After a while, Behram saw that somebody was sitting in the rain under the tree, and all of a sudden he remembered, and he came and called me. So then I got up and left that place. He told Baba about this, but of course Baba knew about it. Baba called me, and told me that I did well, that I listened to him, and that I did not disobey Baba's words. Baba said "Even if it were not rain, and it was fire, you should not have gotten up, should have continued to sit there."

There were from the five of us, three left: only Ghaneker, Behram and I were left. At that time, Baba said to us: that's enough — you should come out also. We also left that seclusion that Baba had given us. This whole period of silence and seclusion lasted for six months.

One of the Prem Ashram boys was called Ali Akbar, and Baba had given him so much love. He had asked me to follow this Ali Akbar around, so that he might not harm himself, but I should never touch him. But the first day he came and he smashed me in the nose and my nose started to bleed, blood was all over the place. But I couldn't touch him, and I couldn't hold his hand to stop him. Well, he could come and beat me and do whatever he wanted to do. Now is the time! (laughing) And for six months also I was with this Ali Akbar wherever he would go, from morning till noon.

(TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: I should mention that Shahriar has mentioned that this Akbar, whom he just mentioned, is not Ali Akbar Shapurzaman, who is in Meherazad and he is not also Sayyed Ali, who is mentioned in Sobs and Throbs as the hero of the book.)

Yes, I would go with this Ali Akbar, and he had so much love for Baba that wherever he would find a stretch of water, he would put his stomach in the water so that he could cool it. He would tell me, "O Shahriar! I'm burning! I'm burning!" — every day from morning till noon. And I would tell Ali Akbar, "O sir, it is lunchtime, it is noon now, everybody has gone for lunch, and we're hungry. When will we go back and reach home? Then finally he'd say, "O.K. Let's return." When we would start back, in just a few minutes we would reach the ashram. This was all Baba's help: it was as if we were flying, that in such a short time we would get back. It would feel like a car that goes so fast, or a train that goes so fast. When we would get there, we would see that the children had started to have lunch, and we would join them.

Whenever all would get near Baba, he would go under Baba's daaman. He wouldn’t want to come out; he was like a child who wanted to have milk. And I, who was along with this Ali Akbar, who was accompanying him, also was drunk, and didn't know where I was going, where we were, what we were doing, until we would get back to the ashram.

After six months of being with Ali, I was at the end of my rope, and I came to Baba and said, "Baba, I can't go with him anymore; I'm fed up. I won't go with him anymore And Baba said: "All right. You don't do it anymore; I myself will take care of him. I will look after him." And another one of my chores was to sit and take care of the 33 boys in Prem Ashram, to watch over them and make sure that they didn't hurt each other, that they were kind to each other.

For six months we also went to Toka. There was Alex-Saheb from Germany. He spent 25 years in Vivekananda's ashram in Calcutta. He was in a world of light, but Baba took it away from him, and then sent him all around India to spread his message. Alex-Saheb was to travel on foot all around India, and if anybody offered him a ride, he should take it and if anybody gave him food, he should take it.

And for some time we went to Happy Valley, and spent some time there.

There were 20 or 30 of us elder ones, not any of the boys. Up the mountain, there was an old abode of an ancient king, which we visited, and then on our way back, we went slowly down the slope. Baban Shabnis, who was an Indian athlete, had tried to come straight down the mountain instead of going alongside the slope, and had got caught between the stones. He couldn 't rescue himself; he couldn't get out of the jam, so he