Baba offered his salutations to the companions, and ordered them to go outside for ten minutes and not to look in the hall through any gap or cracks in the door. Seated alone for ten minutes, Baba then clapped, and the men reentered the hall. Baba informed them that he had again reconfirmed his original oath before God taken at the beginning of the New Life.
Baba then pressed his head on the feet of every servant-companion. After that, on Baba's sign, Nilu and Vishnu read the Dasavatar (Ten Incarnations). Kaikobad, Eruch, Pendu and Kaka read a Zoroastrian prayer, Baidul an Islamic prayer and Don a Christian prayer.1 Baba next asked Don and Nilu to loudly recite the English translation of the Song Celestial from the Gita, which they did for one hour. Thereafter, the young qawaal sang the Song of the New Life and the New Life prayers.
At ten o'clock, Baba fed the masts, and then served food to the companions, with his own hands. At two in the afternoon, he began his work with the masts, mad and poor gathered from different villages and towns surrounding Satara. He clipped their hair, and gave them a hot bath, using a lot of soap. The men assisted Baba, but as to the actual cutting of hair and scrubbing their bodies, only Baba attended to this. He dressed them in new shirts and pants, and gave each new bedding — one mat, one mattress and two blankets. They were all accommodated in a separate room of the bungalow, under the care of the companions.
Baba did not eat the whole day. At nine o'clock the next morning, dressed in a long white kafni, he walked to the dak bungalow in Satara to beg for food from a Muslim khansama (butler) named Hussain. Baba did justice to the begged food and with apparent pleasure. On the 27th he begged food at two homes: one of a Hindu and another of a Muslim. On the 30th he fasted on water for 48 hours, and went out
for bhiksha again on 1 August, even though he was suffering from gastritis.
For the purpose of the boja fund, Don left Satara on the 26th, and took a flight to London from Bombay on the 5th of August.2
Having given up the gypsy life, on 28 July 1950, the New Life caravan arrived in Ahmednagar from Dehra Dun. (Padri towed it from Poona.) The New Life caravan, along with the Blue Bus, was a significant vehicle of Baba's travels during this advent, and they are preserved at Meherazad.
Footnotes
- 1.The prayers were not dictated by Baba but were an amalgamation of respective religious sentiments strung together by the mandali to form a prayer.
- 2.Don flew to America on 26 August 1950. He visited New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Detroit and Myrtle Beach before returning to India via London at the end of September.