A common truck driver can find an energetic boy to help him; for their purposes, worldly people can find boys to their liking. Yet, a Sadguru is unable to find a single, solitary boy for his special purpose! Despite this, we should keep in mind my circumstances and the fight between myself and maya, which has created these circumstances. The reason is that I have to do my important work, and that work is done with the help of maya. Maya is opposing my work, yet this very maya is the medium of my work.
During April and May 1930, the mandali would bring boys to Baba after thoroughly searching the area every day; but still Baba would send them back either immediately or after a few days. He would play with the boys and discourse to them in simple terms. Each evening Baba would explain spiritual subjects to the former Meher Ashram boys. On frequent occasions, these boys would accompany Baba on hikes. Baba was seeing no one else in Panchgani and had ordered that even Raosaheb Pandit's family (Kalemama's son-in-law and Baba's host) were forbidden to meet him.
A spiritual seeker named Biharilal had met Baba at Meherabad the previous year, and Baba permitted him to stay with the mandali. He was sent to Ahmednagar on the 30th and returned with his nephew, Gotya. Baba liked Gotya and kept the boy with him for some days.
Some of the mandali had shared in the work of digging the cave at Tiger Valley from the very beginning and would work hard whenever they were not on tour with Baba to Bombay, Poona, or Kolhapur. But from Thursday, 8 May 1930, to help speed up the work, all the men mandali were recruited to lend a hand. They would mix the cement and carry water from below to the excavation site.
One evening, as the last concrete was being applied, clouds suddenly gathered in the sky and threatened a heavy downpour (which would have ruined all the cement work executed that day). Baba stepped out of his hut to view the sky. Soon after, an argument broke out between Masaji and Kaka Shahane. It was as if their quarreling drove away the clouds, because it did not rain until eleven that night, which allowed the work to be completed and the concrete to set.
On the 9th, while perusing the newspaper headlines, Baba remarked, "Mahatma Gandhi has been arrested; Sholapur is in the grip of a riot. In Rangoon, a cyclone has taken the lives of 1,000 people, leaving 30,000 homeless and without shelter."1
Footnotes
- 1.Hindus in Sholapur had burned a Mohammedan man alive on a public road.