, but you could not share. They would never have understood.
My parents had never gone to France, so we went all to Paris. I wanted to see Bratslavsky because I felt slowly going back to Auroville. But I wanted to have some safeguard. I did not feel very comfortable with Navajata. I had written to Bratslavsky. He never replied. I went straight to his Paris office and found him. I asked a question but he had no time. He was not there anymore. I felt the enthusiasm going down, it wasn’t like it had been at the inauguration.
Auroville was forgotten a little. In February ‘69 I applied for a further scholarship in Cincinnati in America, to study town-planning. I sent an application. We had to write an essay on “The Ugly American”, then there was an oral interview. They asked questions, and I remember the last answer I gave. They wanted to find out whether I was fit for studies in America. I quoted Gandhi – actually that was a quote from the Upanishads, but I didn’t know in those days, “Who sees action in inaction, and inaction in action, truly is a wise man.” They all looked at me! The coordinator said that it was getting a bit philosophical, and I was not recommended. I suffered for two days and then I took it.
Helga and I wanted to go out East again. I wanted to go to Nepal and work there; I liked Nepal, and I would be close to Auroville. There were about twenty organisations with similar aims, social work, etc., but they had no work for us there. They offered us a job in Ghana or Indonesia. We said, “If nothing works, we go to Indonesia.” I was almost ready. If we had been posted in Indonesia, I am sure I would have stayed there. But things took a different turn.
A phone call came from Yusuf Vollmer (he would be my boss in Delhi for the next few years). He phoned to the German Volunteer Service in Germany: “The people of Auroville are ready to take people from GVS to work in Auroville.”