MANI REMEMBERS YOU NIGHT AND DAY
Excerpted from "Mani's Reunion"

 
At 3:15 p.m. it was time for a final Arti, and the Meherazad women mandali, with great love and grief, tenderly kissed their precious sister for the last time in Meherazad, the home she loved so dearly. It was moving to hear even the Meherazad pet dogs calling out a farewell. Then Mani's form was carried on the stretcher into the Swanee, and with Goher, Meheru, Katie, Gulnar and a few other women, she began her last journey to Meherabad. Reaching there, as they turned into the road going up the Hill, some of the women saw her face flush, as if she was exulting in the approach of her final goal.

On the Hill, a group of Baba-lovers carried the stretcher into Baba's Samadhi, where Mani was placed on Baba's right hand side as the prayers were said. From there, she was taken to Mehera's shrine, and lying in the space between her beloveds, she seemed to grow pinker with happiness.

Mani's form was then placed on the Sabha Mandap, the large platform near the Samadhi. It is hard to describe the amazing atmosphere of this gathering, the heightened sense of Baba's presence, of Mani's joy, of the immensity of the event of her Reunion with Him, all against a background of flowers garlanding her form, songs in English, Marathi and Hindi, an outpouring of reverence and respect from the villagers, the intimate moments of farewell from her dear old friends Mansari and Gulu, and others who had just arrived from Bombay, and the combined focus of the huge crowd on her glowing form.

At about 5:30 p.m. once again Mani was carried into the Swanee, and a caravan of cars, motorcycles and people on foot wound down the Hill to the Meherabad cremation ground at the southernmost end of the property.

Mani had always loved the atmosphere of freedom and renunciation surrounding cremations, and especially those that took place at evening time.

As her form rested on the pyre, she looked sublime and serene, like the Princess she truly is. Poignant farewells from her dearest ones, heartbroken with grief. And then all stepped back for the final covering of her form with sandalwood, and the finishing of the pyre. Sometime after 6 p.m., at twilight, a time of day she loved, the men of her devoted family, Jangu, RustomSohrab, Dara, Arvind, Meherdil and Jamshed lit her pyre to resounding calls of "Avatar Meher Baba ki Jai!"

If legends are to grow from this farewell to Mani, surely there will be one about her pyre. For those who have seen many cremations it was extraordinary in many ways. Extraordinarily beautiful, as the flames whipped by a west wind leapt up, dancing, intense, and bright against the deep blue evening sky. Extraordinarily meaningful, as Meheru, dazed by sadness, suddenly saw forms among the flames dancing and bowing to Mani, and then Baba's face and Zoroaster's face alternating in the center. Extraordinarily rare, for as Eruch was standing silently nearby, two sadhus approached him, asking whose pyre was this? They had been passing by, and observed the smoke — but it was not the black smoke of the pyre of an ordinary person, it was the gray-blue smoke of the pyre of a saint. And so they had come to ask about this great soul and to pay their respects. The sister of Meher Baba? Ah, that explained it.

And the pyre was extraordinarily long-lasting, for when all was done and the mandali had returned to Meherazad and others to their homes and resting places, it went on burning and burning and burning. Normally a pyre will burn for twenty-four hours. A very large one, for thirty-six. The fire of Mani's love must have ignited the very air around her, for her pyre burned for three days. Even thereafter the place where she had lain was warm.

Those three days were another kind of darshan for the Baba-lovers who kept round-the-clock vigil at the site, passing the time with songs and stories, energized by the atmosphere of great peace and sweetness that came from the fire. How delighted Mani would have been to see among them young people from the Youth Sahavas recently held at Baba's Center in Myrtle Beach (USA). One of them remarked that Mani's song to Baba,"Open Up the Door", which had been sung so often at the Youth Sahavas, for the first time really meant something to him because of this experience.

Even the flora paid her tribute that night. Years ago, Mehera had given a cutting from a "Christ's Cradle" plant at Meherazad to grow in the Pilgrim Centre. The Christ's Cradle flower, which Mehera had shown to Baba, is a beautiful white fragrant flower that blooms only at night, and then rarely. On the night of Mani's reunion, all the Christ Cradles in the Pilgrim Centre bloomed. Only the next morning did anyone notice there was one more plant outside, stuck away in the corner of the nursery, that had given seven blooms in the night — in direct view of the distant pyre.

Link to Mani's Reunion

Copyright © Heather Nadel
Meherabad, 24 August 1996