That day, 22 October, was Mehernath Kalchuri's birthday. Unlike every other year, Baba had not called him to Meherazad, but sent him his love through a note from Bhau, and Rama sent bhujias for all at Meherazad. After the cardiogram was taken, Baba met Bhau's family and sent for the Khilnani family.
He embraced Mehernath and remarked, "This year I did not send for you because I myself was coming to meet you. The failure of the transformer was just an excuse so that I could come here to see you!"
Baba embraced Dolly, Sarosh, Viloo, Bhasker, Usha, Rustom Kaka and Silla Kaku before Adi drove him back to Meherazad in the DeSoto.
Khorshed arrived from Bombay on the 24th and stayed with the women for three days. She left on the 27th with Jalbhai, who had come to Meherazad for the day.
In late October, Baba announced that, health permitting, he would give darshan to his Eastern lovers in May (1965) in Poona, and to his Western lovers in the month of December (1965) in Bombay. His Western lovers were informed immediately, while the Easterners were informed of these plans a few weeks later.
On Sunday, 1 November 1964, Baba called twelve workers of the Poona Center to discuss arrangements for the darshan program.1 They agreed to arrange everything. Baba asked them to erect the same type of pandal behind Guruprasad as was done for the East-West Gathering. Although at first Baba indicated he would give darshan for the first fifteen days of May, he later curtailed the period to five days, from 1 May. After the meeting, the Poona lovers left at 4:00 P.M.
The next day, a busload of 45 devotees from Kakinada, traveling to places of pilgrimage throughout India, arrived in Ahmednagar, desiring to have Baba's darshan. Because of his seclusion, Baba at first agreed to see the group for five minutes only, with no bowing down or embraces. But out of his compassion, when Baba met the group on the 3rd, he permitted each person to bow down to him.
On Thursday, 5 November, Gajwani and Siganporia arrived at 2:00 P.M. with a family from California — Kenneth W. Ranney, his wife, Marjorie, and their 20-year-old son, David. The couple were friends of Bhai Mohan Singh, the owner of the Indian pharmaceutical company Ranbaxy Laboratories. Marjorie was a follower of a Seattle woman, known as "Mother Hamilton," a disciple of Yogananda, who had urged her to meet Meher Baba. Marjorie had read several of Baba's books, and had visited the Baba booth at the World's Fair.
Footnotes
- 1.Those who attended the meeting were: Jalbhai, Meherjee, Sadashiv Patil, Ramakrishnan, Shinde, Kamble, Subramaniam, Soman, Bhavsar, Madhusudan, Pratap Ahir and Bhikubhai.