2 . All should eat rice and dal for lunch, and milkless tea and bhakri for breakfast and dinner. Bapu Brahmin will be appointed as the cook to prepare this for all without distinction of caste or creed.
3 . No one will receive a single pie [cent] as wages under any circumstances.
Those unable to comply with these conditions are free to return to their homes and earn their livelihood however they see fit.
When the proposed conditions were voted upon, most of the mandali chose to stay at Meherabad under Baba's conditions and a list of these men was noted. Another list of those who were ready to leave was also prepared; this consisted mostly of the teachers who had been receiving wages.
Proper arrangements were made for the students and those in the hospital and leper asylum, and no one had any cause for complaint. Twenty-five children were willing to stay with Baba in Meherabad. The rest of the children were sent home the following day. All medicines and equipment in the dispensary and hospital were sold to Dr. Karkal at a concessional rate. The dharamshala and hospital were vacated by the evening of the next day, 22 October; however, those few patients who were bedridden with venereal diseases stayed on.1 The students from Nasik and Poona were taken to their homes by Harinath and one other man respectively. Memo and Freiny Masi arrived that day at noon by train.
Rustom, who was particularly disturbed by the new announcement, questioned Baba privately, "What is to become of those who came here for you in all sincerity, whose hopes were raised by you? What of those to whom you promised salvation if they stayed here with you until you spoke?"
Baba wrote out this long explanation:
All the children received the benefits of education and more particularly a spiritual push, which they would never have received elsewhere in the whole world. Even admitting that they all came here hearing my name, does it mean I am bound to teach them and keep them with me for an indefinite period? I may keep them with me and under my guidance as long as I deem desirable.
Do you mean to say that I should leave all else — my other external as well as internal duties — for their sake? Do my workings depend upon longer or shorter periods of their stay with me?
Footnotes
- 1.Baba once related to Padri that the world would never be rid of venereal diseases, specifically syphilis.