Notable Travels
Yercaud, Mysore, Bangalore and Madras, 1994
Hemet, California and Gstaad, 1995
Palm Springs, December 1998-January 1999
For many people, knowing UG involved traveling to places all over the world, for as UG would boast, ever since he was in his teens he never stayed in one place more than six months. Even at an advanced age he managed to keep moving, He rented Chalet Sunbeam in Gstaad many summers and people would visit him there from all over. He would make brief trips to other countries in Europe from that base. While I knew him, he visited California almost every year, first staying in the Mill Valley area, then in Palm Springs. He also made regular brief visits to New York, passing through, as it were. He often went to India, staying for some time with Chandrasekhar and Suguna in Bangalore before and during the time they cared for Valentine, and after. He of course made trips to Bombay, a few times to Delhi, but rarely to Hyderabad where his two daughters and their families lived. They visited him instead wherever he stayed. He also made many trips to Australia, New Zealand and solo forays to China and Japan. He traveled simply and insisted on carrying his own small suitcase or carry-on bag, his total sum of luggage and a pride of point. In his last years, he had forgone travel to Australia and China but made short trips by car to Germany and more extended ones to Italy, his final destination.
I visited UG in several of these places, at his invitation, and was always treated with great hospitality. Here are some of the highlights.
Late in 1985, UG suggested I should visit him in Gstaad. I told him that I wanted to bring my 12-year-old daughter, Shyamala, with me, and that I would also like to go to India, since it would be so much closer – fewer miles and less cost. But, I said I wouldn't go to India unless he did, because half the fun of going there would be to see him. So he promised to meet up.
It was arranged that Shyamala and I would go for about two weeks, spending six days in Gstaad, and then also go to see friends in Marseille, Paris and Heidelberg, Germany, after which I would send Shyamala back to the US. I would then go on to India, spend some time visiting family members, as well as some time with UG in Bangalore. My wife, Wendy, and one-year-old son, Kiran, would remain at home in Seaside.
UG stayed in touch with us constantly by sending train schedules, picture postcards and whatnot. The first leg of the trip was difficult, with Shyamala getting airsick on the plane and in Frankfurt. In the airport I had difficulty finding a money exchange bureau and getting us on the train to Bern. Making a phone call to UG on the train involved some fumbling and help from a German man, as I didn't know that I wasn't supposed to dial the initial “0” in the number. Once the call was successfully made, I informed UG of our arrival time and also of Shyamala's sickness, and to my great relief, when I returned to my seat, Shyamala was suddenly feeling better.
We both were starved. We had to change trains in Basel, carrying our stuff across the train tracks, which was another hassle. Finally, around 7:30 PM or so we arrived in Bern and were met at the train station by UG and Paul Sempé, who drove us to Gstaad in an hour and a half. It was dark, so we couldn't see much. Upon arrival, we had soup and bread, which revived us. Kim was cooking for UG and Valentine (and others too). We were given two small rooms upstairs to sleep, and we were ready to rest.
The next day, I had a better picture of Chalet Sunbeam and its surroundings. It was a two story chalet, with the landlord, Herr Grossman and his wife living upstairs. Also from a side staircase you could go to an upstairs apartment and a room for guests. There was a bath and a shower downstairs. The chalet stands on a small hill and you could see the town's main street and tennis courts, and the magnificent mountains all around covered with green grass mown in the summertime by owners of the properties. In winter, Gstaad turns into a ski resort, and in summer, a venue for world-class tennis tournaments. The place is abuzz with tourists in summer. The weather is pleasant with occasional showers. It's a delight to tourists.
I met many people visiting UG that were new to me but whom I would see many times again on future visits. These included Paul Sempé, Marissa, Salvatore, Henk Shoneville, Robert Geissman and Herr Grossman, the rather peculiar resident owner of the chalet. Paul was once a pacifist and used to listen to J. Krishnamurti regularly. Salvatore and Marissa were also once followers of Krishnamurti. Henk, who ran an Advaita ashram in Amsterdam, once took me out for a beer and complained about how badly UG would treat him in spite of the fact that he made all the arrangements for UG's visits to Amsterdam. Paul Sempé would discuss René Descartes with me. Being a Frenchman, Paul was quite enamored by Descartes. Once, UG was listening in on our conversation, but I was too self-conscious to speak freely. Of course, UG was critical of Descartes.
Shyamala was entertained by Marissa and Kim. Marissa's teenage son, Lorenzo, being there was very helpful. They all took good care of Shyamala. Kim took Shyamala on hikes in the mountains and they all played Dungeons and Dragons. Marissa even did our laundry.
In the morning of the second day or so of our arrival, UG brought us down to Mount Egli and photographed us at the bottom of the hill with our camera. That was touching. He left us there, asking us to take a lift to go up on the mountain. We did, and Shyamala and I walked on the Alps. Shyamala shouted, “I'm not going home. This is my home!” I was pleased with her response. When we got back to the town it was 2:30 or so in the afternoon, too late to expect lunch at UG's. So we decided to have lunch at a restaurant downtown. We went into an Italian restaurant and ordered some minestrone soup. I had to make sure, in my broken French, that there was no meat in it. Shyamala thought the soup was delicious. Generally, the food we had with UG at Sunbeam was good – the usual UG menu of soups with cream, bread, cheese and yogurt.
We went on car trips to various places. Paul Sempé drove us to Zurich one day where we ate at an Indian restaurant. In Zurich we met this young German psychiatrist and his wife whom I had the occasion to meet again much later. Paul also drove us to see Bern and Lucerne. The night before that drive, the weather was predicted to be dismal. The television showed a picture of the whole of Switzerland overcast with a forecast of rain. But the next day, it was sunny! In Bern, UG walked around the shops with us, and bought us some freshly-squeezed orange juice and chocolate for Shyamala. Only when we had returned to Gstaad did it begin to get cloudy. Observing this, I asked UG, “Should we say it was UG's miracle or simpy that the weatherman was mistaken?” UG replied quietly, “Let's say that the weatherman was mistaken.”
During our stay, Shyamala and I took pictures all over the place. Once, Shyamala's camera fell on the street. I later had to supplement my pictures with Chandrasekhar's either because mine were lost or there was not enough film left.
I think it was on this trip that I asked UG if he would be interested in reading the article I wrote about J. Krishnamurti (“Fragmentation, Meditation and Transformation”). It was later published (in 1988) in the Journal of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research. UG said that he would always be interested in reading what I had to write. So, I gave it to him. He read it overnight and the next morning he nicely slipped it under a couple of other books or papers so that it would not be easily noticed. I asked him what he thought of the paper. He said I made clear some of the difficulties which the reader might have in understanding Krishnamurti, and the conversation ended there.
I commented to UG at one point about how all the people who gathered around him for his sessions (I had in mind Robert Geismann and Bernard, the mailman from England) were so mature. And UG's reply was astonishing: “The Old Man (meaning J. Krishnamurti) prepared them all, sir!” That told me the regard in which he held J. Krishnamurti, contrary to all appearances.
Sometimes, UG would flare up at one person or another. Once, I saw him flare up at Kim and another time at Paul Sempé. I remember Kim saying, “You want me to leave now?” Then UG would say, “if you want to…” and soften. There was no apparent reason to flare up at Paul either. UG's rationale was, “This gun shoots wherever and whenever time it sees the movement of thought.”
One day, maybe on another trip, I saw UG yelling at Herr Grossman, calling him a bastard or whatever, because Grossman had raised his rent. And of course, UG didn't relish the idea. Grossman was quite money conscious and, in spite of his riches (supposedly he owned some businesses in town) lived very modestly. Grossman engaged me in conversation once when I was climbing down the stairs in the night. For at least forty minutes or an hour he bored me with his talk of Rosicrucian teachings.
People would often gather informally outside UG's apartment on the small lawn next to the chalet, with the backdrop of the town below and the mountains behind. They sat in plastic chairs or on the ground. One afternoon, I was standing there and UG asked me to please sit down. I told him I didn't mind standing. He replied that it hurt him if I kept standing, Without making a fuss, I sat down.
Another car trip we made was with Salvatore, the Italian architect. We went to Geneva to pick up Chandrasekhar at the airport (he was returning from the US after a training course in automobile engineering in Detroit). It rained and hailed heavily in Geneva, and on our return we found a dent on Salvatore's car top from the hail.
Our stay in Gstaad was filled with trips, conversations and new acquaintances. It was memorable. On the day of our departure, we were driven by Paul Semp̩ early in the morning around 3 o'clock to a border train station and dropped off there to go to France via Milan. UG went with us to the travel agent to book the train tickets Рwe bought tickets also for a fast train from Marseille to Paris. After bidding goodbye to UG and Paul, Shyamala and I checked the luggage in the cloak room and went to a restaurant across the street for breakfast. We got on the train which went through a very long tunnel (I think about fifteen kilometers) at the border of Switzerland and Italy. When we got through the tunnel it just stopped raining, everything was wet and fresh after a recent shower. The mountainsides were green. The train stopped at a station. All the surroundings were fresh and sparkling, the wet pavement reflecting the sun. It was one of the most beautiful sites you could see. We continued our journey to Marseille where we were met by my old friend Paul Albert.
After a couple of days with Paul and his family, five days in Paris and four days in Heidelberg, I returned with Shyamala to Frankfurt. I sent her back to the US and took a plane to Bombay.
After visiting my relatives in Bombay, I went to Hyderabad to visit my brother. From there I tried to contact Chandrasekhar in Bangalore by phone to find out about UG's arrival and stay. I couldn't locate him so I left a message. Chandrasekhar never answered my message.
I then went on a trip south, first to see my friend Kumaraswami Raja in Annamalai. Raja was a professor of linguistics at Annamalai University. He used to be a close friend of mine in Visakhapatnam where we both worked at the University. He was very much into J. Krishnamurti, having read many of his books. Many years ago he had helped me go to the US by encouraging me to send him my papers and submitting them to the Department of Philosophy at UC Berkeley. I spent a couple of days with him in Annamalai where I met his new wife Saraswati (he had had a previous short-lived, broken marriage in the US) and his son Mohan.
I played all my Amsterdam tapes of UG for him on his tape recorder. Henk had given me these tapes in Gstaad. He had made them himself from interviews he had had with UG. The tapes must have made an impression on Raja. He said, “This must be another Krishnamurti looming on the horizon.” After a couple of days of visiting, Raja dropped me off at the Annamalai bus station about ten in the night to travel to Bangalore. He promised he would come to Bangalore a day or two after I arrived there, and I asked him to put himself up in a hotel and come to Poorna Kutee on 40 K.R. Road, Chandrasekhar's house, where UG was living.
The next morning, after a sleepless night and with a back that felt broken, I arrived in Bangalore. I hired an auto rickshaw and went to Poorna Kutee. Just as I was getting out of the vehicle, I saw UG walking away on the street in Indian dress. I hailed him. He turned around and recognized me and took me into the house. He and Chandrasekhar showed me the room where I was going to sleep. It was adjacent to the street but quite decent.
Usha, UG's daughter, was there and also Valentine, living in the downstairs room at that time. There were a couple of servants and a constant traffic of people. I chastised Chandrasekhar for not answering my phone messages but UG calmed me down, saying that that since I was there anyhow, it didn't matter. There was also a mention of Sudha, my translation of Chalam's Telugu poetry, and Chandrasekhar was critical of it and seemed not to like it.
I stayed in Bangalore for six days. I was planning to stay there for less time but UG charted out my itinerary, insisting that I should stay longer. I had stayed in Gstaad for six days so I must stay there for six days – so went his reasoning.
There were all kinds of visitors there: Shanta Kelker and her children Mittu and Prashant, Gopikrishna and Niranjan, the bicycle shop owner, Radhakrishna, the tea merchant, Ramachandra and his partner, Rechal Das, financiers to the movies, Chandrasekhar, the architect, and his wife, Sudha, Gopi Krishna and his wife, Brahmachari, the would-have-been Shankaracharya of the Kudali Math, Satyanarayana, the statistician and astrologer, and so on. We mostly sat on the floor or on a cot while UG sat in a chair. There were few chairs. Lots of gossip and joking around made for a party-like atmosphere.
Kalyani was one of the visitors. She would sing and dance, and beg for money. She was well-to-do, being the sister of a civil service officer. Later, she died of breast cancer. She was evidently pretty psychic and a bit crazy. All kinds of stories are told about her in Stopped In Our Tracks by Chandrasekhar.
Mahesh Bhatt was also there, staying at the Woodlands Hotel. A couple of days after I arrived we went to see him there. Mahesh ordered some beer. Brahmachari, the swamiji, was there. Then Raja was ushered in, as he'd arrived at Poorna Kutee and someone brought him over. It appears he was given the room Usha was occupying, so he didn't have to stay in a hotel. UG asked Usha to sleep in the living room instead. Raja, Mahesh, Nagaraj and I all drank beer in UG's presence – generally unheard of. Brahmachari, who would not normally approve of such things, nevertheless joined the merriment minus the drinking.
Another night, UG asked me to join him to go to Mahesh's room where a drinking session for Mahesh and me had been arranged. We took an elevator to go to his room. He wasn't there but UG had a key and on entering we could hear a big band playing next door downstairs. The noise was so loud that I thought UG would do something to quell it. He went into the bathroom and closed the curtain there and came back into the main room. As he was sitting down in the armchair he swung his right arm broadly. A minute later the band noise stopped and never returned. Mahesh and I did have a couple of drinks in the room and then the three of us went downstairs for dinner.
Nagaraj (the personal assistant to the Postmaster General) was always around, on “French leave” from his work so he could be with UG, taking shorthand notes of conversations with UG. He was addicted to smoking. He wanted to quit but couldn't. UG would advise him not to quit. If he quit, UG warned, it would be a great shock to his system. Sometime later, Nagaraj even called me at home in Seaside (while UG was visiting) and asked me for tips to quit smoking. I told him to “just quit.” Anyway, it appears he did, and he died soon after. UG, I heard, went to visit his family to console them.
There were two servant maids in the house taking care of Valentine. I noticed how their faces would expand with broad smiles whenever UG walked into a room. They were happy to see him. Of course, he always rewarded them generously for their work. Why wouldn't they be happy? Besides, UG's aura was such.
One night, Chandrasekhar and I brought vadais and hot chutney from a nearby restaurant. We all ate them to spare the women at home the trouble of cooking. During my stay, I was offering to spend money on this or that, but UG would always stop me, saying, “Wait, your turn will come.” We went into a sari shop looking for a sari for Wendy, my wife. UG let me pay for a piece of fabric for him and he helped me pick a nice sari for Wendy, a blue one.
That was the last time I saw my friend Raja. While there, he once participated in a conversation with UG. As usual, the topic was enlightenment. UG in his usual fashion downplayed the idea of “waiting for something to happen.” I wrote to Raja later from the US but never had a response from him. I learned a couple of years after from his son Mohan that one evening around five he went out for a walk to the downtown area and never returned. His family and friends advertised in the papers and other venues searching for him, but to no avail. No one knew what happened to him. I mentioned this later to UG and mused aloud that he might have been murdered. UG replied, “Murdered, no!” I didn't know how to take that answer.
As my time in Bangalore was coming to a close, I remarked to UG that it seemed about 90% of the people who came to see him there were really there for the supernatural effect and not for his teaching. He replied, “Why 90%? All of them!”
After the six days had passed, I bade goodbye to everyone. Suguna made some upma for me as it was too early for dinner. As a parting gift UG gave me some incense sticks to give to my family. I was going out to get an auto rickshaw and Chandrasekhar wanted to accompany me to the bus station. I said I could go alone. UG supported me by saying that a man who can go all around the world doesn't need company to go to the bus station.
On one of his visits to Seaside, UG invited Wendy to come to Switzerland with our two children, Kiran and Shyamala. I told him that if we went all the way to Switzerland, it would be only a bit longer to go to India, but it would cost too much to go to both places. UG said it would be more interesting for Wendy to go to India. I pointed out that I wouldn't care to go to India if he weren't there. So, the trip was arranged. The four of us traveled from Seaside first to Madras and then took another plane to Bangalore. Julie and Chandrasekhar received us at the airport around midnight.
At Poorna Kutee, our family was given a big room upstairs and was treated like royalty. The food was great. I remember going for a walk with UG in Lalbagh Botanical Garden. UG also took us all to M.T.R. Restaurant where everything was made with ghee. We stayed in Bangalore for ten days. On the third day it was June 25th, my birthday. For that day, I arranged that Julie would take my family in a taxi to Mysore and show them around while I spent time with UG in Bangalore. But at 6:00, just as I went downstairs in my pajamas to get some coffee, I learned that Julie had backed out of going – she couldn't tear herself away from UG! UG suggested that I should take them to Mysore – after all, they were my family. I agreed and got ready in fifteen minutes. I did have a great birthday celebration, with a lovely beer and cashew nuts in the luxury hotel located in the Brindavan Gardens near Mysore.
One morning, UG arranged for me to go and get a Nadi reading (I think it was called Agasthya Nadi). I had anticipated this possibility even while I was back in the US, as there was talk about it then. So I had my horoscope that had been done by my late father sent to me from Hyderabad and I took it with me to the reading, along with information about Wendy's birthplace and date and time of birth. We had both our readings done. Brahmachari and Chandrasekhar were with us as well as Wendy and I think Shyamala and Kiran. The session took place for no more than an hour. At the end I gave the Nadi reader a hundred rupees. The Nadi reader had long matted hair and read the palm leaves inscribed in archaic Tamil which he translated into contemporary Kannada.
There were some predictions that I would become rich and famous in some sort of international business, that I would live till I was 93, that Wendy was my second wife, and that my mother was going to die in the next year or two. The reading was right about Wendy, and my mother did die about a year later. At the end of the session, I was prompted by the Nadi reader to ask questions. I asked if or when I would get enlightened. The answer came that I would be enlightened when I was 93. When this was reported to UG, he chided me. I told him I believed that in some sense I was already enlightened. That put an end to the conversation.
One afternoon, there was a big gathering at Poorna Kutee. The upstairs living room was packed with people. A little girl from a Telugu family was brought to perform classical dance for UG, her teacher accompanying her with her singing. It was difficult to watch. The dance was so long that the girl was literally in pain. At some point in the late afternoon, everyone moved to the rooftop terrace. Even Valentine was carried up the stairs in her wicker chair. There, Shyamala charmed everyone with her dance as well as her dramatization of Dr. Seuss's poem, “What Was I Scared Of?” While everyone was chatting, Shyamala and the other girls, Mittu, Aruna and Archana taught each other some dance movements. Mittu and Prashant were Shanta's children. Aruna and Archana were Chandrasekhar's daughters. Bharati, UG's elder daughter, was also present. The women had a grand time decking Shyamala out with saris.
Another day, I invited everyone for lunch at the Woodlands Hotel. We all ate pizza and other foods. Indian food was served but in another part of the restaurant where you ate in Indian style.
The night before we left, we saw UG off at the airport. He left to go somewhere. The same night, after 10 o'clock, Chandrasekhar took me to see his friend Satyanarayana, the statistician, who was also an astrologer, for a reading. Satyanarayana was kind enough to give a detailed reading. He appeared psychic, citing phrases from the book Mind Is a Myth according to page number before it was even published! He told us his father had become a sannyasin and I noticed a picture of him dressed accordingly.
On our final day, we were invited for lunch by Ramachandra and Rechal Das. They were partners and billionaires. There were snacks and beer and all that. But we didn't see their families. There was some philosophical talk, part of it turning around who would succeed UG. I felt that they got interested in me because they suspected that I might be the one to succeed UG. Not a chance! In fact I commented once on UG in everyone's presence: “UG is an ‘oddball.’ I don't want to be an oddball.” After the lunch, Ramachandra dropped us off at the airport.
From there we flew to Hyderabad where we visited my brother and his family for a couple of weeks. In Hyderabad, my family was treated to lunch or dinner parties by UG's daughters Bharati and Usha, and UG's friend Dr. Kameswari. UG's grandson Kamesh drove us around showing us his place of work, the Defense Research Laboratories.
We then briefly visited several other places: Bombay, Guntur, Delhi, Agra, Banaras and Madras, partly on a lecture tour, arranged by my former teacher and friend Professor K. Satchidananda Murty, before returning to Seaside.
This period of four weeks of being with UG did not involve traveling on my part. This was the only time that UG stayed in the area where I live for more than two or three days. The occasion was to provide Mahesh Bhatt a place to write UG's biography (U.G. Krishnamurti, A Life, published later in 1992 by Penguin Books, India), with some assistance from UG and me.
UG sent some money from Europe, asking me to find a place for him and Mahesh to stay while they visited the US with the plan of Mahesh writing UG's biography. Wendy and I found a vacation rental home in Carmel for them and rented it for a month. They arrived and set up house there. I brought in my 286 PC computer and dot-matrix printer. The idea was for me to help Mahesh write the biography in the afternoons when I wouldn't be busy teaching in the college. For a whole week there was no movement, as Mahesh didn't even make the first stab at writing. I was beginning to doubt if the biography would ever come to pass. But soon after, he picked up speed and would dictate material to me and I would type it up on the computer while simultaneously editing it where needed.
There were few visitors – UG made sure of that. There was this odd and odiferous couple whose story is recounted in a later essay. Larry Morris came for a couple of weeks to help with the writing. UG himself had newspaper and magazine clippings as well as some old letters with him, and he would dictate some of those to me. At times, he and Larry (and I too) would work together on a paragraph or two. Also, Douglas Rosestone visited, giving an account of the night of UG's “calamity,” which was videographed and reported in the biography. A few others, mostly from the San Francisco Bay Area and Santa Cruz managed to drop in for short visits.
Mahesh was intense in his work. When he was not working, he was talking to his daughter on his birthday or to some others in Bombay about his films. He never cared much about what he ate or drank, and lived practically on what UG had provided him. At nights, when he was alone, he would write stuff and dictate the material the next day when I was on the computer.
The last night of the writing of the biography, at about 10:00, the computer keyboard promptly broke down. Not knowing what else to do, I called the shop person who had sold me the computer. Fortunately, not only did he answer, but he said that he could replace the one I had with another one right then! I told Mahesh I would go down to this man's shop to fetch the replacement keyboard, and Mahesh said he would go with me. After we returned at about 11:00, I told Mahesh that it was my job now to put all the material of the book together and he could retire for the night. But Mahesh insisted that he would sit with me. He said that in his movie-making work he was used to things breaking down in the middle of the night and to sitting with people working with him late into the night. I started working.
Around 2:00 AM, UG suddenly walked in from his bedroom and declared, “I still sense a block here. These two chapters (whatever they were) should not be separate. They should be merged together.” I told him that then the resulting chapter would be too long and that some material would have to be cut. The material that could be cut was mostly about Mahesh's relationship with Parveen Babi. Mahesh said that he couldn't do it because the material was too close to his heart. So, I said I would do it. In about ten minutes I merged the chapters and cut down the size. This was another of the many instances where being with UG meant things could change instantly, at any time; one could not hesitate or ponder, but had to act quickly.
The book was ready to be printed by 6:00 AM. As the book had to be finished immediately (they were scheduled to leave the next day), I called my work and excused myself for the day, and set about printing the biography using double-strike printing on the dot-matrix printer. The two hundred pages took about five and a half hours. By 11:30 AM the manuscript was ready to be taken to Kinkos to be copied and bound. I was exhausted, so I rested a couple of hours in the middle of the day.
The next morning, Mahesh and UG left the house in Carmel, dropping by our house for breakfast on their way to Corte Madera. I told UG that the work had been hard, but I loved every minute of it. I also said that my work was my “guru dakshina” (gift to the guru) to him. UG replied that if there was anybody like a guru, he wouldn't call himself that. By all accounts, the writing of the biography was a memorable event.
Yercaud, Mysore, Bangalore and Madras, 1994
While I was visiting UG in San Rafael some months earlier, UG invited me to go to India that winter of 1994 and he even provided me with a round-trip ticket. I was to spend a month in India, about three weeks with him and a week with all my extended family in Hyderabad.
My brother had died the year before (in November 1993) from a heart attack. I hadn't gone to his funeral, so I thought it would be a good gesture on my part to visit my sister-in-law, his widow, after a year of his death, to offer my condolences.
After one night in Madras, I first spent about two weeks in Yercaud with UG, a night at Brahmachari's ashram in Mysore, a few days in Bangalore at Chandrasekhar's, then a week with my family in Hyderabad, and then went back to Madras to spend another week with UG before I left the country.
I flew from Los Angeles on Malaysian Airlines directly to Madras. UG, besides sending me the ticket, also arranged for Chandrasekhar to meet me at the airport and take me to Mr. Malladi Krishnamurti's house to spend the night. I was quite touched by the cordiality with which the Malladis received me. They had supper ready for me. I slept, took a bath in the morning and had some coffee. I learned that my host had been the roommate of my childhood friend Parthasaradhi when they had both studied at the Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta.
Well rested, the next morning, Chandrasekhar and I took a train to Salem. We traveled in an air conditioned compartment where seats were already reserved for us. We ate some idlis sold by vendors on the train for breakfast and talked to our hearts' content.
When we arrived in Salem after about 4-6 hours of travel, UG and Major Dakshinamurti were waiting at the station to receive us. We went into a nearby restaurant for lunch. UG chided the Major for the measly tip he gave to the waiter.
Later, we arrived at the Radha Estate, in Yercaud. Yercaud is a resort village located on a hill near Salem. Driving there involved quite an uphill curving road with sharp hairpin turns which the Major negotiated well. The house had a West Wing and an East Wing; UG, the Major and I occupied the East Wing. In my room, as I opened my suitcase to pull out some small gifts (like almond rocca), I heard UG talking about them as “junk.” Of course, I was hurt a little. Yet he appropriated the whole box of the almond rocca, only part of which I had intended to give to Chandrasekhar and Suguna and the rest to my family, and never even mentioned a thing about it. UG gave me some rupees in exchange for dollars (with his usual “commission” – as this was his usual practice and how he made some money, the exchange rates varying, depending on the customer).
Nartaki also came to see me (I had written to her before), and, of course, UG. She was put up in the West Wing along with Godfried and Bodil.
My room was comfortable enough, and there was a bathroom where I could get hot water and wash my underwear and hang them up to dry. I remember one morning I came out after my bath, not quite fully dressed, and UG was sitting cross-legged in the living room on a sofa, clad in white clothes. I was standing in front of him, hands closed, watching him in reverence. Earlier, when I was taking my bath, I had been having all kinds of negative thoughts going in my head, but now when I stood there, my mind was swept clean of all those negative thoughts, and I could feel a nice clean energy running through me. UG looked like a freshly blossomed flower.
One evening, after dinner, UG was asking all the foreigners (it must have included me) to go to the West Wing. I teasingly said something to the effect, “We all belong over there!” UG took it as if I was feeling hurt. The next afternoon, he himself made some coffee with cream and brought over to me. I knew he was making up for his remark the previous night. The coffee was absolutely delicious.
I saw him also abetting a drunkard by giving him money each time he came by or UG passed him on the street.
One evening, UG again started his tirade against Chandrasekhar for his gathering so many personal letters of people to UG, as well as photographs of him, and videos and audios of UG talking with people. UG's claim was that others might access those letters and glean personal information the authors or involved parties wouldn't want seen. Also, he maintained that the photographs and videos were the general property of people (of everyone) and Chandrasekhar had no business keeping them for himself. Another claim I heard was that people who keep these videos and other materials might eventually use them to make money. That night things came to a head with a movement to destroy the photographs. UG started throwing pictures (he only did that to a few) into the fire. I said I would help him and threw one of the into the fire myself. Everyone was aghast at what I did. Later, on several occasions, I would brag about how I had committed UG's pictures to flames.
Early in my visit there was talk about taking me to a Nadi astrologer somewhere in Salem. Godfried, the elderly German painter, and Bodil, his Swedish wife, had already consulted that Nadi. The Nadi reader had told them about their previous lives, including their past names, and everyone had been impressed. Arrangements were made for us all to go in a hired van. I was mildly interested. On the morning of the reading, I was taking a bath, getting ready to go, and UG shouted from the living room addressing me, “You're not really interested in going, are you?” “No, not really,” I said. Then he canceled the trip, on that pretext. That's UG's style. He can throw surprises at you at any turn.
One cold night, the fireplace was lit. UG's room was right next door. There was a billow of smoke coming out of the fireplace, and quite a bit of it was being drawn through a small window into UG's room. UG, however, continued to sleep in his room with his door closed and did not come out for hours. Later, he bragged about this and would say, “Fresh air is only a psychological necessity.” “Right,” I would say to myself sarcastically. In fact, I remember in Palm Springs and in the Crow's Nest in Mill Valley, people practically choking from the heat and rushing out of the room gasping for a breath of fresh air. Suffocation is not a psychological necessity!
It was during that trip that Brahmachari showed a sudden interest in me which he never had before, perhaps because he had read my paper on non-duality (“The Viability of Non-Duality”) by that time. He started showing some respect for what I had to say.
One afternoon, Chandrasekhar and we two went out for a walk into the village and sat on top of a couple of boulders. The view of the valley from there was magnificent. Brahmachari told me stories from his past about UG and we exchanged notes about our experiences with UG.
One afternoon, Chandrasekhar asked me if I would look at his translation of Mahesh Bhatt's translation of his into Telugu. I said I would and asked him whose idea it was to ask me, his or UG's. It was UG's, he said. UG remembered that I had some experience in translating when I worked for the Telugu Encyclopedia many years ago, and probably thought that it would do some good to the translation if I look into it.
There was this lawyer of the Supreme Court of India, Sushil Kumar, visiting from Delhi. He wore an ochre robe. Obviously he was a sannyasin before. One morning there was a big meeting in the living room with several people around. Sushil Kumar was quite brilliant. A big repartee session went on between him, Brahmachari and UG. Mahesh was also present. I think someone even filmed it. It was simply hilarious. People roared with laughter.
The next day, Sushil Kumar and UG were standing on the porch, involved in some discussion. I was present. At some point UG for some reason turned the discussion over to me. I answered to the best of my ability.
On New Year's Eve, the Major, Chandrasekhar, Suguna and I watched TV while UG was resting in his room. The celebration was quite interesting. Among other entertainments, there was a woman from Malaysia singing in Tamil – she was quite good. It was quite amazing to me how many channels (including Western channels like CNN and BBC) you could get on TV in India. Of course, you had to have the appropriate cable to receive them.
After New Year's, it was time for us to leave Yercaud. Brahmachari had left before us. We planned to visit him in Mysore at his ashram, which is really a house where he taught Vedanta or whatnot to a few brahmacharis. They cooked food and ate there. There were several rooms; the house was his family house and probably his share of the family property. His brothers, according to UG, were kingmakers. They were noted for their corruption and graft. Brahmachari had connections with liquor dealers and could get you illicit liquor!
I rewarded the servants well for their work before we left the house in Yercaud for Mysore. The Major drove UG, Nartaki and me. We dropped Nartaki off at the bus stop to take a bus to Tiruvannamalai where she worked at Ramanashram. It was in the morning around 8:00. We then drove for quite some time through a National Forest, up in the hills. The forest was like a jungle, but had wide enough dirt roads to go on and lots of trees, but it wasn't a dense forest. We must have driven through the forest for about an hour. We played several tapes of Balamuralikrishna, the famous South Indian classical singer, in the car.
We arrived at Brahmachari's ashram at about lunchtime. Brahmachari made me wear a dhoti, and we sat on the floor for lunch. The food was cooked by Brahmachari. It was quite tasty. There were cots with mosquito nets in the neighboring rooms. After lunch, an astrologer came by and a hilarious conversation followed. UG and Brahmachari were talking to each other through the astrologer, joking, of course. I interrupted them saying, “Why are you guys talking to each other through him, instead of directly?” That added more spice to the hilarity. We slept there that night and the next morning we left for Bangalore, which was about a six-hour drive. Brahmachari saw us off after blessing me and receiving UG's blessings.
I stayed in Bangalore at Chandrasekhar's place, Purna Kutee, on 40 K.R. Road. There I saw Godfried and Bodil again as well as Frank Naronha. That was the first time I met Naronha. He was a high level civil servant in the Central Government and had edited a couple of UG's books, No Way Out and Thought Is Your Enemy. He was trying to touch UG's feet to show respect and UG was preventing him by trying to touch Noronha's feet in turn. So you could see both of them ending up pushing each other's arms away from themselves as though they were wrestling. It was funny. When he was making some appeals to UG (about his job), I said to Noronha, “You don't have to ask him, whatever is good for you, UG will do it.” UG looked at me and echoed questioningly, repeating, “Without asking?”
Chandrasekhar brought out his translation of Mahesh's book, and I started making corrections with my limited abilities. UG and I discussed the correct translation for “calamity” and we finally settled on “vipattu.” I spent several days making the corrections. In the process, Chandrasekhar also brought out journals he had kept of his encounters with UG. I glanced through them and told him that they deserve to be published in English, as many Westerners wouldn't know about most of the things that happened around UG in India in the early years after his calamity.
One evening, Brahmachari brought a poem of his (he called it a dandakam on UG) which he wrote in Kannada and wanted me to translate into English. He, Chandrasekhar and I sat together for about two hours and did the translation and got it typed up. It is now in Chandrasekhar's book, Stopped In Our Tracks with the title “Who is this UG?”
My next stop was Hyderabad, where I visited my sister-in-law and other relatives and friends for a week, out of UG's orbit, and then went on to Madras where UG was waiting at the airport, along with Chandrasekhar and the Major. We again were put up at the Malladi's, where I had a grand time.
Chandrasekhar played a tape of Jnanachakravarti's astrology readings and some music. We were invited the next morning for breakfast at Madurai Mani's place. The idlis were great and to top it off Mr. Mani sang. The Manis are a domiciled Telugu family. Obviously, the man is well known. His music was good.
After three nights, Chandrasekhar, Suguna, the Major, UG and I went scouting for a place to spend the next three nights. After looking at a resort place one day and not being satisfied with it, we returned to Madras. The next day, we decided to go to Pondicherry. We went to the Aurobindo Ashram Hotel there and found that there were no vacancies. So we headed out of Pondicherry. About 15 kilometers away, UG spotted a hotel from a distance and declared that that was “it.” We went there, and found it was a Government-run Ashoka hotel. It was pretty clean and was standing on an immaculate beach with a fantastic view from the back where you could sit on chairs and watch the ocean, the beach and the lone boat parked in the sand on the beach. The Major and I occupied one room, Chandrasekhar and Suguna another and UG a third. The food wasn't great, but we tipped well anyway. Once, UG asked how much I tipped and I mentioned that it was 10% of the amount of the bill. He made no comment. Chandrasekhar was going to pay for the hotel, but I insisted on paying for it.
On the second day, I arranged for a ride back to Pondicherry to meet with my French friend, Paul Albert, at the hotel where he was staying. Albert was living in Pondicherry at that time trying to do some field work in linguistics in a local tribe. The Major drove and Chandrasekhar and Suguna went with us. UG opted to stay back at the hotel. I caught Albert in the restaurant at the hotel. Looking at the picture on one of the UG books I gave him, Albert remarked that UG looked like a movie star. I introduced Chandrasekhar, Suguna and the Major to him. They were to come back in the late afternoon and pick me up after I had spent the day with Albert.
I drank some beer with him and then we went into the local tavern with food stalls lined up alongside, a place where local wine was served. There were hordes of flies on the foodstuff. Paul said that if it weren't for the flies, he would have loved to eat the food. We went up to his room, which was clean. He made a tape copy of a couple of 45 rpm records of Sita and Anusuya's folk songs and gave it to me as a gift. Then we went for a short walk along the street. In the late afternoon, my three friends came to pick me up. Paul said namaskaram to Suguna and we all left.
One night while we were there, there was a beautiful full moon and all four of us went to the beach. Suguna was complaining about some personal things in her life, particularly about how she didn't want to see or hear about Kaka, Chandrasekhar's former wife, whom he divorced on UG's prompting.
We returned to Madras. I called Satchidananda Murty, my former philosophy professor at Andhra University, on the phone. I had called him once earlier from Yercaud. He had already met UG before in Albuquerque, so when I was on the phone with him in Yercaud, he asked if UG would come to his village and receive his hospitality. UG politely declined. I made an appointment to see Murty in Madras at the hotel where he was staying. He was there on some official business.
I asked Malladi if he could spare a couple of copies of the organizers he had gotten made for his company, which he graciously gave me. I took one of those and a copy of one of UG's books as gifts to Murty. That morning, UG had his hair cut at the Taj Mahal Hotel. UG, Major, Chandrasekhar, Suguna and I had coffee there after the haircut then drove by the hotel where Murty was staying. I was dropped off at the hotel. I asked UG if he wanted to come in and see Murty. UG promptly declined. I went and knocked at Murty's door. He opened it but looked pretty annoyed as I was there a few minutes earlier than the appointed time (I was supposed to see him at noon, and it was about 11:50). He let me in anyway. Others, all professors, also came. I spent the afternoon in their company discussing issues of promoting Indian studies abroad. After lunch and a meeting with the professors in Murty's room, I took an auto rickshaw back to the Malladi's.
At the Malladi's, the food was delicious. UG, the Major and I were all put up in the rooms upstairs. Mahesh was visiting UG at the time. And also a woman from Sri Lanka called Sylvia.
Parvati Kumar, a wealthy retired chartered accountant, once came with his wife and about fifty foreigners. They were on their way to somewhere in the South to visit one of the “Masters” places. Malladi's house had a collection of the pictures of the Masters. I once heard the whole family chanting in Sanskrit at the shrine downstairs. The sound of chanting sent shivers up my spine. Parvati Kumar prostrated before UG, and, of course, UG withdrew his feet, saying that they were dirty. Kumar is into occult Vedic thinking and has published in poor English plenty of literature concerning it. UG is considered a Master in the lineage of Masters by Kumar's group to which the Malladis also belonged.
That night, the whole group Kumar had brought was asked for dinner. UG and the rest of us were invited too. UG was made to sit on an elevated seat. He introduced Mahesh Bhatt as “Public Enemy No. 1,” and Chandrasekhar as “Public Enemy No. 2,” and I added that I was the Public Enemy No. 3. Anyway, we ate dinner. UG gave a small speech, and not saying very much, got up and mingled nicely with the people around. Soon after, we all left to go upstairs, leaving the group to their own devices.
The last night I was there, I was leaving in the middle of the night to fly back to the US from Madras. UG was supposed to leave the next night. I asked him where he was going. He said he had four plane tickets in his pocket – one to go to Australia, a second to the US, a third to China and Japan and the last one to Europe. He said he would go first to Singapore and then decide in which direction he would go from there.
UG was debating whether he should go with me to the airport to see me off. I discouraged him saying why should he trouble himself driving in the car at such a late hour in the night. Nevertheless, around 10:00 PM, he decided to go. At the airport I got everything taken care of and was about to go in the gate and board the plane. As usual, I shook UG's hand and saluted him. He tapped me on my shoulder and made some kind of a blessing gesture with his arm as he was leaving. It had to be a blessing!
That was the end of my trip to India in 1994.
Hemet, California and Gstaad, 1995
At the end of 1994, UG and gang visited us in Seaside for a couple of days, staying through New Year's Day. As usual, he stayed in the modest Magic Carpet Lodge (a Best Western motel) down the street where I live. During that time, UG insisted that I go travel with them in Southern California right after New Year's. There was no specific destination. Rather, he wanted to make good of his threats to find a new “base” in California. He said he was finished with the Bay Area.
I had to stay home for a few days to take care of Kiran's injured leg, but soon after New Year's, I flew to LA and was received by UG at the airport. My daughter Shyamala was also there to meet me at the airport and spend a little time with me. We all got into a van driven by Julie. While Julie was driving out of the parking lot she ran into competition with another woman for space on the driveway and neither of them would budge. UG kept yelling at Julie, “Don't let that bitch in!” egging her on. Finally, after both women took considerable risks, Julie prevailed. This scene certainly freaked Shyamala out.
We drove to a nearby hotel where the Malladis were waiting for us with idlis and other goodies. We had our lunch with them. Shyamala was introduced to Malladi Krishnamurti and his wife Prasanna. Larry was with us on the trip too. Shyamala left us to return home.
We spent the night in a hotel, UG, Larry and I, occupying the same suite. In the morning, we all set out on our trip with nothing but a cup of coffee or tea and some peanuts from the plane. And, looking for places to stay, we drove toward San Diego, via a valley where we didn't find anything suitable. We had lunch in an Indian restaurant in San Diego. Then we were driving again when UG asked us to stop and picked up one of those papers where hotels, apartments and other accommodations were listed. He found a Best Western motel for $19 a night in a place called Hemet. He couldn't have been happier!
We immediately drove and found ourselves in a small non-descript town some distance southeast of Los Angeles. The rent at the motel was actually somewhat higher. Julie rented an apartment, Mario and Lisa one, and the Guhas another. Some of these must have traveled with us and others come later. Larry rented one for himself. I was to crash in UG's suite, sleeping on the living room sofa-bed which could be folded back into a sofa in the daytime for people to sit on. The arrangement was that I would pay rent for the suite for one month (that was the scheduled duration of our stay) and in turn UG would feed me.
Sometime during our stay, I coined a nickname for Hemet: “Hemet, damn it!” UG liked it.
In India, Mahesh was going to write a press release on pornography and government censorship and he sought UG's help on the phone. To help with the matter, UG dictated his pronouncement on the subject to me. I didn't have a computer with me, so I wrote it down by hand. It was entitled, “The Role of Godmen in the Next Millennium.” I edited it and then fair-copied it in all capitals, and Julie faxed it to Mahesh in Bombay. It was an indictment of censorship, showing how it never works.
While we were in Hemet we made several trips to various places. One time we went to a billionaire's place (I can't recall his name). The man had once been a professor of mathematics or economics at the University of Chicago. Once, Julie had taken UG to visit him in Chicago. He had quit his job there, saying that the income provided by his job kept him poor. Instead he became a high-level investment broker and made four billion dollars and was on his way to making the fifth. His place in one of the valleys in the Los Angeles area was hidden away. We had to drive down a long driveway which had several signs warning, “Armed Response!” He had two ferocious dogs and lived alone with a whole lot of booze and vitamins and a huge TV screen with almost a thousand channels. He looked like a lonely man.
We later went to another place of his where he was having a huge house built with big lawns and bronze sculptures on the lawns worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. There was a separate annex being built which he was offering to UG to live in. But UG wasn't too enthusiastic about it as the place was located in a remote area not easily accessible for people who might want to visit him.
While I was in Hemet, Wendy mailed a copy of the book, Selected Verses of Vemana, translated by me into English, which had just been published in India. UG immediately got hold of it in the car and started reading from it as we set out to go on one of our “malling” trips.
At one point, UG was making arrangements to go with Mario to the airport in Los Angeles from where Mario was leaving for Europe. Mario was to drive there, I was to go with them and then drive UG back to Hemet. UG suggested that we visit my daughter Shyamala after dropping off Mario, as she lived nearby in Santa Monica. We called her, offering to take her out to lunch. She asked if she could invite a few of her friends to meet UG. That was fine with UG, so it was arranged.
When we arrived the next morning at the airport, I had to get help from Mario even to start the car. I was nervous to drive in the big city but I did anyway, and drove UG carefully to Shyamala's apartment. Kash, her boyfriend (later her husband), was there. Shyamala didn't have any coffee or cream in her kitchen, so she had to send Kash out to get some, and then we had some coffee.
Meanwhile, about ten to fifteen of their friends, mostly interns and residents from various medical specialties, including ophthalmology and psychiatry, gathered there (Kash was in medical school at the time). One of them offered to go to a nearby South Indian restaurant and bring us all some lunch. By about noon, the coffee table in the apartment was filled with a feast with all kinds of goodies, and we had a great communal lunch, instead of just taking Shyamala out.
And UG, in his usual fashion, charmed all of them with his answers to their questions and with his one-liners, anecdotes and jokes. UG's magic at work again! After a couple of hours, UG and I drove back to Hemet. On his next visit, UG did change his base to Palm Springs.
In 1995, my family and I all visited UG in Gstaad. On this trip, our family also went to Heidelberg, on our friend Rima Holland's invitation, to spend a few days there. One event stood out. UG asked Julie and Mario to take our whole family on a trip to Italy. They did. We stopped in a border village after passing through the big tunnel going to Italy and had a six-course elaborate lunch which Julie paid including apertifs, digestives, wine, portabella mushrooms and whatnot. It was so fancy. I realized that the Italians, like Mario, were just as particular as the French (and the Brahmins) about eating.
We took the freeways, which are tollways in Italy, to Milan. There we went into some stores and shops, had coffee in a place that also sold ice cream, and visited a great cathedral with a dress code. You had to wear shoes and a shirt. There was a big water fountain in the huge plaza in front with lots of people and pigeons. We took some pictures and headed back to Switzerland.
On the way we stopped in Stresa, a resort town on the Italian-Swiss border, where UG had spent a couple of months with Valentine many years ago. UG must have asked Julie and Mario to show us that place. It was on Lago Maggiore, a big, beautiful lake. The place was very touristy. We walked around on the cobbled lanes and went into shops, stopped in a restaurant for delicious pizza, and in an fancy ice cream place across the street.
It was after dark when we left to head back to Gstaad, through another long tunnel. The moon was magnificent, just beautiful. It was so fantastic passing through the high mountains on a moonlit night with Mario driving perfectly all the way. Around 2:00 AM we got back.
Palm Springs, December 1998-January 1999
The final event I would like to write about here is my ill-fated visit to see UG in Palm Springs at the end of 1998 and beginning of 1999. That December to January, I had a falling out with UG in Palm Springs. That was the same winter when he gave $10,500 to Kiran for both his grand piano and drum set.
I traveled to Palm Springs first and then about a couple of weeks later Wendy and Kiran joined me.
At first, UG fixed a place for me in a condominium in a gated compound called Whitewater to share with Mahesh. I was doing the cooking there for Mahesh and myself. Once UG asked me to feed Bob and Paul as well, and then when they came along with him into the condo, UG started his talk about how he didn't like the stink and stench of an ashram. I was just about ready to punch him for his contradictory messages.
A week or so later, after we were moved to another apartment, UG asked me if I could feed Mahesh for the next ten days. I said fine. But I wasn't cooking just for him; occasionally the whole gang would come in for lunch. And I had to make something special for UG. I was making mashed canned garbanzo beans or something for him. It would take about an hour to prepare the whole lunch. UG was watching over all this. He didn't like my getting so involved with cooking. I should have seen it coming.
Ten days later, Mahesh left, and Wendy and Kiran came. We were all put up in one room in the main house next to the cottage where UG lived. Chandrasekhar and his wife Suguna were also there, as were Lisa, who lived there, the Guhas, who were eating there but staying elsewhere, and Julie.
I was supposedly to share the kitchen with Chandrasekhar and Suguna. I quickly made some garbanzo beans with a few spices and lemon for Kiran. It didn't take more than ten minutes. Meanwhile, UG was sitting there outside the kitchen watching and at one point he said, “Get out of there, they have to do their own cooking.” By that time, I had finished and told him that I was getting out. Then a minute or so later, he said again to get out of there. I got furious. I was already out of the kitchen. I said, “UG, I am out of there. I'm done.” He realized that I was really done and he couldn't say anything further.
After a while I continued on, “I won't get into the kitchen! The three of us will eat outside from now on.” UG replied, “You're guests here. I don't like your eating outside.” I said, “Why are you sentimental about it? This is a decision I came to after thinking about the practicalities. After all, I am earning my own living. It's not a problem for me.” His speech faltered and became weak. It was clear that he was disturbed.
Then I stopped using the kitchen. I told Wendy to take care of the cooking. I got my food and ate in the living room for a couple of times, and then I figured it would be better if I ate in the Lucky supermarket at the end of the street. This went on for about three days just before New Year's Eve, when Dr. Lynn, Lisa, Wendy and I had a celebration with expensive champagne.
In one of our gatherings in the house, I said to UG, “I know when I am not wanted.” He answered, rather disturbed, “You are very much wanted. If it comes to that, all these people, Chandrasekhar and all, can go.” Although surprised by the reply, I wasn't too convinced by it. The fourth morning, I was telling myself in the bed that I had to leave the place. I was finishing up putting Chandrasekhar's Stopped in Our Tracks in a book form in Word Perfect. I was still struggling with the headers and footers. As UG entered the main house, I announced to him that I was leaving that afternoon (Wendy and Kiran were leaving that day to go to San Diego). UG looked very nonplussed, turned to me and said, “Why?” I said, “I don't feel very happy here.” And that was it; there was no further conversation.
I went to his cottage to wind up the computer business and put all the files Chandrasekhar needed on a floppy disk to give to him. Meanwhile, UG walked in, and I said that he didn't owe me anything for what I did for him, and that I did all the web business because I didn't make any distinction between his work and mine, and that I would look after his web page until he found someone else. UG replied that he wasn't concerned about that.
I told Wendy I would get a ride with her to the bus station that afternoon; she could drop me off there and move on to San Diego with Kiran. I would take a bus to Los Angeles, then to Salinas and Monterey. I said at the bus station to Wendy, “It's my life. You have to let me do it this way.” The operator didn't have change for a hundred dollars. But he let me in and I bought the ticket at the next stop. I paid $70 not knowing that there was a cheaper fare; the sales clerk didn't tell me about it. In the LA bus station, I had a sandwich for dinner and sat there watching people while I waited for the bus. I was quite impressed by how a black woman treated another homeless person. That was very moving, she was so compassionate. There were two buses; I took one of them knowing full well it would arrive in Salinas around four in the morning.
When I got off the bus in the Salinas bus station, there was no immediate connecting bus to go to Monterey. I walked with my bag and pillow on the streets for at least a mile in the 30 or 40-degree cold weather until I found a breakfast place. I ordered some cereal with milk and went and washed in the bathroom. I asked the waitress for directions to catch a bus to go to Monterey. One of the fellows there told me where the bus stop was, but advised that I should go back to the Greyhound station instead of the bus stop nearby, as it was dark and not safe to wait there. I walked back to the bus station and waited another hour or so. Then I took the bus to Monterey; I was dropped off in Seaside at Fremont and Ord Grove streets.
After eight days of internal turmoil, I did finally break down and call UG in Palm Springs and apologized, saying, “I'm so sorry, I made such a mess of things.” UG said, “No need to apologize,” and quickly started making arrangements for Chandrasekhar and Suguna to spend a couple days in Seaside.
Later, UG and I met many times, but the air between us was never very clear again. I did visit UG in Gstaad in the summer of 2000, when I edited Bob Carr's autobiography. The question came up in my mind, more than once, what in the world was I doing sitting there, day in and day out.
The next summer (2001), UG extended the same invitation, even offering to send me a ticket for my travel, saying that I didn't have to spend a penny. But I turned down the invitation. He said that it was terribly disappointing. I said, “For a long time I thought that no one understood me better than you.” He enthusiastically replied, “Yes, that's true.” I continued, “But I don't feel that way anymore.” He then said, “Come over here, we will thrash things out.” When I declined, he said, “Give it some deep, serious thought.” He called me twice in this context.
I didn't go to Gstaad again until the summer of 2004, although I had been seeing him off and on in the US in various places, including my own. In 2004, I heard he fell in the bathroom and was hurt. Being concerned, I called him a couple of times. I told him I planned to go to India for one last time to say goodbye to everyone. UG said that if I was going, he will be there too. The second time I called him in Gstaad, he said, “Why don't you come and spend some time here?” I accepted the invitation and went to Gstaad to spend six weeks with him. That was when I also made arrangements to spend four weeks with him in Bangalore along with Wendy and Kiran at the end of the same year.
He did come to see us in Seaside in the beginning of 2006. But after that, he never visited the US again. My last visit to see him was before his death. In spite of the air between us not being cleared, there was still that same friendship, affection and mutual respect between us as there had always been.
Sleeping Arrangements
On one of the trips to Gstaad, in the big room upstairs we were given to stay, I needed a separate mattress as Wendy and my little boy Kiran were occupying the big bed. UG was told by the landlord that there was an extra mattress in the storeroom. Before I knew it, I noticed UG climbing up the stairs carrying the mattress singlehandedly! I couldn't bear watching a 75-year-old man carrying a heavy mattress. I was so sorry I asked him. But it was too late. That's UG. When the occasion demanded it, he would throw his whole weight into the situation.
It was probably on my first visit to UG in Palm Springs, as usual, I was asked to sleep in UG's living room. There was a couch on which I was supposed to sleep. I told UG I had trouble sleeping on the couch as it was too uneven and soft, and that I would rather arrange the pillows on the floor and sleep there. He said he would rather that I slept in his bed and he would sleep on the sofa. I said, “No such thing.” He then brought sheets and pillows from his bedroom and arranged the bed on the floor himself. I remarked to him smiling, “UG, you are doing everything short of taking me to bed and singing lullabies!”
Once Guha told me that UG said to him that only two people could sleep on the couch in his living room (referring to Chalet Sunbeam in Gstaad), that is Mahesh Bhatt and Narayana Moorty.
One night in Palm Springs, UG was sleeping in his room with his door locked and the heater turned way high (probably around 95 degrees). I in the living couldn't fall sleep – it was so hot, plus I had to pee. But I couldn't get into the bathroom as you had to go through UG's bedroom to get to it. So, I went outside and peed in the plants. The next morning I told UG about it, and he said that he hardly ever slept at night and that I could easily have gotten him up. Later, I started getting picky about where I slept.
On a visit to Lake Havasu, I was to stay in UG's hotel suite and sleep in the living room on the couch. There was so much party noise from downstairs that I suggested to UG that maybe we should look for another room for me. And with Larry's help we went around looking, but didn't find anything satisfactory. So I ended up in UG's living room again, with ear plugs this time, loaned by Larry.
I think from then on UG changed his policy. On my further visits to Palm Springs he never asked me to sleep in his studio apartment. He arranged for my sleep in others' places like those of David and Maria, and Lisa and Gary.
Children, Movies, and Censorship
It was in Chalet Sunbeam in Gstaad, I believe. We were watching a movie every night to pass time. The movies were either brought in by Julie from the US or rented locally by her. Sometimes the movies had much foul language (four-letter words used hundreds of times), violence and explicit sex. But UG never disallowed children to watch the movies (the children present at this time were Shilpa and Sumedha, Guha's daughters, and Claire, Susan's daughter). “They will be exposed to them later in their lives anyway,” was his justification.
A most touching time was when we were watching the movie “The People vs. Larry Flynt.” The movie was quite painful to watch at moments, as Flynt's girlfriend was suffering from drug addiction. It was dark in the room, except for the light from the movie. Everyone was absorbed in watching the movie. But I looked at UG's face, and I could see distinctly tears rolling down his cheeks. Who could say that UG never cried?
Memorable Car Rides
I had the most memorable car rides while I was visiting UG. UG always made sure that I sat in the back of the car he was in (he always occupied the front seat by the side of the driver, and there were usually multiple cars following behind).
In California, the ride to Idyllwild was very interesting: the road up the hill was windy and the climb steep. Larry, Susan, Mario, UG and I and some others all went there looking for a house to stay in while we were still in Hemet and UG was looking for a “base.” It had snowed there earlier and was rather cold. We parked the car at the main intersection of the town and got out. Everyone else was shivering, but UG got out with not even his hands in the pockets of his thin jacket. There was sludge on one of the streets. UG was more sure-footed than I was, so he gave me a hand when I stumbled crossing the street. When they looked at a house on another street, I went with them inside and remarked while UG was toying with the idea of renting it, that he and others could stay there, but I would stay outside under the tree, and if I died in the cold, they could drag me out and throw me away! That probably poured cold water on any enthusiasm he might have had.
While in Switzerland, I remember going on such fantastic trips with UG and others that I doubt if I will ever have such experiences again. One was driving through Villars, the place where J. Krishnamurti had lived a long time ago with his brother. I remember stopping there and having coffee with Larry and Susan and whoever else.
A second trip was to Lugano and the Italian border where we saw Lago Maggiore. The views were phenomenal.
A third trip was when we all went to Liechtenstein. The small town was bordering on three countries, Austria, Germany and Switzerland. We stopped to have lunch in the local McDonald's. I treated everyone to veggie burgers. We circled around the palace where the ruler lived. On our return trip, I was with UG in a car driven by Vibodha. We drove back on the Upper Alps and the views of the mountains and valleys were so breathtaking that I will never forget them. Vibodha was such a perfect driver. Mario, I think, was driving the other car. He too was a great driver, and also (contrary to UG's denunciations) a great cook.
Finally, even as recently as August 2004, we went in a two-car caravan to Chamonix, France, to see the glacier coming down Mont Blanc. The river from the glacier waters flowed through the town. Not only were the views there phenomenal, but I never saw water flowing so fast in a river.
In the beginning of February, 2007, when I heard (from Julie Thayer and Paul Arms) that UG had fallen again in the bathroom in his apartment in Italy, I was concerned about his well-being. I was told that this time he had been badly hurt. (He was hurt once before in 2004, falling in the bathroom.) I called him. UG told me he was doing okay and expressed his wish to see me. I called again a week later. Larry answered the phone this time and said that I should come and see UG. I told Larry that I would try to come in the summer. He said, “No, no, you don't understand. It's rather urgent; you should come now.” UG picked up the phone and said, “I have to see you before I die. If I don't see you, I'll have to die in great pain!” I replied, “I will come soon. Let me look online and find a flight. Then I'll let you know.” The phone went back and forth between UG and Larry, and I could hear UG saying in the background, “Why should he pay? I will pay for his trip.” Larry repeated that to me. Later UG asked Sarito and Mario to arrange for my travel as well as for an apartment to stay while I visited UG in Vallecrosia, Italy.
I left Monterey, California, on the morning of February 14 and arrived late night of February 15, in Nice, France, to be picked up by Mitra, a friend of UG, and driven to Vallecrosia. Because of my missing an earlier connecting flight and some time-zone confusion, Mitra had to wait for a couple of hours at the airport. He was so helpful in transporting my suitcase that's handle was broken en route.
The first morning after I arrived, Larry came to pick me up at the hotel where I was staying, after I had called UG's place using Mitra's cell phone.
When I entered UG's “cove” with Larry, UG was lying on the couch and sat up to greet me. He looked frailer than even the last time I had seen him at my home in California in January 2006. As I approached him to shake his hands after saluting him in the Indian fashion, I felt I was entering into a vast field of energy enveloping me. I sat down next to him, holding his hand. Then came that strange feeling I had had a few times before – I could feel no separation between him and me. It was the same energy in both of us. It was the same field in which everyone was engulfed. No wonder UG could bind so many people to him.
Just as I expected, the room was filled with people. There was a constant influx of visitors, some of whom would leave after staying a while. The apartment was heated beyond normal levels – we all knew that UG liked to keep his surroundings quite warm, almost hot. The heat had the added effect of people not wanting to stay in the room too long. When UG had to answer the call of nature, Louis would politely clear the room so he could assist UG.
UG expressed his appreciation of me, “You made me what I am today!” I replied, “Nonsense, UG, if anything, it's the other way round,” knowing full well that he was exaggerating in his usual fashion.
Later, Guha told me that after I left the room UG had remarked, “Moorty played a major role in my life.”
[On another occasion, while I was still in Vallecrosia, I was expressing my appreciation to UG and said that I was glad to have met him and spent almost a third of my life with him. I also said that he played a major role in my life. Then I started bragging about myself. I said that I had integrated death into my life and it didn't matter to me if I died the next day. He said that he was ready to die right then and there. I said, “Me too.” And then I started bragging again about my integrating death into my life. UG sarcastically replied, “Sounds profound!” Served me right!]
Vallecrosia is on the Italian Riviera between the towns of Ventimiglia and Bordighera and is about an hour's drive from Nice, across the French border.
UG's apartment was built for him by his friends Lucia, Anita and Giovanni within their villa compound in Vallecrosia. It was right behind one of the main streets of the town and was an annex to the two-story main building. Sandwiched between these two were the kitchen with a dining anteroom with steps leading upstairs and a door which led to the back street. The villa had spacious gardens with a few lemon and orange trees and a grass lawn. There were reclining lawn chairs as well other chairs and a couple of tables. The grounds were periodically kept clean by the hard-working Lucia, the landlady. As you entered through the main gate, you went on a paved path through an arch to reach UG's apartment. Outside the apartment, you could see dozens of shoes on the stone floor. At times, there was also a black cat hanging around.
In the anteroom there was a window overlooking the grove, a table and several chairs, and places along the walls for people to leave their belongings. Even here, people always left their shoes outside. They put their computers and other paraphernalia on the table. For the computers, there was a slow and temperamental broadband connection which could only handle a couple of laptops at a time. People sometimes had trouble getting on the Internet, but with Mitra's and others' help they sometimes had better luck.
A glass door let you into UG's apartment. The red curtains to the wide glass windows on the walls were almost always closed to prevent the intense daylight from bothering the resting UG. On the right of the entrance was UG's bedroom, with his bed and his few belongings such as clothes, “archives” and other papers. The living room was rather small: it had a fireplace and good light fixtures which shed plenty of light when needed. On the left was the entrance into the small bathroom and a cooking place with a microwave, a stove and a refrigerator.
My hotel apartment was on the sixth floor in an apartment building with a pizza restaurant and shops on the first floor. It had a grand view of the Mediterranean from my bedroom and another spectacular view of the Mediterranean as well as of the beach road with tall buildings on one side and tall lamp posts with double hanging lights, on the other.
After I arrived, I learned the details of UG's fall in the bathroom which had happened about five or six weeks earlier. According to his own account, as UG fell in the bathroom, his head hit the sink and began to bleed, and he fainted. He had also injured his leg, When he regained consciousness, he heard knocking at the door in the living room. It was around 5 in the morning. He slowly crawled on the floor to the door and was somehow able to open the door. It was Avner making his early morning call. He saw UG's condition and helped him to the couch.
Since then UG had round-the-clock caretakers, the most constant of whom were Louis and Melissa. But many others were at his beck and call, performing sundry chores: minding the fireplace (Avner from Israel), taking care of accounts (Sarito from Germany), cooking and feeding (Melissa, Trisha, Larry and Susan, Anandi, Lakshmi, Kathy from Hungary, Lucia, Golda from Australia, Paul Arms and Viresha, and so on), outdoor chores such as transportation, airline bookings, finding places to stay for people who visited (Sarito, Mitra and Mario), and last but not the least, photo and video shooting (Lisa, Avner and others). People took turns cooking.
There were some phenomenal gourmet meals, all of them vegetarian, especially from Melissa (her great soup!) and our hostess, Lucia. Golda made her famous chai. It is thanks to Lisa and Avner that we have a record of many of the happenings around UG in his last days. The recording abruptly stopped because, for one thing, Lisa had to leave with me on March 9, and for another, about ten days before he breathed his last, UG asked Mahesh to go out of the room and announce to everyone to “go back to where you all came from, and not sneak around in corners trying to see me.”
In spite of the looming tragedy, there was a sort of festive atmosphere in the air. (It must, however, be mentioned that at the times when UG was resting, you could notice that people sitting around him looked quite solemn and somber.) People were joking around UG and UG never quit his ranting and raving, teasing and scolding people. His hyperboles, particularly about himself, knew no bounds. In the anteroom next to the kitchen, in the kitchen and outside on the patio, people were chatting away, emailing, chatting on Skype, transferring videos and photos they had taken on to their computers, and so on and so forth. The place was abuzz from morning at six till evening about eight.
When Louis was drawn into the scene to be asked to read something or do some other chore, he would always add his irreverent humor to whatever he did or said. He would even rock UG in the couch by holding one end of it up. He would do his improvisations or mimic Larry lying with outstretched legs on the sofa, shaking his legs, and such. He would sing the songs he had composed about UG, mostly poking fun at him, or he would show his drawings or read from the book he was currently writing on UG. Whatever he did, he would sprinkle it with his creative humor.
Sometimes, Larry would be asked to do his standup comedy or read from Chandrasekhar's book or something someone else had written. Or UG himself would read either from the “archives” or from the Internet clippings collected by Lisa. Or there would be an astrological reading by Nataraj. The cell phones would constantly ring with callers asking to speak to UG. And there were daily sessions of UG's pulse reading by the doctors: Dr. Paul Lynn, Dr. Susan Nettleton (now Morris), Ramateertha, Doris and Vibodha. There would be periodic medical consultations about UG's condition, which were more in the spirit of entertainment than serious consultations, because UG never really consulted doctors in his later life.
One of the pieces of entertainment (there were many) was performed by Chin Meyer, a German standup comedian from Berlin. I saw several acts of his, of course done at UG's behest, all of them centering around UG's “Money Maxims” which Chin had translated into German. He would read the English version and sing his German translations. The Germans that had gathered there, particularly Nataraj, appreciated the translations very much. As I don't know German I couldn't appreciate them. Later, Chin showed me a video of his performance on the Internet and gave me one of his picture postcards. Apparently, he is well known in Berlin.
To add spice to the scene, occasionally Leonidas chocolates, specially brought by friends from Germany, or some other goodies would be passed around.
There were occasions when UG would ask for all his papers to be brought to him, and he would read from them, or ask Larry or someone else to read from them. Or Vibodha would be asked to read a piece from the UG “archives” on the computer, UG constantly chiding him for not finding a piece quickly enough. Sometimes, a letter or two written to UG would be read. Once, Sarito was reading a letter from someone who mentioned how UG “touched me where no one else has touched before,” and she broke down crying. Someone else had to finish the reading for her. She was actually crying for everyone there, for each and every one of us was touched in a similar fashion. UG had a special, albeit different, relationship with each one of us.
And in one of those sessions, UG started tearing up many of those papers and asked people to throw them into the fire in the fireplace. Included in those were Yashoda's funny “letters” from the Dalai Lama, Ramana Maharshi and other celebrities and Robert's photos of UG morphing into Marilyn Monroe.
No one could have served UG with so much devotion as Louis. It's not that others wouldn't have served him well but he did it all with gusto and a great sense of humor. UG was always grateful to him for his service; he even bought him an Apple laptop with a printer at considerable expense and had them delivered there in Italy. UG would say that he would give Louis the remaining three hundred thousand dollars of his money, if he would only “pack him off.” But neither Louis nor anyone else would do any such thing!
You could sense that UG was experiencing pain, although he would not express it except in rare moments. His cardiospasm was acting up too, as a result of which he was eating even less than normal, which was miniscule to begin with. A small amount of rice sticks, idli or upma or a few sips of orange juice or scalding hot water were all he was taking in. He would frequently throw up, mostly liquids. Paper or plastic cups and paper towels or napkins were always on hand to help catch the vomit and clean up. It was obvious he was losing body fluids. His energy levels were diminishing. At times, he would just lie down with his head on the arm of the couch, supported by a pillow and his arms thrown back, and practically gasp for breath. Sometimes, he would just doze off.
A couple of nights I thought his life energies were leaving him. Those two nights, I didn't see how he could make it through the night. But to my utter amazement he would pull through by the next morning.
I was encouraging him to get up and take a few steps, with support, of course. He tried to do that and was even able to walk a few steps across the room holding Louis's hands. He even pretended to make a few dancing steps, to everyone's delight. All that seemed fine until one morning there was a major setback: apparently, around 4 AM he was taken to the bathroom (he was normally transported to the bathroom by being placed in a chair and moved); he stood up and, according to Louis, Louis's attention was distracted momentarily when he looked at Melissa trying to say something to her, and when he turned back to UG, he noticed that UG's eyes were rolling in their sockets, and UG fainted and collapsed on the toilet seat. Louis had to carry him back to the couch in his arms. As far as I know, UG never took another step after that.
On the second morning of my stay, just as I entered his room, UG put me to work in his usual fashion: “Why don't you make some upma for everyone today?” I agreed and immediately recruited Larry's and Susan's help. UG in his teasing fashion forbade Larry to cook. But Larry and Susan did go out to get the necessary groceries for the upma. Susan helped me with the cooking. I made a little upma specially for UG, as he doesn't eat food with many spices, particularly ginger, with a little extra salt, to suit his taste, and sent it to him with someone (I think it was Mario). Mario came back with UG's comment on the upma: “Why did Moorty put so much salt in it?” I sent Mario back with my reply, a counter question : “Since when UG has started complaining about excess salt?” Apparently, when Mario relayed my reply, UG smiled.
Just to stay away from the heat in the apartment, as well as not to crowd UG too much, I would sometimes get out of there and sit in the anteroom next to the kitchen, doing this and that. I helped clean up Lisa's laptop since she was complaining about how slow it was. Soon, thanks to her word of mouth, I ended up doing the same for Avner's and Paul Lynn's laptops. I also made CDs on request, copying some of the Indian music I had played earlier to everyone in UG's room.
One morning, there was a talk of the “Swan Song” that UG had earlier dictated to Louis which was now only on Louis's computer. UG wanted me to edit it (one of his “chores” for me). It took me an hour or so to edit it. The English needed work and the piece wasn't all that coherent. I tried to make it a little better. I transmitted it by email to Louis who printed it out on Sarito's printer. I think it was read to UG and the rest of the audience. The piece is now posted on UG's website as it is in several other places.
Another morning, UG was talking away and was trying rather unsuccessfully to remember a Sanskrit verse about Vedantins, Naiyayikas, Bauddhas and other philosophers. I told UG that it was possible to get the exact text of the verse from the Internet. He said, “Do it!” I went into the anteroom and fished for the verse on the Internet. It didn't take long. I copied it in Devanagari script and showed it to him. He said he would be more comfortable reading it in Telugu script. So I wrote it in Telugu script on another sheet of paper and he was able to read it with ease. I told him that the verse was written by Sri Krishna Chaitanya, the founder of the Chaitnaya movement, and I related the legend of the conversation between him and Raghunatha, the Navya-Nyaya philosopher who was his fellow student. Chaitanya apparently was also a good scholar in Nyaya except that he didn't believe that logic would help one to attain liberation. So while saying this, as they were crossing the river on a boat, Chaitanya threw the logic palm leaf manuscript he was holding in his hand into the river.
Mahesh Bhatt arrived about a week or so after I did. When UG was asking Mario to look for a place for him, I told UG that I had a room vacant in my apartment which no one was using, so why not he stay there. UG agreed and put him up there. The night Mahesh arrived, he kissed me on the forehead and thanked me for the fast editing job I had done for him recently (on his journal concerning UG). There was not much conversation between us. For the week or two he was there (I would say about 10 days), I would make coffee for him in the mornings and offer him some cashew nuts or a little piece of bread. He would leave early in the morning to see UG and spend the rest of the day in the villa.
Mahesh had a central role to play around UG. He had a special relationship with UG. UG would let Mahesh touch his feet with his head (or UG would rub Mahesh's head with his foot), kiss him on the forehead, make violent gestures (in jest) or crack crude jokes at him. He would chide UG saying, “You say you are dying, UG, but you are not going to die!” I too thought this was the time to put aside all my background and pride and prostate once and for all in front of the energy called UG. First, he tried to prevent me. But I protested saying, “You let Mahesh do all that, why not me?” and forced myself on him. After he left once, Mahesh returned again later, at UG's behest, after I left Vallecrosia.
Usha, UG's daughter, arrived in the latter half of my stay, after being stalled in Bombay when her Italian and Swiss visas were delayed. Apparently, there was a screw up in the bureaucratic process, thanks to the ineptitude of Mahesh Bhatt's travel agent. Chandrasekhar and Suguna, who were supposed to arrive with her, met with a worse fate. Their Italian visa was not only delayed, but Chandrasekhar had to go through an interview at the Italian Consulate.
Usha's arrival was a major event. Everyone was, of course, glad to see her. (In her childhood she was UG's “darling daughter.”) As soon as she came in, she sat next to him and started nursing him – massaging his legs and feet with oil – as a daughter would minister to her father's needs. She made some upma or idli for him. She wanted to give him a bath on a stool (she was going to get the stuff ready for it), but UG would have none of that. (UG had not had a bath in a month or so. Yet, there was not the slightest smell on him! He looked clean as a whistle!).
I renewed my acquaintance with Usha. (I had met her before both in India and in the US.) She wanted lessons in computing. I gave her a couple, teaching her the basics of blind touch typing on the keyboard, setting up and accessing email, writing replies to emails, and such. Having been a teacher herself, she was a fast learner. When I left, I said she should continue her learning with the help of Chandrasekhar or someone else. I don't know if she ever did, because later, when I wrote her an email, I got no reply.
As I said before, Chandrasekhar and Suguna weren't able to come with Usha. Mario and others were pressing me to stay on. I too was telling people how sorry I was that I wouldn't be able to see Chandrasekhar, having come that far. I had another reason to see Chandrasekhar: I had just finished translating the Third Series of his book Stopped in Our Tracks and wanted to give him a CD of the book personally and talk to him about both that and his Second Series. I had also finished translating the Second Series recently and brought a hard copy of it to present to UG.
People had already been reading passages from the Second Series to the crowd that gathered around. Guha apparently had read out the chapter on the Upanishads in that book. UG expressed his appreciation of the chapter and admired Chandrasekhar's scholarship. (I conveyed that compliment to Chandrasekhar later.) I mentioned to UG that the chapter following it, “The Upanishads and UG,” was even more interesting and said that he should read it. I don't know if he ever read it or anyone read it to him. The book was being passed around and people were reading parts of it. UG's granddaughter, Kusuma, who was also visiting from the US, and Lisa proofread it and caught some typos in it. Lisa asked me to read the last chapter in the book, “A Prayer to UG.” She made a video of my reading. As usual, the reading was interjected now and then with UG's exclamation and “editorial comments.”
Finally, word got around to UG, and about the 26th of February, when I went to see UG that morning, he asked me, “Could we persuade you to stay a little longer?” I said fine. I extended my stay till the 9th of March. Sarito called British Airways, and I talked to them and rearranged my flight.
Chandrasekhar and Suguna didn't arrive until the afternoon of the 8th. Mitra and I went to Nice to receive them at the airport. I only had that half day to spend with him, as I was leaving the next morning. When we arrived at UG's, as usual, there were a lot of shoes outside, and the living room was packed with people. I think first Suguna entered and then Chandrasekhar. As she went in, Suguna broke down crying, “UG, why is this happening to you?” in Telugu. Then you could hear UG answering in Telugu with his own crying voice, “Why are you crying?” That was most heart-breaking to everyone around. UG's affection to her was boundless. She is a pure soul!
One day, being tired of his talk, I asked UG, “UG, what prevents you from dying now?” UG replied, “I want to go, but the body doesn't let me!” He had made that statement several times before. I tried to interject, “If you care about what the body is trying to say, you should pay attention to it, nurture it and bring it back to full life, instead of neglecting it and letting it go!” But he reacted rather sharply, speaking of my “schoolboy logic.”
One thing remarkable about UG was his attitude toward his condition. You might sometimes hear him groan in his pain or gasp for breath but he always remained unconcerned about his health and well-being. He never, even once, worried about what was happening to him. I heard him roar once, “Do you think I care about whether I live or die?” He was never the “frightened chicken” that he accused people of being when they were afraid of disease or death.
After giving an account of the money still left with him, UG was constantly saying that he would give the remaining $300,000 to anyone who would pack him off. Then there were plenty of jokes about that. I told him that I would do that and he could give the money to me. He said, “No, you wouldn't do it.” I said I could strangle him or give him “the kiss of death.” Louis was doing his own part in the joking. He would say he could make minced meat out of the body of UG, make patties with the meat and distribute them to everyone, to put catsup on and eat. And so on. This joking would go on endlessly.
One morning, I prepared a scheme for a “mortal combat” with UG and was waiting for Mahesh to arrive on the scene so he could record the conversation. (Mahesh had been taking copious notes so he could write a book on his days with UG later.) This mortal combat would be a kind of answer to UG's repeated statement, “I want to go, but my body doesn't want to go.” When Mahesh arrived, I was massaging UG's legs along with Usha (I wanted to try a certain massage, Bowen style, which I learned from Linda, my ex-wife). As I was massaging, I stood up and said, “Here are the three terms of the mortal combat: 1) It's a combat of debating until one of us dies; 2) We debate strictly according to rules of logic and nothing else; and 3) No bullying on UG's part.” I don't think anyone was amused by my idea.
My complaint to UG was essentially that if he treats his body as something separate from him (or even if it is the same as him), he should listen to his body and do its bidding, since he often claims that the body can take care of all its problems. I said that he as “UG” was not letting his body take care of itself. (He did admit that “UG” was a nuisance.) If he did, he would listen to the body's demands. The body was demanding nourishment and freedom from pain, and wanted to get some help in that direction. It wanted to get well. I added, “It's ‘UG’ I want to kill and let his body take care of the problems. It's that ‘UG’ who is subjecting the body to all his diet philosophy and other kinds of ‘crap’ and screwing it up!” UG right away agreed “it” (the philosophy) was “crap!”
I don't think UG heard any of that. But that's how he is. In a sense he was right. He in fact told people later that “UG” was already dead. He was just waiting for the body to go. And he would give no encouragement (except the minimal food or elimination) for the body to linger or carry on. And that's precisely what happened, he let the body wither away slowly on its own. It took a long time and he was deteriorating day by day, until finally he gave up when no one was around. He made sure that the three who were attending him (Mahesh, Larry and Susan) were out for a short while for a cup of coffee and then he breathed his last.
Ten days before that, after everyone else had left the room, he asked Mahesh to go out and tell everyone to “go back to where you all came from and not sneak around in the corners trying to see him.” Larry and Susan had also left, but when they arrived at the airport in Nice, they were called back. Usha was also sent away; so were Chandrasekhar and Suguna. (I believe that if I had stayed on, I would have met the same fate.) Mario and Sarito were asked (by Mahesh) to hang around in town to do any chores that were necessary. Guha came back, of course with UG's permission, after earlier saying goodbye to UG and returning to India with Lakshmi and their children. He didn't have the heart to stay away, but when he came back he still had to stay out along with others. So he hovered around in town with his cell phone (everyone had a cell phone).
UG gave clear instructions to Mahesh that there would be no funeral. And there was to be no ceremony of any kind. His body was cremated locally. Of course, Susan was on hand to take care of any death certification process that was needed, as she is a medical doctor. I don't know what happened to the ashes that were collected from the cremation. I heard that Mitra was asked to take the few of UG's personal belongings to Gstaad and I do not know their final disposition. I also heard that Sarito or someone else was left in charge of the “German funds” to be disbursed according to UG's wishes. Mahesh was left in charge of the other funds, mostly to be given away to deserving young girls of Indian origin studying abroad. There was a will of sorts which UG had dictated to Mahesh and which was read aloud in some gatherings, but I don't think it will have any legal validity. As for the apartment in Gstaad which had already been paid for by UG till the end of August, UG invited any of his friends to come and stay there and enjoy themselves.
Sometime toward the end of my stay, Yashoda collected money from those present to buy a tree and present it to Lucia and Giovanni, the hosts, in token of the appreciation of the group that had gathered there for their gracious and wonderful hospitality. They would plant the tree in their yard in memory of UG.
The night before I was to leave, I gave a little talk addressing everyone present there. I told how I appreciated everyone taking such good care of UG, especially Louis. What Louis did for UG no one else could do, including myself, I said. Everyone worked together like a family, I continued, like an orchestra without a conductor. Everything got done and no one was there to tell them what to do. I mentioned the names of various people from different countries and I also made reference to some who were not present, particularly to Julie Thayer.
Why were all these people so attracted to UG? On the one hand, they considered him as their spiritual master guiding them in their lives. On the other hand, thanks to their belief in his “supernatural” powers, they were looking to him for help in worldly matters as well, to become successful in career, love or money, or for success in other areas. Some regarded him as an invaluable friend, who was always loyal to them and who couldn't be replaced by anyone else. Some were simply in love with him. Many of them regarded him as a father figure who gave them that love and affection which they received from no one else. Their respect, love and obedience abounded to the point that they totally disregarded any apparent abuse by him.
Nothing explains better all these relationships than the one crowning factor, namely, that UG represents to many the end of a search. You feel that with UG that you have come to the end of the road. There is nothing beyond. No wonder he became such a reference point (to use Julie's expression) for many of us. Such was UG's magical spell on those around him.
UG did ask several people, including me, to visit him one last time before he died. But some he didn't. It's not clear what his logic was behind this. Whatever it was, it was clear that when people didn't come to visit him, he never showed any disappointment. You are always left with the impression that his invitations were extended to people for their benefit, and not for his, just to give them one last chance to be with him.
I cannot but be impressed by the mutual cordiality which people expressed to one another in this group. Not just respect, but affection and friendship. I know that at least some of them will remain friends with me even after UG's death. With the others I feel that I could renew my friendship any time I might choose or when an opportunity might present itself. Then it would be like I saw them only yesterday.
The night before I left, I told UG and everyone present that whichever way he decided, whether he decided to “stay” or “leave,” we would respect his decision. If he decided to live and carry on, I would be glad to see him again in Seaside. On the other hand, if he decided to leave, that would be his decision, and we would respect that.
I thought, in the back of my mind, that UG might want to ask me to postpone my departure further, but that wasn't forthcoming. And it wasn't so clear to me that UG was going to die. There was some possibility that he could kick back, as he had once before, a few years ago, and hang on. But, I didn't want to sit there on my own initiative to keep a death watch. For some reason, that didn't make much sense to me. For one thing, UG had said several times he wanted to leave everyone there in Vallecrosia and get someone to drive him to Gstaad where he would settle all his affairs and simply disappear.
On the eve of my departure, I said my goodbyes to all my friends. I asked UG if he would be available at 5:30 in the morning to say goodbye. He said, “Why 5:30, you can come at 5:00. I will be up most of the night anyway.” Lisa was going to leave at the same time and travel with me to London where we would be going our separate ways, I to Seaside and she to Palm Springs. Mitra was to take me to UG's with my bags at 5:00 AM. I hardly slept that night. By the time we arrived at UG's, Chandrasekhar and Suguna, Larry and Susan, Guha, Golda and Lucia were present. So were Kathy, Avner, Usha, and several others. I said goodbye to everyone once again. I prostrated one final time at UG's feet to show my respect.
I feel, and I am sure that he was not unaware of it himself, that irrespective of all my ambivalences and ambiguities, there is a fundamental feeling of non-separation from UG.
I can't say I really miss UG. Sure, he is gone. But the unity I felt, the identity, the energy, they are not gone. It's just like I always said, “Whatever is real there in UG it is here now!” I am not real, fundamentally. And what is real is always there with or without UG, and with or without me.
One could ask whether I feel the same non-separation between myself and other people as well. The answer is, in principle, yes. But most of the time it doesn't surface, because my conditioning and background keep operating and prompt me to react to what others say or do, thus creating a division between me and others. In UG's case, however, my reactive mechanisms were at least temporarily, on some occasions, in abeyance. There was no room for them to arise, at least for those moments. Then it's not that I actually felt that there were two non-separate people, but rather that I felt as if there was just that field of energy, which I could feel any time I moved outside of my reactive mechanism.
You could feel the same way in intense moments of love, when the separation between you and your lover is gone. Then it's not that you feel you two are united into one, but you touch on the underlying energy field which exists everywhere and in everyone, and in you and me. Of course, we can't remain there. The world has to go on and have its play and we are part of the play. We act and we react to other people. We get involved and then we get disengaged. But fundamentally there is only that energy!
Goodbye, UG, my friend!
JSRL Narayana Moorty, Being Yourself, 2014
