The mandali followed in another car, with Norina and Elizabeth.
When they left India, each of the men mandali had been allowed to bring only two flimsy dress suits and one pair of shoes, which they had to wear continually. Baba would often change his attire, and for the reception at Pickfair, Baba wore a stylish Palm Beach suit. In contrast, the mandali looked like paupers. Apart from their poorly tailored suits, the sole of one of Adi Jr.'s shoes had come apart and was flapping up and down when he walked. Baba, however, refused to let him purchase a new pair, so Adi tied a string around his shoe to hold the heel in place. Crowds of celebrities dressed in formal attire mingled throughout Pickfair mansion while Adi sat huddled in a corner, embarrassed, trying to hide his worn-out shoe with the string tied around it.
Among those invited to the reception were Cecil B. DeMille, Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Charles Farrell, Lottie Pickford (Mary's sister), and a woman who wrote Mary Pickford's screenplays. Countess Dentice di Frasso was also present. Baba stayed at the reception for two and a half hours. Mary Pickford greeted Baba at the door of the mansion and led him to the spacious hall.
Age marveled at the scene: "As the darkness of night is dispelled by dawn's rising sun, so also was this glittering mansion illumined by Baba's presence. Whatever light was shining from the crystal chandeliers was not light but darkness. Even the sun's brilliant light is darkness compared to the true Light of the Awakener!"
As Jean later wrote: "Amidst the tinsel stars [Baba] shone like a resplendent planet ... "1
Mary had Baba sit on a sofa and she herself sat on the carpet by his feet. The others, too, sat down on the carpet around Baba, and the wine of love began speaking to all hearts. Douglas Fairbanks joined his wife near Baba, who conveyed to him:
The whole universe, whose structure I have created, is my cinema. But just as an audience becomes absorbed in witnessing a drama on the screen and engages their emotions and sways their feelings by its influence, causing them to forget that it is not real — in the same way, the spectators of the world are charmed by this worldly film show, forgetting themselves and taking it to be real!
So I have come to tell them that this worldly cinema in which they are absorbed is not real.
Footnotes
- 1.Jean Adriel, Avatar (John F. Kennedy University Press, Berkeley, 1971 ed.), p. 144.