Gulamasi, hearing this, came to scold the children. (The sour fruit causes a sore throat if eaten in excess.) Before her arrival, Meherwan told Sarwar and Meheru to rinse their mouths out. Gulamasi scolded them for eating tamarinds and asked why they had done so. Meherwan spoke up, "We didn't! Smell our mouths!" Gulamasi did and then told Baba that the report about the children's misbehavior was false.
Meherwan turned to his two accomplices and said, "Now if Baba asks us, we will have to tell the truth. But we should say that we were only tasting the tamarind and then spitting it out."
Baba called them and asked if they had eaten the fruit. Meherwan and Meheru admitted that they had, but Sarwar said she had not. Baba punished her for lying by whacking her on the head with an umbrella, and he also gave Meherwan and Meheru a stroke on their palm.
Sarwar often got a spanking for something. Once in Bangalore she pressed a switch, turning off the lights. Baba called her and asked why she turned off the lights. Sarwar replied, "I didn't! I only pressed this button." Baba spanked her, even though she had no idea what she had done. But his spankings made her grow strong in his love.
Kaka and Eruch brought a mast from Chikmagalur on 18 January. The mast would repeat, "This is shariat, that is shariat. Everything is shariat!"1 Baba especially liked this mast for his jovial nature and christened him Shariat Khan . The mast in turn referred to Baba as "King of the World."
Baba and the group returned to Bangalore with Shariat Khan on the 20th.
On Saturday, 27 January 1940, during darshan at the Links, a new visitor asked Baba, "What is real spirituality?"
Baba dictated this response:
Spirituality is a thing to be experienced and lived. It makes you firm like a rock. Neither worldly sorrows nor pleasures upset you. You attain the state where no desires remain and you want nothing. When you do not want anything, you have everything.
Look at this mast, Chatti Baba. He is so innocent, so loving, so happy always — for the simple reason that he wants nothing; and strange as it may sound, he has everything — happiness, contentment and eternal peace of mind.
The state of desirelessness, or of wanting nothing, is a faculty that is latent in everyone.
Footnotes
- 1.In Islam, shariat means religious conduct, so perhaps the mast meant that everything is the will of God.