At three-thirty in the afternoon, Pyaroo Qawaal sang again, and Baba also praised his voice highly.
Later that night Baba informed the mandali, "From the 21st of February there will be an absolute stop to darshan — and stop means stop!"
But this new restriction applied only to outsiders, those unfamiliar to Baba or the mandali. A notice board to this effect was put up.
On Thursday, 21 February 1929, Baba selected five men to be writers — Dastur, Chanji, Manekar, Ramjoo, and Raosaheb (who had recently returned to Meherabad from Persia). A committee was established and came to be known as the Divine Knowledge Publishers , with an office in the tatta lecture hall on the hill. Each of the men was given a separate room in which to write. Baba ordered Dastur to write in English, Ramjoo in Hindi and Urdu, Raosaheb in Persian, Chanji in Gujarati, and Manekar in Marathi. Two o'clock in the afternoon was fixed for the committee to meet with Baba and receive his advice about their respective writing projects. But, as it turned out, during this entire period, they had the chance of seeing Baba only twice.
Necessary writing materials, such as paper, pen and ink were supplied to them. Only Manekar was given specific instructions about his project; he was first to translate Ramjoo's manuscript Sobs and Throbs into Marathi and then to write Baba's biography in Marathi. The other writers continued the work in which they were already engaged: Dastur with the magazine The Meher Message ; Ramjoo with Urdu articles for the newspapers; Chanji with Gujarati newspaper articles and pamphlets; and Raosaheb with the first book to be published in Persian about Meher Baba and the Meher and Prem Ashrams, titled Kashful-Haqayaque (The Revelation of Truth).1
Up until 1929, the Family Quarters property in Arangaon had been rented. Baba had tried to buy it earlier for Rs.1,000 and later for Rs.1500, but the landlady refused to sell it. Unexpectedly, on 21 February, the woman on her own came to the Master and was willing to settle for only Rs.500. A legal deed was prepared and the building became Baba's first property in the village.
From 22 February, Baba reassigned some of the mandali's duties: Masaji, who had been on night duty, was now put in charge of the cooking department on the hill. Chhagan was transferred from the Prem Ashram to Buasaheb's department.
Footnotes
- 1.Raosaheb's intention in writing the book was to "set the record straight," so to speak, as at the time, a lot of false rumors had been spread in Iran and elsewhere about Baba's activities at Meherabad with the children.