Nilu indignantly stammered, "What's the matter?"
Bhau said, "You were snoring so loudly, Baba told me to wake you up."
"I am awake, I was not sleeping! Someone else must have been snoring. Why have you come to me?" Bhau went back to Baba and reported what Nilu had said, and Baba laughed.
Then Nariman started snoring and by Baba's instruction, Bhau awakened him also. Nariman protested, "What? I am keeping awake the whole night. How could I be snoring? Have you gone insane?"
Thus Nariman and Nilu went back to sleep and kept snoring, and each time Bhau kept waking them up. Each time, both would claim, "No, we are not asleep. Why are you bothering us?"
Baba found the situation hilarious, but Bhau was embarrassed and at last told Adi, "Both of them are furious with me. Now you go wake them up." And Adi was confronted with the same answers.
Baba rose early on the morning of Monday, 30 January 1956. At 4:00 A.M. he went in a tonga to the Meher Center. The members had left Meher Cottage the previous evening with the hope that Baba might still visit the Center. So they had gone there, decorated the hall, and spent the whole night awaiting his arrival. With a stick in his hand Baba gently prodded them awake, and their joy knew no bounds. There was a huge portrait of Baba there and Baba went up to it, touched the feet in the picture and then touched his forehead. He sat down in specially decorated chair, above which a basket of roses had been placed. The lovers pulled a string and a shower of rose petals rained down on Baba. After arti was performed, Baba returned to Meher Cottage.
The Desai family, who had been ejected that night, returned to Meher Cottage at 5:00 A.M. Baba did not ask how they had slept, knowing that they had not. Soon several women of Navsari arrived and for some time sang bhajans. Baba was then ready to depart. He embraced the family members, and Bapai told Baba through her tears, "May you come back to Navsari soon."
Baba replied, "This is my last visit."
His remark shocked them and added to their grief of separation, and the Desai family bid him farewell while sobbing.1
Baba arrived at the train station, where his lovers had collected in vast numbers to see him off. He began briskly pacing the platform, picking up pebbles and tossing them along the railway tracks. Fascinated, people quietly watched him. When the train entered the station, Baba and the mandali boarded a third class–compartment, which had been reserved for them by C. B. Vyas of Bombay.
Footnotes
- 1.Baba's visit to Navsari in 1956 did prove to be his last.