Elizabeth wondered to herself: "Why does Baba send us out for food?"
Answering her unasked question one day, Baba commented, "By walking one stimulates a good appetite, and returning on foot after eating is good for the digestion."
A few minutes after Jean, Delia, Elizabeth and Norina left to eat, Baba would send Rano after them with instructions to listen to them as they ate and report back what they had been talking about over lunch. This was awkward for Rano, because each day she had to fabricate some excuse for going there. She would pretend to be talking with Kaka as she tried her best to overhear the lunchtime conversation.
After a few days, Jean confronted her: "Rano, I do believe you are spying on us."
Trying to look innocently outraged, Rano replied, "Why Jean, why should you think that? I am conveying Baba's messages to Kaka." But Rano felt embarrassed nonetheless, and perhaps that is exactly the reason Baba kept sending her time and time again on this spying assignment.
Among the men also, Baba would choose someone to spy on them for him. Sometimes, he would disclose to the others that such-and-such a person had told him a certain thing. Sooner or later, someone would lose his temper, and all hell would break loose when the traitor was exposed, as denials and accusations were shouted back and forth. The innocent "spy" could not even defend himself by revealing that he was doing so under Baba's orders, since that would have displeased Baba. So he had to glumly accept the retribution from those he had been spying on.
The reason Baba would create such situations was to make the mandali fearless by strictly following his behests without their giving a damn what anyone thought of them. Even if the whole world would turn against them, they became so strong they did not care. Their only thought was to keep their Beloved Master pleased. They learned that to keep him pleased was the greatest thing they could possibly accomplish, and he who devoted his life to it could be said to have "gained" immeasurably. But it was next to impossible to keep the Beloved happy, and only heroes who were unafraid to "die to themselves" could do it.
Baba called Dhake to the Ice Factory on 1 September 1948 and told him to be present every morning from seven to nine, "unless you are dying or already dead!"