VERY SURPRISED BY HIS ANSWER

 
At the end of August [1948] ... our new house at Meherazad was ready, and Baba had invitations sent to His lovers at Meherabad, Ahmednagar, Poona and Bombay for a housewarming.

During the housewarming the men all stayed on the men's side, and we women sat in the garden where a lunch of wadas, potato wafers and rava was served on leaf plates. On the front door of the new house was a big silver lock with a silver key, and after lunch Baba turned the key and opened the lock. He then opened the door, and we all followed Him inside.

So we moved into our new house at Meherazad. Baba's room was upstairs. Mani and myself, Meheru, Goher and Naja were in the new house, and Norina, Elizabeth, Delia and Jean were in the cottage. Baba was there with us for a couple of months before He left Meherazad for His work, and in the evenings we sat around Him in our new drawing room.

As I have said, Baba loved humour and jokes, and every evening He said to the Westerners, "Now tell Me a joke!"

It is not at all funny to have to tell a joke to Baba like that. Before long Norina, Elizabeth, Delia and Jean were running out of stories, and they began to get a little desperate. Somehow Delia managed to get a book of jokes and this book gave the jokes in alphabetical order.

One of the four girls took from A to E, and another from F to K, and so on. Everyday they would memorize a joke from their section of the book and be ready for Baba to call on them in the evening. It all went very smoothly until Delia got a cold and could not be with us for several days.

When she again joined us Baba called on her to tell a joke. "Oh, yes, Baba," she happily said, and told Him the joke in her section that she had just memorized.

Baba did not look amused and told her, "I've heard that joke!"

"Oh dear, Baba," Delia said, "I'm so sorry."

The next evening the same thing happened. Delia told the next joke in her section, and it seemed that Baba had heard this one also. Delia was very puzzled, "Baba, I just can't understand it," she told Him. But when it happened for the third evening Delia suddenly realised what had gone on in her absence. "Baba, someone has been stealing my jokes!" We all knew who had been telling Delia's jokes, and Baba looked at Norina.

Now Norina had the section in the book with included "T", and nearly all the "T" jokes were about a little boy called Tommy. "But, Baba darling," Norina told Baba when He looked at her, "what could I do? I was so tired of Tommy!"

One Tommy joke I still remember because Baba enjoyed it so much was this: A teacher asked her students, "Does anyone know where God is?" Everyone except Tommy looked very blank, but Tommy's arm shot up. "Yes, Tommy, do you know?"

"Yes, miss," Tommy replied, "He's in our bathroom."

"How can you say that?" the teacher said, very surprised by his answer.

"Well, miss, every morning my father knocks on the bathroom door and says, 'Oh Lord, are you still in there?'"