Eruch left for Satara on the 24th, where he was required to be present in court for the final verdict in the accident case. As mentioned, he was acquitted.
At the time, Baba was using his bedroom on the top floor of the house in Meherazad, where he was carried each day in an armchair. Prior to the second accident, the night watchman would always sit outside Baba's room, but after the accident, whoever was on duty sat with Baba in the room. The reason was that Baba would get jerks in his legs as he rested, so the watchman would have to sit on the bed and hold Baba's feet. On the night of 26 September, Bhau was sitting on Baba's bed with one leg dangling over the side, holding Baba's feet. Baba was snoring loudly. Even though Bhau had once experienced Baba's omniscience in Satara in this regard, still the thought pestered him: "Baba is snoring like an ordinary man. How can it be that the Avatar has conscious sleep?"
Suddenly, Baba moved and he began snapping his fingers repeatedly. Bhau stood up, and as soon as both feet touched the floor, he saw a poisonous krait an inch from his foot. Had Baba not drawn his attention there, he would surely have been bitten. It was astonishing that the snake could have come up to the second floor, as there was no way up except the staircase, and the dogs regularly patrolled the gardens and barked if they spotted a snake.
Baba motioned to Bhau to kill the snake. As he had never killed a snake in his life, Bhau did so with much difficulty, crushing its head.
Baba asked him, "What type of sleep do I have?" Bhau laughed, and Baba reminded him, "Just remember that I can never sleep like an ordinary man. I am always awake! I am always conscious, doing my Universal work."1
Baba went to Ahmednagar at 6:00 P.M. on the 28th with the men and women mandali to attend a traveling circus.2 Sarosh and Adi had had a private enclosure erected so that no one could see the women. How the circus manager came to know of Baba's presence is unknown. But towards the end of the show, the man brought out an elephant who garlanded Baba before the audience and the manager expressed his gratefulness to Baba for coming.
Footnotes
- 1.Just a few days later, at about six in the evening on 1 October 1957, the women killed another snake in Baba's room.
- 2.Meherjee, Dadi Kerawala and Meherwan Jessawala accompanied them. They had arrived from Poona the day before and spent the night at Meherazad.