He longed to be in her company. For hours he would sit by the old woman's side — sometimes late into the night. They hardly spoke.
Respectable, upstanding citizens of Poona seldom approached Babajan. Most considered her to be a mad woman; others thought her to be a witch or a sorceress. The atmosphere surrounding Babajan made it difficult to believe that she was a holy woman. She kept company with ruffians and Pathan soldiers (forbidding, quick-tempered men) who guarded her, beggars and vagabonds who loitered nearby and lived off the dakshina (donations) given by devotees, and even thieves who did not hesitate to steal whatever a devotee placed as a gift before the Master.
Nevertheless, every evening without fail Merwan would go to Babajan. He did not care about the remarks of people who shook their heads, clucked their tongues and wondered, "Merwan was such a good boy — the son of respectable, devout Zoroastrian parents. What has happened to him to make him sit by that old woman every night?" His good name and admirable character were routinely slandered. But it did not concern him, for with that one embrace from Babajan, Merwan's life in illusion had ended and the merging of his life in divinity had begun.
One night during January 1914, as Merwan was about to leave Babajan's company, he reverentially kissed his Master's hand. Babajan held Merwan's face in her hands and looked deeply into his large brown eyes with an expression of the profoundest love. The time had come. With her divine authority, she kissed him on the forehead.
Turning to her followers nearby, Babajan pointed at Merwan and declared, "My beloved son will one day shake the world and all of humanity will be benefited by him."
Merwan just stood there, for as soon as Babajan had kissed him he became insensible. Mechanically, he began to retrace his steps back home. His dazed mind had no conception of his surroundings; his body was moving, but he was unaware of what he was doing or where he was going. In this state of near oblivion, he reached home about eleven o'clock and went straight to his room and lay on his bed.
The lifting of the veil had occurred through an extraordinary, divine experience. Within ten minutes of lying down, Merwan again felt the same feeling he had experienced after Babajan's embrace in May — but now it was intensified a thousandfold!