Baba's 54th birthday was observed (according to the Parsi calendar) on Friday, 13 February 1948. Baba called the women from Meherabad to Pimpalgaon at three in the afternoon for a bhajan performance by an Arangaon group. Also allowed to attend the festivities from Ahmednagar were: Gulmai, Piroja (Gulmai's daughter), Viloo (Sarosh's wife), Soona (Sarosh's sister-in-law) and her daughter Franey (Adi Jr.'s wife), Khorshed Banu (Goher's mother) and her daughter Roshan, Meheru Damania (Eruch's sister), Khorshed (Eruch's wife), Khorshed's sister Meheru and their mother Shirin Damania.
Two weeks before, Mansari's brother Minoo Desai of Bombay had sent Baba a very useful birthday present — a radio. It was turned on for the first time that day by Rustom Kaka. It was the first time Baba had listened to a radio at Pimpalgaon and he expressed his pleasure with Minoo.
Also played that day was a gramophone recording of a speech Jean Adriel had given explaining Baba's teachings.
All the men and women mandali shifted from Pimpalgaon to Ahmednagar on Sunday, 15 February. The temporary structures Kalemama had built were to be torn down, and in their place Sarosh was to construct a large two-story house for Baba and the women. In the beginning, the Pimpalgaon property was held in Sarosh's name, but later he transferred it to Baba.1
In Ahmednagar, the women — Mehera, Mani, Meheru, Goher, Walu, Elizabeth and Norina — stayed once again at the home of Rusi Pop and Khorshed Banu Irani, Goher and Katie's parents. The rest of the women mandali were living on Meherabad Hill, though Rano, and sometimes Kitty, would be called to spend a few days at Rusi Pop's. Khorshed Banu and her daughter Roshan moved out of the house and stayed at Viloo's brother Keki Irani's house. Rusi also moved out and stayed with the men mandali in Jamshed A. Irani's nearby house, called the Ice Factory Bungalow , and did the marketing for them during their stay.2
Every evening, Adi Sr. would drive Baba and Chhagan back to Gyara's cottage nine miles away in Pimpalgaon, where Baba spent the night. Some of the servant boys shared the duties as night watchmen. In the morning Adi would pick them up, and Baba again would spend the day in Ahmednagar or in Meherabad.
Construction work was also progressing for the new hall and residential quarters for the mandali at lower Meherabad (on the site of Nilu's old dispensary, opposite Kaikobad's cottage). One day Baba went to bless the first door frame to be erected, by touching it. Kalemama was overseeing this work with Pendu's help.
Footnotes
- 1.Sarosh had also been made a joint owner of the Meherabad Hill property on 26 September 1947.
- 2.The bungalow got its name from housing an ice manufacturing plant in former days.