harm her; it now looks as if the war is really starting; Baba says so too. We left Goa on Monday 15/4/40 morning and picked up the boy on the way out. Goa is very hot though picturesque, and rather like Spain with all its churches and Portuguese buildings. We were glad to leave, too sticky and smelly, the hotel smelt of a mixture of fish, urine and Phenyl disinfectant. Baba ate fish with all of us at Goa. He told us it was for special reasons. Nilu was away at Belgaum seeing to Jal's car and Baba jokingly said that Nilu said Baba must manifest in Ladhus; Basundi Ladhus are sweetmeats, and Nilu has a sweet tooth.

We spent Monday night at Khanapur, 15 miles on the Goa side of Belgaum. Baba took us men to bathe in the river there — I had a good swim, Baba watching us, and the Goa boy had a swim too — swims O.K. He's a bright lad.

Baba is a very good mimic of all His followers. In Khanapur, He was mimicking Gustadji, the way he blows his nose and wets his head and handkerchief, and all the funny little things like carrying a bottle of water under his arm, which are special to Gustadji. Yesterday we had lunch in Belgaum in a restaurant, arranged by Vishwanath, Vishnu's jeweler brother in Belgaum. The evening before in Khanapur, Baba, the boy and we men played marbles and other stone-throwing and stick-waving antics with stones and sticks, perhaps to amuse Baba, perhaps to amuse the boy, and perhaps for other reasons, who knows. Anyway, Baba scored the most hits in all the games, and wields a stick very neatly like a lathi, just missing us, me included with His swinging strokes. One never really knows what inner work a Master is doing when He is only “messing" about or joking externally. We got here at Amboli yesterday afternoon; it is a jungle village on the very edge of the ghats*, a superb place, most lovely views of the ghats dropping to the plains to the west and the rolling hills to the east. Baba happy here and this morning took the ladies in the bus down a "saddle" with a big precipice below, and superb views on either side of the jungle-covered ghat cliffs, 1,000 or 2,000 foot gorges, canyons, ridges, cliffs, and dense jungle with villages and rice fields.

Baba has now altered the program, and we stay only one day each at Mahabaleshwar and Panchgani, to save money. Yesterday, Baba picked up a "pucca" mast 5 miles on the other side of Belgaum, and we have brought him with us here. Baba is very pleased with him and fed him and he now looks more presentable, but rather sad.

Baba used to sit on my bed on the bungalow veranda at Amboli to dictate letters, and other work there. The night before we left, Jampa, the Belgaum mast, was very noisy and restless and at 2 in the morning he broke the window and pulled away part of the frame; anyhow he was always picking and scratching at things, pulling nails out of the walls, wiping the floor with his hands, picking up any dirt; Baba later explained that all this is because of a certain spiritual state. They must always pick at things, like Mohamed, all day long.

Irene had a crisis and was ill in Amboli, temperature 105° on the day we left, and Elizabeth and Norina with fever. So when we left Amboli for Belgaum on Saturday 2 p.m. I drove Elizabeth’s car with Baba and Elizabeth in front, and the "invisibles" behind, hidden by a screen. At Belgaum we stayed in the Rani of Sarvantradi's bungalow about three miles from the city, all very comfortable. Baba slept with we men, at the end same room with half drawn curtain above; He groaned at times in the night. Irene left at the hospital and Jampa the mast was left behind. He was too much to look after.

* mountains