most unluckily before I was aware, most of them were thrown away. But I found, in a book, a note where Baba is sort of praying or thanking Baba. I still have it at home but it's very faint, it's written in pencil. I have a letter where father wrote to Walter Mertens to thank him for an invitation. These are two I have from my father. Of course I knew he knew Baba but I would have liked to know really how it was at first but they only told me about it when my father had already died.

Kitty: Anything from the blue bus tours?

Oh, yes . . . I have a wonderful story — about when you gave Jangoo a lift with us and his dear grandmother had him on her lap. When he had to do something, you see, she opened a window and we also had the windows open and little Jangoo made all this outside and we got it all in our faces! (laughter)

Kitty: Who?

Jangoo is the nephew of Mehera, the son of Rustom and Freny. The two boys who were living in the ashram were Jangoo and Merwan, the brother of Eruch. I felt he never got free of the stomach of his mother because he always put his head there — don't you remember? I felt he was tied to the strings of his mother. She was Gaimai, sort of a universal mother or something! So dear and jolly! Now Merwan works with Meherji; I heard he has been so ill. These two young boys, Jangoo and Merwan, stayed at the ashram of secluded ladies — they were the only men allowed. Really, I mean, they were boys.

Q: Were you surprised, did you have any inkling when you went to India that you would stay as long as eight years?

Well, Baba said to me, "You come for two years." But you see, even when I came here now, it's strange, I didn't make any plans — I just came. So it was the same then. Oh, I must tell how I arrived in Bombay . . . You see, when the news came to come to India, we had letters (I sent you, Kitty, some copies of these letters). It was decided after all the discussion about those people who could come or couldn't come that one would be Hedi Mertens, who had been so ill. Everybody said, How could she travel that way, but I think she would have died if she had stayed at home, so if she came and died, it wouldn't have mattered anyhow. She was really ill, she had these colic attacks and most of the time she was in bed. There also was Countess Nadine Tolstoy, who was in Switzerland at that time. She happened to be from the same place where my father stayed in Russia; she was very happy that my father could speak such fluent Russian, because she could not speak it with anyone else; Her father had been Commander of the harbor where my father had stayed. Of course they didn't know each other then. So Nadine came to our house very often for lunch, and talked to my father; we talked on Baba also. Also Helen Dahm, the painter of the dome of Baba's tomb, went to India with us — Nadine, Hedi and myself.

In 1938 I was 21½ years old, on paper, but I was younger, naive, you know, as one is if you stay at home and don't have to battle with life, and have a careful home. I was so naive, I was like a 16, 17 or 18 year old in many ways. Usually I always used to like old ladies, because both my grandmothers had died, and I had some old neighbors I adored. But when I got on the boat with these old ladies, I really didn't like them any more. Of course they were nice, but Baba saved us a little bit from the worst, as I'll tell you. Norina said we should bring at least a bed or something, because we would have nothing in India and they also had written that we should renounce everything. But what does one know of renunciation? Nothing, until one encounters part of it! First we went to Venice, it was wonderful. I've read this lately in Hedi's report — that I ate a whole thick box of Swiss Frigor chocolates!! I wasn't a bit sad at leaving home or my friends or my fiancé or anything. I was just so happy to go to Baba in India. Already in the train some wanted to talk and some didn't want to talk; and I always used to like to talk. Of course Hedi wasn't so old as the other two, but you see when I think I am older now than Nadine and Hedi were at that time, they were about 60, and now, I am 64 so I am talking of old ladies!