TRAINING IN BELGAUM

 
Mehera: We had tea in Poona in the early morning and finally after a tiring drive reached Belgaum late in the evening. There too it had been raining and was very chilly. Baba was to stay in a temporary structure with cement flooring and walls of bamboo matting. The floor was not yet dry as it had all been built specially for Baba's stay there.

Don: You were to remain some days, as it were, in training?

Meheru: Six weeks. I think Mehera and Meheru looked after Baba's room and tried to do what they could to make it warm and comfortable.

Mehera: During the monsoon it is very cold and windy in Belgaum because it rains very hard there. When we arrived it was raining steadily, and our house was located out in a field that had been ploughed frequently. To reach it we had to walk through thick slush.

Don: I would think that about then, Mehera, it would have been almost impossible to resist having a bad mood.

Mehera: Yes, exactly. But Baba being with us, you know ... often the difficult becomes surprisingly easy.

Don: You were still in a good mood.

Mehera: We liked it. The mandali stayed in one large common room erected for their stay. There was a tile roof and the walls were of tatta — that means, made of bamboo matting.

Meheru: It wasn't at all warm and it was damp underfoot. We had very limited luggage, as Baba had allowed us only a certain amount of clothing and bedding, which was very meager in the circumstances, especially when you had to lie on a damp floor.

Here the training period began and everyone was allotted duties. Some of the mandali, for instance, were given the task of drawing water from the well, but they were not used to this work and the rope was rough on their hands, it being a very deep well. Goher helped fetch the water inside to us. Mani was in charge of the cooking under Mehera's guidance and the rest of us gave a hand helping. None of us had ever cooked such large quantities as were needed for all the companions, so it was difficult for us.

Don: This is the women mandali, not Kaka, doing the cooking in Belgaum?

Meheru: Yes, this is the women mandali.

Don: Later on in the New Life Kaka did the cooking?

Meheru: Yes. At Belgaum the four women mandali cooked for all the companions, for Baba, and for ourselves. The tea, however, came from the men's side.

Don: Kaka did that, did he?

Meheru: I think Baidul made the tea. The two meals we cooked, and the tea they made. Baba took much interest in all our activities. The food was vegetarian, and Baba would come back and forth and ask what was being cooked. Sometimes if he thought that a dish lacked something he would advise us what to do.

Don: Meheru, you say that the food was all vegetarian? I asked Mani earlier whether Baba had laid down any rule that the food was to be vegetarian, and her best recollection was no, there was no rule about it. Mostly you ate vegetarian food just because it was available?

Meheru: For a certain period in the very early days, Baba and all those who followed him were strict vegetarians and did not even eat eggs. Later on eggs were permitted. But all that was in the early days.

Don: Before the New Life.

Mehera: Yes, at Meherabad. When we first came to the ashram we were always vegetarian, and Baba was also vegetarian. But if somebody's health was not good Baba allowed other food. For instance, Elizabeth needed and was allowed eggs.

Meheru: Later on when we had chickens at Meherabad we had eggs but no meat. But to go on with the stay at Belgaum. The Song of the New Life was written there with Baba's help by Dr. Ghani. It used to be sung every day by Adi in Baba's presence, and I think Baba used to accompany him on the drum. Other qawali songs were also sung, with Baba accompanying on the drum. It was actually a dholak, I think.

Often in the evening Baba would play the dholak for us in our quarters. We would sit and listen, entranced by the beautiful rhythm and sound, watching Baba's slender graceful fingers as he played and the expression of intense absorption in his eyes, as though he were one with the music.

Mehera: The dholak he used in the New Life is in the museum.

Don: The kind he played when we took the motion pictures of him in the living room at Meherazad in February of 1962?

Meheru: Yes, that's it. The place where we stayed near Belgaum was a brick house with a tiled roof but no ceiling. The area was divided into three tiny rooms by single brick partitions. Almost every time it rained the main room became flooded, and then the mandali would come along with ladders and try to patch up the leaks. Also, every night the mice were busy gnawing away at the walls, and in the morning before Baba came for tea we would sweep up the rubble.

One night Mani woke up, startled, asking what it was that had bitten her on the finger. Mehera was nearby and Goher and I were in the other room. All of us woke up and learned that her finger had been bitten by a mouse. Her hand must have been sticking out of the mosquito curtain, and the mouse had nibbled on it. It was bleeding a bit and Goher attended to it.