THE SILENT MIRACLE OF HIS PRESENCE

 
The year has grown some twelve weeks older since our return from Poona. After the first refreshing plunge into Meherazad's quiet life we cease to gasp in renewed wonder at all the little things that make Meherazad what it is, but we can never completely take its blessings for granted.

In the moonlight, when the jasmine bushes look like leafy nets that have caught a shower of fallen stars, we still gaze fascinated. And when at dawn these fragrant little flowers cover the garden paths like white carpets, we still find time to stand and stare.

Of course there is the other side to Nature's coin, and competing with the profusion of the jasmine are the midges and the mosquitoes that seem immune to all our attempts to outwit them; and when on an evening we hear the sound of vigorous slaps and claps, it is no cause for concern — one or the other of us is up in arms against these humming horrors.

However, pleasing form of life has also been on the increase, and it is already difficult for us to tell the babies apart from the parents — I'm talking of course of the birds: the bulbuls, sunbirds, mynahs and others; while Mrs. Swift is in the process of hatching her family in her little mud bowl of a nest outside our cottage wall. When some restless or curious fledgling would drop out of its nest, we would put it back in its frantic mother's care.

We played the role of anxious aunties when they ventured on their first non-stop flight from one tree to another; for, not all of them are little Lindbergs, and more than once we've picked up a bewildered and bedraggled young bird from one of the water tanks in the garden.

Whenever this happens, after the bird is thoroughly dried by the log fire until its feathers are fluffy and it has regained its aplomb and lung power, before setting it free we invariably take it to Baba. The Beloved gently caresses its sleek head, and sometimes blesses it with a kiss.

That is as far as we see of the blessings — how can we fathom its unseen depths? How can we understand the silent miracle of His presence that wipes out hordes of sanskaras, the alchemy of His touch that turns the consciousness of a bird or animal into that of a human being in its next life? As Kabir has said:

One moment, half a moment, even half of a half moment spent
in the company of a Perfect Master, cuts away crores of one's sanskaras.