From Monday, 2 October, all the men awoke at 4:00 A.M. and queued in front of the three bathrooms. The brisk, cold bath made them wide awake, and they sat still for one hour "in worship." Exactly at six o'clock, the breakfast gong was sounded and they went to have tea. This turned into the morning routine, although there were some humorous incidents. Behramji would awaken them at 4:00 A.M., but he himself would be half asleep while holding a kerosene lantern. Jalbhai , as Baba's brother was called, could not bear the cold baths, so he would pretend to be taking a bath by splashing water on the bathroom walls.1 Ghani also detested the freezing bath in the early morning. His ploy was to enter the bathroom and mutter some sounds as if he was bathing as he poured water on the floor, never taking off his clothes.
Gustadji was the only one exempt from these morning practices, as he was responsible for having breakfast ready by 6:00 A.M. sharp.
The following Saturday, Baba awakened everyone an hour earlier and Upasni Maharaj's arti was sung. Thereafter, the men cleaned the backyard of the Manzil so the space could be utilized for sports, exercising and recreation. The area was full of garbage and rubble, which the men scraped into ghamelas (iron pans) and dumped over the wall. The work of leveling the ground continued for several days, until the yard was smooth and hard. Ghani was usually feeling sleepy and had never in his life done such menial labor. He resorted to the following stratagem to escape this early morning labor. When Baba was standing on the verandah overseeing the work, Ghani would loudly chant this song as he picked up a ghamela or pulled a leveling roller: "O Shirin! Trouble not Farhad to tunnel the mountain! He is your lover not a hired laborer!"
At first, the other men could not understand why Ghani, who was the laziest of the lot, was singing with so much gusto. But when he kept repeating the same couplet about the doomed Persian lovers, they all caught on and began laughing, as did Baba, who then called Ghani before him and told the mandali, "Look at the face and features of this Farhad! Is this my lover? What luck do I have? Look how big this man's head is!"
Footnotes
- 1.Bhai means brother.