His close lovers surrounded it, tears streaming unabashedly down their cheeks. Baba expressed his satisfaction with their love and labor, and the car slowly made its way through the milling crowds. "Jai Avatar Meher Baba!" resounded from all directions, and the stream of people coming to Ganeshkhind continued even after he had left. Baba had touched the remainder of the prasad, which the Poona lovers distributed until 9:00 P.M. Nearly 20,000 people had Baba's prasad that day. This was the first mass darshan Baba had ever given in Poona, the city where he had been born, played and studied, and where he gained Knowledge at Babajan's hands.
After visiting the Jessawala family, Dhun Satha and her sister Alu at Bindra House, Baba left for Satara that same evening. "Baba looked very tired, when he returned," Mani wrote to the Westerners, "but the next morning, he worked as usual."
The Poona darshan program was only the first in a series of brief darshan functions which Baba was to give at the beginning of 1956, prior to going into seclusion. After returning to Satara, Mauni Bua came and beseeched Baba to give darshan in the village of Kumtha, fifteen miles away, where Mauni Bua had been actively spreading Baba's love. None of the 2,000 villagers had met Baba or had his darshan before, and they were eager for it. Baba acquiesced and fixed the date.
At noon, on Tuesday, 24 January 1956, Baba, along with a few of the mandali, was driven from Satara to Kumtha in a station wagon, and they reached its outskirts half an hour later. The rural village was located on the banks of the Teel Ganga River, three miles from the Koregaon railway station via a dirt road. The villagers were waiting to receive him. They had decorated a bullock cart to resemble a chariot, and harnessed a dozen pairs of sturdy bullocks to pull it! Mauni Bua requested Baba to sit in it and, alighting from the car, Baba climbed aboard. Led by a bhajan and dancing ensemble, with some blowing on conch shell horns in homage, the villagers took their Lord in a procession to the place where he was to give darshan. While passing through the village's only main road, the villagers showered flowers on Baba from their house steps while shouting his Jai. People stopped the "chariot" now and again to garland him. "The scene was reminiscent of the era of Krishna," Eruch later related.
Baba reached the darshan site, where a small tent with an improvised dais had been erected under a banyan tree.