Daulat Sohrab Irani, known as Daulatmai, was the mother of Mehera J. Irani, Meher Baba's chief woman disciple. She was the daughter of Sohrab Salamat Irani and Shireen, and the younger sister of Freiny Nowroj Driver (Freiny Masi, the mother of Padri). Her younger brother, Colonel Merwan Sohrab Irani, was a physician in the Indian Medical Corps. In 1902 she married Jehangir Hormusji Irani, a government forest officer whose work took him throughout India. They had three children: Freiny (Piroja), Mehera, and a son, Kersasp, who died in early childhood. After Jehangir died in middle age, Daulatmai resettled in Poona with her two daughters.
In 1921 Freiny Masi took her sister first to Hazrat Babajan and then to meet Meher Baba at Sadashiv's house in Kasba Peth, Poona. When Baba asked whether she wished to ask anything, she told him that her daughter Piroja was ill and had lost her appetite. Baba told her to take Piroja to Udwada, where the fire of Zoroaster is kept burning, and when she followed his instruction her daughter recovered. From that first meeting both sisters had tremendous love and faith in Baba. In 1923 she agreed, at Baba's request, to the marriage of Piroja (Freiny) to Gulmai's son Rustom, which brought her into still closer connection with him, and in her love for him she surrendered everything to him.
In May 1924 Daulatmai came to Meherabad with Mehera, and soon they were living with the first women mandali in the Post Office building, which in 1925 became their permanent quarters. Daulatmai was one of the few women there who knew how to cook. She gave large sums of money to Baba's work, financed a school that Baidul conducted in Persia in Baba's name, and in 1927 went to Poona to donate her property to him. Her brother the Colonel, who had hoped she and Mehera would live with him, bitterly opposed Baba and for years published accusations against him in the Gujarati press; Daulatmai refused to leave and remained at Baba's feet.
From the late 1920s Daulatmai lived mostly in Nasik, near the women mandali or with her daughter Freiny, and at times at the Family Quarters near Meherabad. On Baba's order she kept silence, and from 1933 she observed perfect silence until her last breath. In 1938 Baba sent her to Persia for about a year, saying it would be "spiritually beneficial for her."
Daulatmai died of heart failure in Nasik at 4 A.M. on 5 November 1952. When the news reached him at Meherabad, Baba said, "My dear Daulatmai will live in me forever, by God's grace. I say 'by God's grace,' because today I am in the state of a devotee." A circular about her passing was sent to his close women disciples, and a tombstone was later placed for her on Meherabad Hill, reading: "One of Baba's dearest lovers. Observing silence for 20 years." Lord Meher and her Meher Baba Travels page give her age as 45 in 1921 and 76 at her death (born c.1876), while her tombstone and the Meher Baba Travels family tree give her birth year as 1883.
