SECLUSION IN MAKE-SHIFT ROOM

 
In August 1927 Baba left the Jhopdi and Table House where He had been staying at Lower Meherabad to stay on the Hill and to be near the Prem Ashram boys who were living in the water tank. Before moving up the Hill Baba came to our room and told us to be happy, and to obey His orders, and to take care of our health. After He left us we saw little of Baba for some time.

On the Hill Baba stayed in what is now the Samadhi, but in those days it was not a nice stone building, but a very rough-looking room made from odd bits of tin sheets and tarpaulins. It was full of cracks, and a snake could easily have crawled inside. And at night Baba not only stayed there, but He slept down in a pit He had had dug inside the room that was later to become His crypt.

We were still not permitted on the Hill, so we did not see where Baba was living until later on Baba's birthday in February 1928, when as a special treat, He allowed us to go up there. At that time Baba was in seclusion in this make-shift room, and He did not step out of the room but He stood in the doorway, and from afar we had His darshan and saw how He was living.

From mid-November 1927 Baba was on fast up the Hill for about five and one half months, and for some of that time He was in seclusion in this make-shift room. All that Baba had to eat during those months were two cups of milk-coffee a day, which He had sent word for me to prepare and to send up to Him everyday.

I prepared it very carefully, keeping the flask for the coffee very, very clean, properly measuring the milk, and taking great care that no onion or garlic smell tainted the milk. Every morning I sent two cups of coffee in a flask up the Hill to Baba with a small village boy of eight or nine years.

And it is so sad. Baba could not talk, and now He was on this very long fast, taking only these two cups of coffee a day, and He did not even have these two cups. After the fast was over the subject came up, and we found that the boy who carried the flask up the Hill would stop just over the railway line, sit in a ditch, and drink a part of Baba's coffee. And Baba never complained about getting less coffee.