After Kaikobad's departure, Baba stopped his morning seclusion work, but his afternoon work went on continuously for the next year and a half, until the 30th of January 1969.
On Sunday, the 17th of September, at 11:30 A.M., a second singer named Chhota Qawaal arrived with his musicians in Meherazad to entertain Baba. However, Baba did not enjoy his singing much, or his choice of material, and he sent the group out for tea, saying he was curtailing the program and ending it at 1:00 P.M. But after tea, Chhota Qawaal's singing improved, and Baba extended the program by an hour. All then left at 2:00 P.M. The singing programs were a private affair; no one from outside was called except for Padri, Adi, Don, Chhagan, Waman and Bhagirath. Nariman had come from Bombay on the 17th, and later that day, Nana Kher returned to Nagpur.
Baba announced that he would step out of seclusion one morning for three hours only, for the purpose of washing the feet of seven lepers brought to Meherazad from Ahmednagar. Only those men who had been directed to make arrangements for this leper work were to be present at Meherazad that day.
An exception was made for Louis van Gasteren, 45, a filmmaker from Amsterdam. Van Gasteren had first heard of Baba through Irwin Luck. Irwin was driving a taxi cab in New York City when he picked up van Gasteren and drove him to the airport. Louis noticed a small "Baba card" pinned on the taxi's dashboard.
In June 1965, Robert Dreyfuss met van Gasteren through a mutual friend in Cambridge. A year later, in September 1966, Dreyfuss stayed with van Gasteren for a week in Amsterdam, and during that visit he spoke to van Gasteren at length about Baba. The filmmaker and his wife had been guests of Rick Chapman in California the previous August. Van Gasteren told Dreyfuss about his plans to make a 35mm color film in Dutch titled Nema Aviona za Zagreb (There's No Plane To Zagreb).1 Van Gasteren said he wished to include Meher Baba in it but had no money to finance it yet.
Through a letter from Eruch, Baba instructed Bob Dreyfuss to tell van Gasteren to write Adi directly about his idea. Van Gasteren wrote, requesting Baba's permission to come and film him, stating he wished "to communicate the fact of Meher Baba to the world via the media of film." After much correspondence back and forth, Baba decided he could come to India in November. He then changed the date and said van Gasteren should be present on 20 September, during the three hours when Baba would step out of seclusion, and film him doing his work with the lepers.
Footnotes
- 1.Zagreb is the capital of Croatia.