Saturday, 10 November 1945:
Baba rose at 6:00 A.M., but looked exhausted. His forehead and eyes were strained, yet his cheeks were glowing. Without taking any tea or food in the morning, Baba resumed his seclusion at 9:00 A.M., sitting on the rock verandah outside his hut. Kaka kept watch from 9:00 to 11:00 A.M., Pendu from 11:00 A.M. to 1:00 P.M. and Adi from 1:00 to 3:00 P.M. The quiet surroundings were suffused with Baba's peace. At exactly 3:15 P.M., Baba came out and broke his 21-hour fast with a little rice and dal cooked by Kaka. At five o'clock, he drank a cup of milk.
It started raining at about seven that evening, and this caused more of an ordeal. Baba's hut began leaking, and Kaka's and Gustadji's bedding rolls in the adjoining shed got drenched. There was no place they could sit and not get wet, so Baba kept both men in his hut for the night. Baidul, who had been keeping nightwatch all these nights in the winter cold, sat on watch in Baba's improvised bathroom.
Later that night Baba disclosed:
At the end of my seclusion here, my mast work will be over. But I feel uncomfortable about the non-cooperation of the mast at Cuttuck [Mohammed Baba], at the end of the definite work for which I undertook this journey.1 It is like the discomfort felt when the whole work of collecting logs or fagots is done, and one gets a small splinter in the finger. Now, to remove this uncomfortable "splinter," I will have to contact six more masts before returning to Wai. This will complete the mast phase in toto . Out of the six, three can be old contacts, but a minimum of three must be new. And the places we have gone are not to be revisited for contacts.
After deliberating about the matter, the mandali suggested Kolhapur and other places for this mast work.
Baba could not sleep the whole night. It started raining again at midnight and continued until 4:00 A.M. They could not keep a fire lit, and the Petromax lanterns were also extinguished by the rain. Although the area was infested with poisonous snakes, under Baba's nazar nothing harmful happened. Fierce animals roared all night, but none ventured inside their camp.
Footnotes
- 1.Mohammed Baba was the jalali, sixth-plane saint, who would only agree to personal contact after Baba's third visit to him.