At the hotel, however, the mast refused to go upstairs, and had lunch in the hotel garden, after which he began acting strangely, collecting sand and throwing it on himself for half an hour. As soon as Baba returned from his other mast work, he was told about Chatti Baba's restlessness. Baba promptly began bathing him, pouring buckets and buckets of water over him, and Chatti Baba's uneasiness finally went away after 50 buckets.1
Baba had gone in the morning to contact a sixth-plane ghous-type mast named Abdul Kadir Jilani .2 In the afternoon Kaka was sent to bring this mast back to the hotel. When Eruch, Kaka and Jal had contacted Abdul Kadir before, on their first visit, they were forced to reveal that they had been sent by Meher Baba. Hearing Baba's name, the mast got up, folded his hands and repeated Baba's name two or three times, passed his hands over his face, and then kissed his own hands and the three men in a very affectionate manner.
Leaving Tanjore that evening, Baba and the mandali arrived in Trichinopoly at midnight. Taking Chatti Baba with them, Eruch, Gustadji and Krishna continued on the train to the next station where they were to wait for Baba. Baba, Kaka and Jal got down at Trichinopoly to again contact Yusuf Mastan and bring him also to Bangalore. They spent the night at the same hotel where they had stayed previously and left the next morning along with the mast. Meeting the others at the next station, Baba gave Chatti Baba a bath on the way to Bangalore, where they arrived on the morning of 1 December. Krishna was assigned to look after Chatti Baba, because, as mentioned, he spoke Tamil, the mast's native tongue.
After Deshmukh and Norina's public meetings in Mysore and Bangalore at the beginning of November, a local attorney named Sampige Venkatapathaiya began to stir up heated opposition to Baba's plan of settling in the area. Venkatapathaiya, 55, was a founding member of the Hindu Mahasabha, a right-wing Hindu nationalist political party. He went to almost any length in trying to thwart the center plan and turn public opinion against Baba. For example, during the first week of December 1939, Venkatapathaiya issued this outrageous statement to the press:
For all the hysterical tom-tom about Shri Meher Baba by his coterie of devotees, disciples, admirers and friends, who try bluff, bluster, bravado and browbeating, there is unimpeachable documentary evidence, of a most intimate character, which denounces him as a swindler, cheat and charlatan ...
Footnotes
- 1.Baba later explained that Chatti Baba was spiritually connected with France, in a similar manner to Mohammed Mast's connection with Germany. As the war in Europe progressed, Chatti Baba's mood would be affected.
- 2.There was a Perfect Master of the same name, whose tomb in Baghdad Baba had visited in 1936.