When Nilu first came to me, I inquired about him getting married. He wanted to marry, and if I had prevented him, it would not have been taken so well. So I made a plan and sent him, accordingly, with Kakubai and Shireenmai to Poona to see a nice girl.
There, in fact, Shireenmai and Kakubai showed Nilu several girls, and it so happened that the girls he liked did not like him, and those he did not like, liked him. Thus, after his rambles, he returned to Meherabad and told me, "Baba, I don't want to marry." I wanted him to say this, and it happened according to my plan, as I turned my key. But if I had objected at the beginning, although he would have obeyed me, the desire to marry would still have been burning there.
Baba asked Nilu, "Is this true or false?"
Nilu said, "Quite true. No one else in the world could have played such a perfect game."
On Saturday, 21 July 1945, Baba, with Don, Eruch, Baidul Kaka and Jal Kerawalla, left Hyderabad by train headed south for Madras where he eventually worked with nineteen masts. Baidul found a mast called Mohammed Mastan in a lane near Anderson Street. The mast would continually tear up his clothes and then sew them back together again.
Baba wished to contact him, and on the 24th, Eruch and Baidul took the mast inside a nearby office, which happened to be a bank. Eruch spoke with the manager, explaining that his elder brother (Baba) wanted to be alone with Mastan for some time. Eruch said, "He would greatly appreciate it if you would allow him to use this room for a few minutes." The understanding official immediately agreed, and ordered the cashiers, clerks and other staff to leave the premises. He, too, went outside, and Baba entered the bank and worked with Mohammed Mastan.
This was a remarkable contact: to work with a mast in a bank where the employees were ordered to stop their work and go out to the street! Currency notes and checks were left lying on the table unguarded while the staff stood outside. How could unwitting people be so favorably impressed to permit such a thing? But to one such as Baba, no one was unfamiliar or unknown.
Baba also worked with the spiritual chargeman of Madras, Maulvi Saheb , a fiery jalali mast who appeared to be an elderly, unkempt, ill-tempered, overweight man, but was in fact the leading spiritual figure in the city.