Sai Baba the Master

[Guest guest]

Baba never allowed anyone else to stay with him at the mosque at night

except his closest devotees, Tatya Kote Patil and Mahalsapathy. The three

were quite intimate. They slept in the musjid with their heads towards the

east, west and north and with their feet touching one another at the centre

of the mosque. The three stretched themselves on their beds and went on

chitchatting till midnight. Baba slept very little and perhaps intended to

inculcate the same habit in these devotees too. Annasaheb Dabholkar,

describes the scene vividly in his hook “Sai Satcharitra” – “If Tatya began

to snore, Baba at once got up and shook him from side to side and pressed

his head, or with Mahalsapathy, hugged him close, stroked his legs and

kneaded his back. In this way for full fourteen years, Tatya, leaving his

parents at home, slept in the musjid on account of his love for Baba. How

happy and never-to-be-forgotten were those days! How to measure that love

and value the grace of Baba? After the passing away of his father, Tatya

took charge of his household affairs and began to sleep at home.”

 

II In this section we shall look more closely at what Baba said and did. I

shall quote extensively from Khaparde’s “Shirdi Diary”. This enhances the

feeling of Sai Baba’s presence and when read on a visit to Shirdi, this

section lends a new dimension altogether to our stay there. After his night’

s sojourn in the chavadi the devotees offered the first arti (worshipful

offering of light) early in the morning. It was called the kakad arti. In

the mean a while, the mosque was kept clean by the devotee Madhav Fasle.

After the arti, Fasle would request Sai Baba to come to the mosque. Sai

Baba never stirred from his seat without Fasle coming to invite him to do

so. Then he returned to the mosque.

 

 

Source: http://www.saibharadwaja.org