The next day this article appeared in The Daily Herald :
Baba's Children's Party - tiddlywinks With His Ten Disciples
Revered by many as the Messiah, Shri Meher Baba, the Indian mystic, gave a children's party in his bed-sitting-room in South Kensington yesterday.
He is on his way to the United States, where he will break his seven years' silence and deliver his message which, he believes, will cause a great "religious upheaval."
Shri Meher Baba, the "God-like," sat on the floor of his room yesterday, playing tiddlywinks with ten little English children. He spoke no word, though he laughed delightedly again and again. His little black board, with its white alphabet, on which he spells out what his vow forbids him to say, lay beside him. Nearby was a great bran pie, over which he was soon to preside and in another corner a bunch of colored balloons.
The little children, sons and daughters of his English disciples, loved it all. So did Shri Meher Baba. His delicate fingers flipped the bright discs from cup to cup; his liquid, rather lovely eyes gleamed with pleasure.
When I saw Baba at South Kensington he made room for me on his sofa. Some dry toast and some tomato sauce lay on a table, the remains of breakfast.
"The orthodox say you are a bad man. You ruined young boys by getting them to live in caves, and let birds attack them," I told him.
He broke into a loud chuckle. Not just a movement of face or lip. His whole mind was laughing.
"D R S L S," he flicked out on his board.
He uses a queer shorthand.
"Dear souls," translated a disciple, "they do not understand, I have my work to do, and I will do it."
On the afternoon of the 11th, Baba went to the studio of the sculptor Edward Merrett to have a sitting from 2:00 to 3:00 P.M. This was the first time that Meher Baba had ever permitted any sculptor to depict him. Merrett made some rough carvings; two days later, Baba was to return for a final sitting. That evening, Baba and the group went to the Lyric Theater in Hammersmith to see an entertaining play Derby Day (in which Minta had a small role).1
After Baba had left America in 1931, Malcolm had sent the young Indian Theosophist guru Krishnamurti several press clippings about Baba's visit, suggesting that he write directly to Baba in India.
Footnotes
- 1.Quentin was the choreographer for Derby Day.