That afternoon at 3 P.M., the noted singer Vasantrao Deshpande gave a performance.
During one of his songs, Baba suddenly turned to a woman sitting near him and remarked, "While you are here, think of me. One who thinks of others is not present here."
After Deshpande's program in the main hall ended, most of the group left. Baba, instead of retiring to his room, went and sat in the smaller mandali hall, adjacent to the main hall. A few close lovers had remained and sat around him. Baba's expression was grim and he appeared disturbed. After some light conversation, he asked Madhusudan and the Poona bhajan mandali to sing a few more ghazals.
Their final number was a famous ghazal by the deceased Urdu poet Seemab, Ab Kya Batau [What Can I Tell You] . Age noted, "As the ghazal was being sung, the Beloved seemed to be focused on every word that had emerged from the innermost core of the poet's heart."
Baba interpreted a few lines as follows: "Seemab writes that when he met a Perfect Master, he gained everything that had to be gained. When he found the Master's footprints, he possessed everything worth possessing. He had met One who knew himself, the path, everyone and everything. He said he had undoubtedly met God in human form."
As the group began singing the final stanza, Baba looked pensive and sad. When they finished, Baba put his wrists over each other, as if they were shackled, and then made a gesture of breaking them apart.
So touched was Baba by Seemab's composition that he declared, "Seemab! He did not realize what he had written. It has touched my heart. Seemab's whole life was miserable; he was never happy. Today, wherever he is, I have freed him [given him mukti]."1
Lata Limaye also sang before Baba that day. After the program, Baba asked everyone to come and kiss his hand and then leave the hall. Baba had intense pain in his hip joint that day, but nonetheless gave of himself unstintedly for three hours. Although he tried to "forget" his pain with a laugh, in small talk and in the music, it was evident as he shifted restlessly in his chair, that he was uncomfortable the entire time. The Bombay group was called to Guruprasad the next day. Baba urged them not to worry about his health, or anything else, and to remain happy while in his company. But the following day, 30 April, Baba suffered terribly on account of a kidney stone. Dr. Grant was called to Guruprasad. He requested that Baba come to the hospital, which Baba refused. At last, after much persuasion, Baba consented and was driven to Ruby Hall Clinic, where he was given an injection and an intravenous pyelogram was done. At 4:00 P.M., a pointed stone the size of a molar tooth was passed. Baba experienced some relief, but he had become very weak from enduring so much pain. Dr. Grant related: "During the procedure, Baba did not utter a sound in spite of the pain that is entailed, and took the whole thing very calmly and peacefully." Besides the hip pain, Baba's blood pressure had risen, and he had a fever, fissure trouble, and pain in the heart region.
Baba had once stated: "At the time of dropping my body, my body will be minced to pieces!"
To those near him, it seemed this was happening while he was still alive. Meanwhile, a serious heart attack patient named Mr. Shah was in the adjoining room. He was in a critical condition; his prognosis was dire and Grant did not hold out much hope for his survival. As Baba was about to get in the car to leave, Shah's wife begged Grant to request Baba to visit her husband. Baba graciously went back inside to Shah's room and spent a few moments with the couple.
"Don't worry, doctor," Baba told Grant. "He will be all right."
Amazingly, the man made a full recovery. Nana Kher's brother, Vinoo, was a college professor of physics in Amraoti. He came to see Baba on the morning of Wednesday, 1 May 1963. Eruch informed Baba that Vinoo delivered a speech before his science colleagues in Amraoti on Baba's birthday, trying to explain Baba's status as the Highest of the High with the help of scientific reasoning.
Footnotes
- 1.Seemab had died in Karachi twelve years earlier, on 31 January 1951.