Khaparde kept a Marathi diary and recorded on 17 January 1912: "Sayin [ sic ] Baba showed his face and smiled most benignly. It is worthwhile spending years here to see it even once. I was overjoyed and stood gazing like mad [intently]."
Advanced souls "passing through" Shirdi recognized the Master and told the inhabitants, "Blessed is Shirdi, that it got this precious Jewel! ... He is not an ordinary fellow. Because this place [Shirdi] was lucky and meritorious, it secured this Jewel."
Another saint saw Sai Baba and exclaimed, "This is a precious Diamond! Though he looks like an ordinary man, he is not a gar [ordinary stone] but a Diamond. You will realize this in the near future."1
Each day, Sai Baba begged for his food (usually only bhakri) at the same five houses in Shirdi. At each doorstep he would call out, "Mother, give me bhakri," or "Mother, give me roti [chapati]." He continued begging up to his last days, eating only one or two pieces of the flatbread himself and a raw onion and distributing the rest to the poor. Thus, his majesty, the King, would eat only what was given in alms.
According to Meher Baba, there was a secret behind Sai Baba's begging: The five houses represented the five Perfect Masters who are always living in the world and at whose feet the whole universe begs for spiritual and material progress.
Sai Baba had several strange personal habits in addition to being a heavy smoker. While begging, he would often stop along the way — in secluded places or amidst a teeming bazaar — and unabashedly lift his dhoti to urinate. After finishing, he would shake his penis seven times before he would continue with his begging. Seeing him behave in this manner, some of the villagers at first took him to be mad. But every outward act of the Perfect Masters, although sometimes enigmatic, is inwardly significant, because their every action is for the benefit of the world.
For instance, Sai Baba would take hours to relieve his bowels. As the number of devotees increased, this act of attending to nature's call was transformed into a ceremony of pomp and adoration, which Sai would call lendi .2 He would go to defecate in a nearby field every day at a fixed time (usually late morning), followed by a parade of devotees, some playing musical instruments, and one person holding an umbrella over the Master as he walked.
Footnotes
- 1.Antonio Rigopoulos, The Life and Teachings of Sai Baba (State University of New York Press, 1993), p. 63.
- 2.Lendi is a Marathi word for dried fecal matter.