"It is your good luck to wait for me," Baba remarked. "Who is so fortunate to wait like that? It is a great penance and austerity to wait for me until I come."
Baba entered the Family Quarters and by gestures asked that Vishnu call Chhagan. Chhagan was in the toilet and after quickly washing his hands and pulling up his trousers he appeared. Baba asked what took him so long.
Chhagan explained the cause of the delay and Baba began taunting him, "But why didn't you come as you were? God himself is knocking at your door and you keep him waiting by tying your loincloth. Remember, if you are not diligent and alert when He knocks, He will go away while you go on fumbling with your underwear until your dying day. You should be ready to welcome Paramatma anytime. These women wait for me, scanning the horizon for my car; and there you are — in the toilet, bungling with your drawstring!"
Chhagan's fourteen-year-old daughter, Shakuntala, stayed at Meherabad during her school holidays and would always prepare and keep jam ready for Baba; but Baba rarely put in an appearance at their home. Still, in the hope that he would come, she kept up her habit, but perhaps not as vigilantly as she should have. As weeks passed, she prepared jam every day, but not as early as she used to do at the beginning.
On this day, when Baba arrived, he conveyed to Shakuntala that he was hungry and that she should give him something to eat. Shakuntala had the jam on the stove, but it had not yet thickened. She shyly told Baba that it would take a little while for the jam to congeal.
"Bring it as it is," he replied, and he ate the warm jam with a chapati.
Shakuntala felt ashamed of her laxity, and so renewed her practice as before. Although Baba was not visiting every day, she kept his jam ready on time; and thus the task proved a medium for remembering the Master.
The women mandali were still staying at Rusi Pop's in Ahmednagar while the Pimpalgaon construction work was going on, and some of the mandali were at the Ice Factory Bungalow nearby. The rest of the men and women were at Meherabad.