On 29 November 1965, Baba again sent a note to Adi, stating that Baba wished to remain undisturbed for the next four months, until he left for Poona, so no visitors (including Westerners) were to be sent to Meherazad.
"If I am allowed to remain undisturbed for four months," Baba dictated, "I will feel better and there will be some improvement in my health. Otherwise, it will be worse."
From the 1st of December 1965, Baba stopped listening to all correspondence from either the East or West. His neck pain continued to plague him. During the previous few months, when Baba would sit up for long hours during the day without a break, the mandali, as Dr. Ginde had advised, pleaded with him to rest his body by lying down in bed to ease the neck condition. Now they were sad to see him have to lie down for so long, because sitting up for more than short stretches at a time aggravated the pain.1 When he did come to be with the mandali, for about two hours every morning, his hip joint pain was also intense; despite this, Baba's internal work in seclusion continued.
Dr. Alu Khambatta had been staying at Meherazad, primarily to help look after Baidul, but on 2 December 1965, Alu left for Bombay. Padri came to Meherazad on 8 December for work, and Adi was called (after a month's gap) on the 9th. Rama had been discharged from Booth Hospital the day before, and Baba asked about her health, and about Sarosh's. Adi also discussed a boundary dispute with Pendu and others. (One of their neighboring farmers was claiming that a Meherazad well was on his land.)
Savak Kotwal's son and daughter, Adi and Hilla had once lived at Meherabad with their family. Adi and Hilla were permitted to come to Meherazad at 9:00 A.M. on Monday, 13 December 1965, with Hilla's nine-year-old son Deepak. After her marriage, Hilla had moved to London, and it had been nine long years since she had visited India. She could not stop weeping.
At one point, Baba teased her, "I am seeing you after so many years and all you are doing is crying! Have you come to meet me or cry?"
They spent the entire day at Meherazad, and then left for Bombay. Mansari visited all at Meherazad on the 16th.
Footnotes
- 1.It was concluded by the doctors that the cause of Baba's chronic neck condition was due to his strenuous work of years of bowing down thousands of times to shrines, masts, sadhus, the poor and lepers.