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am sitting on my bamboo mat; I am not concerned with the car or anything.'"
He said, "This is perfectly right, because if I am sitting on the bamboo mat and somebody pulls my bamboo mat, what can I do?"
I said, "That's right -- you just sit on the bamboo mat." I took him in the car, and we reached the place where there was a meeting in which I and he were both going to speak. When they saw him sitting .... And I asked somebody to come and pull the bamboo mat out, with him sitting on top of it.
They said, "What is all this?"
I said, "You first pull him out, because he has nothing to do with the car -- he is simply sitting on his bamboo mat. I have pushed his bamboo mat into the car; now we have to take him out." And I had told him, "You simply sit with your eyes closed." I said to them, "He is a very meditative person, and don't disturb him, just pull his mat."
They pulled, but they were angry that this ...."We never heard of it: a Jaina monk sitting in a car! And we know perfectly well this is not a meditative monk; this is the first time we have seen him sitting with closed eyes. He is not very erudite either, not scholarly or anything."
He knew only three speeches, and he used to ask me which one would be right, so I used to make the sign one, two, or three; that would do. So whichever finger I raised first he would do that speech. And I always managed to let him deliver the wrong speech, one which was not supposed to be for that audience, but he depended on my finger; he was a little stupid.
Finally they expelled him just because he sat in the car. While I was there they could not, because I argued for him, "He has nothing to do with it. You could expel me -- but you cannot because I am not your monk, I don't belong to anybody; nobody in the whole world can expel me. But you can expel me; if you can enjoy expelling, you can expel me. But he is absolutely innocent."
So in front of me they could not do anything, but the moment I left, the next day, they expelled him. They took away all his symbols of a Jaina monk. Only after five, seven years passed I met him in Lucknow, and what a great coincidence! -- he
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