Kalemama was working with Pendu and Padri, but he was so meticulous he would tell the workers to tear down a section of a wall they had been erecting all day if it did not meet his standards. Frustrated with Kalemama, Padri finally quit in disgust and said he was so fed up he was having nothing further to do with the work. The huge steel girders for the second story of the Water Tank building had to be ordered from Bombay, and this had caused a delay of a month and a half.
But the biggest cause of lost time was Baba himself. On his daily visits (usually driven by Adi Sr. in his Opel), not only would work-time be lost by the laborers leaving their jobs to pay their respects to him but, moreover, Baba kept adding to the work.
He inevitably noticed things and, for example, would tell Pendu, "There should be a compound wall around the hospital ... Why not add a section here? ... Don't you think it would be better to have the roof like this? You'd better change it," and so forth.
By the first part of August, the dome over the old crypt-room and walls were for the most part complete. The old rough stone walls had been torn down and replaced by black stones from the former Post Office building. This was to become Meher Baba's tomb.
Five small, four-foot-high meditation cells (similar to the ones of the old Sadhak Ashram) were rebuilt out of tin, adjoining the eastern wall of the crypt.1 But the maternity home to the north of the Tomb was far from ready, and so also the upper story of the Water Tank. In addition, Baba had wished something distinctive built on top of the tank that could be seen from far away, and Pendu had suggested a tower. But the tower and steps leading up to the second story were still to be built. Pendu asked Baba for more time, but Baba refused.
On Saturday, 6 August 1938, Baba arrived at Meherabad with Sarosh and a group of three men. Pendu did not know who they were and assumed them to be new devotees. In fact, they were engineers coming to inspect the work and give an estimate as to how much time they would need to complete it. After looking around, they informed Baba that it would take at least two more weeks.
Footnotes
- 1.As far as is known, these meditation cells were never used.