On seeing Baba, the mast, Badri Baba , began laughing loudly. Then, just as suddenly, he became quiet for a few moments. He cried out, "Baba [meaning himself] is hungry!"
It was 1:00 A.M., and the whole village was sound asleep. With much difficulty, Chhagan managed to persuade a villager to sell him a rupee worth of goat's milk, a little brown sugar and a piece of bhakri. Baba gave these to Badri Baba and then sat with him. By 2:30 A.M. the contact was over and Baba was happy. Badri Baba was a high mast, and Baba was quite satisfied with the work accomplished.
They immediately left for Badnera and, in order to search for the lost money and Eruch's shoe, Chhagan led the way on foot carrying a flashlight in each hand. Luckily, at the second mile Chhagan spotted Eruch's shoe and at the third, the bundle of currency notes was found.
Reaching Badnera, the group left at once for Nagpur, where they stayed with Jal Kerawalla, who had been transferred there. Baba and his men drove to Bor Nallah in Jal's car on 15 April, to contact Amir Hussein , a good subtle conscious mast.
They returned to Jal Kerawalla's house and after dinner left again in Jal's car for Seoni, 80 miles away. After traveling in crammed buses and third–class trains to remote areas, the mandali thought that driving in their friend's car would be a much more comfortable and trouble-free way to travel — but they were to learn otherwise! After driving 20 miles, they stopped at the base of Ramtek Hill. On the hill was a temple in which a blind saint was said to live. Baidul and Chhagan climbed the hill to find whether the saint would allow their "elder brother" to see him. But when they reached the temple and knocked on the door, calling loudly for someone to open up, no one appeared. It was past nine o'clock at night, so after some time they gave up and walked down.
After continuing a little further in Jal's car, the back tire became flat. They put the spare on, but then discovered its tube too was punctured. Baidul, Chhagan, Eruch, Vishnu and Baba himself took turns pumping up the tire with a hand-pump. But this was only the beginning of their troubles that night. On their way the spare tire had six more punctures.1 They ran out of patches and had to wait for an hour at one place to borrow more from a passing truck.
Footnotes
- 1.The cause of the punctures was a twisted piece of sharp hard leather that had been left in the spare tire (called a gaiter), which the men had missed seeing in the darkness.