Of the twelve NGOs created by these professional nurses in their fifty years of existence in West Bengal, only six, including ICOD, received 81 orphans, the disabled, mentally ill individuals, the elderly, of all faiths. “I go everywhere where there are no doctors, non-governmental organizations or Christians,” he said. This means that the place is completely abandoned, abandoned. »

He landed in India in 1972, to work with a French priest in a small support center in the Pilkhana slum, near Calcutta: “It was the biggest slum in India at the time, even the world said. » Arriving by rickshaw to the slum , he shocked the locals by entering it on foot: « I don’t go to a place where many poor people ride rickshaws, like the rich! »

“Chicago on the Ganges”

One day in 1981, he received a visit there from Dominique Lapierre “submitted by Mother Theresa “. The famous writer, who wanted to write a novel “about the poor”, was able to convince the hermit of his “seriousness”. The two men became friends. Brother Gaston “is one of the” Light of the world “the epic of love and sharing I had the honor to told about it in my book” La Cité de la joie ”, said the writer, who died last December . Translated worldwide, his novel published in 1985 has sold several million copies. “He financed my entire organization at the rate of three million dollars a year, almost all of the royalties, for nearly thirty years,” the cleric insisted.

On the other hand,adaptation of the novel to the cinema, directed by Roland Joffé, with Patrick Swayze (released 1992), displeased him greatly: “I absolutely hate this film. ”The City of Joy” has become ”Chicago sur Gange”! “

Mother Teresa medicine

At that time Mother Teresa received tons of medicine from all over the world. He gave it in bulk to the mutual aid center that Brother Gaston knew how to take advantage of. He trained nurses and founded a dispensary. “I have the medicine, I don’t need anything else. We quickly had over 60,000 patients in the first year. 100,000 per second. Three years later, we created a small hospital. »

“I lived for eighteen years, surrounded by 500 lepers, in a very small room”

Upon arrival in India, the Swiss decided to adopt his citizenship. “Of course it took 20 years! He chose the surname “Dayanand” which means “blessed (ananda) from compassion (daya)”.

He worked for a long time with Mother Teresa’s brothers to care for lepers in Pilkhana. “I lived for eighteen years, surrounded by 500 lepers, in a very small room,” he said. For his friend, Abdul Wohab, a 74-year-old social worker, “Gaston is a saint”.

“sleepboard”

Now disabled, the eighty-year-old man spends “three quarters of (his) day meditating” in his bed, facing Christ. “I never had anything but a board to sleep on. Now I live like a bourgeois in a big bed! cried the ascetic. “But I didn’t want it”, he added with a laugh, “the worst thing is that I received it …”

“I will make a living until the last day of my life”

ICOD co-founder and director Mamata Gosh, 43, decided so. Nicknamed “Gopa,” she watches over the man who taught her the nursing profession twenty-five years ago: “Before him, I knew nothing. He is my spiritual father. »

The brother’s day begins at 5am with three hours of prayer, before a reproduction of the Shroud of Turin that hangs the Aum, a Hindu symbol, in his small prayer room adjoining his room.