rarely used letters. It depended on the question, the context. I'll begin with a few words. Man=Mustache (gesture). Baba likes mustaches. Woman=Bracelet bangles (gesture of twisting a bracelet on wrist). 'Rice and dal . . . Baby . . .eggs" . . . Mani went through a whole vocabulary of Baba's gestures.

Mani explains, Baba's love, forgiveness was a real experience, deep and vast as His compassion. "If we did something displeasing to Baba, He'd tell us about it, admonish us; the greatest punishment was to see His displeasure. 'Next time you do it I won't forgive you,' He said, but . . . He always did."

Our surfing film proved too big for the projector. A crisis! Eruch sent to the Poona Center for some Baba films. So we saw some footage of the last shots taken of Baba . . . at a wedding, December 22, 1969, of His nephew Dara. He was blessing the wedding. In the film Baba gestures that He will drop the body. The next film showed a birthday party for Mehera. Glimpses of Meherazad by Mani . . . and the love affair between the 'lost' Siamese cat and Baba, at Guruprasad.

After the show, we disperse to our hotels and I ride home with Freni and Rustom Dadachanji, our volunteers. Freni tells me how there was a story in the newspaper of a monk who said before dying 'I will come back,' and his cell was kept clean for his return. The story was read to Baba. Later, when Baba's condition was so bad He was likely to go into a coma, and the doctors informed him, Baba said, "If I do, I will come back, I won't be like that monk."

Freni also told me how long it took before she came to Baba—from 1947, and Baba once said, in front of all, how long it was before she was a lover: 'Since 1947.' I thought it so great that she could mention this about herself.

Bells! Music! The boys had been to the music store in Poona and wiped it out. A spontaneous 'bhajan' session went on till all hours. I fell asleep exhausted. Tomorrow was to be a big day—we go to the Tomb.

Sunday, June 9th, the 5th day of Darshan

We were awakened extra early by the hotel staff and boarded the buses with daylight just beginning to stain the sky. Meherjee had arranged I would ride in a car. The trip to Ahmednagar was through the 'real India' —country India; the sparse desert, the dry gullies. The bent trees reminded me of California so much, and with so much difference. Instead of the gas station and McDonald's hamburger stand, a tiny village of thatched huts, a farmer plowing a dry field with an ox and a wooden stick! Children with eyes dark with kohl or hunger, surrounded our car, the moment it stopped at Sirur. Impossible not to give!

Our car got to the Tomb before the buses arrived. It was a cool, windy day . . . grey­blue clouds rolled over the endless, bare plain. Ann Karrasch and others, placed an exquisite blanket of jasmine and roses over the crypt, for us all. My impression was: Peace, peace. Baba was there . . . and not there. As the Buddhist poet Nagarjuna sang:

Next to the tomb was the cabin in which Baba used to rest at night, the flimsy sides making Him colder when it was cold and hotter when it was hot. Inside was the stretcher that had borne Baba's body to the Tomb, and the quote from Hafiz, that Baba had transferred from the hall to His bedroom one-half hour before He dropped the body:

Befitting a fortunate slave, carry out every command of the Master without any question of why or what.

About what you hear from the Master, never say it is wrong,

Because, my dear, the fault lies in your own incapacity to understand Him.

I am the slave of my Master who has released Me from ignorance;

Whatever my Master does is for the highest benefit to all concerned

Again, we see the carefully preserved items of Baba's life . . . more remote, more dimmed by time, now, than in 1962. Now there were glass cases around the begging bowl and kafni He used in the New Life . . .