“Lucky”

UCKY IS A MONKEY . . . I don’t know where he is now, but I had the good fortune to ‘mother’ him during his significant stay in the Ashram on Meherabad Hill. This incident is hard to believe unless one realizes the effect. MEHER BABA sent out a call for him, but then he described him merely as a monkey that would respond to him.

So, through all the four corners of India, friends and disciples were mobilized to detect such a promising creature, which, after we read the Divine Theme, we realize is part and parcel of it... like any one of us.

Now, monkeys after monkeys were sent for and brought up the hill. As I had to carry them down the hill again it meant that none of them was as yet the one for which BABA sent out a call. And then, one day, most unexpectedly, a tiny case arrived down at the men’s quarters, below the hill, from an unasked source, and in it was a small creature, no bigger than a baby squirrel with huge sparkling eyes and long eyelashes. The news was rushed up the hill to where BABA was at the time. His reaction was “spontaneous rejoicement.”

At once, the following plan was set by BABA . . . the men down the hill were to squat in a circle with BABA hiding himself in their midst, and at a given moment BABA was to give the sign for the cage to he opened. Should the monkey, without hesitation, jump into BABA’S lap first, that would he the chosen one. The momentous order became fact. The monkey shot straight on to BABA’s left arm, sitting right under his heart, and was given forthwith the name of  ‘Lucky’ amidst great enthusiasm of all present. What perfect instinct!

By chosen one, I understand the one whose evolutionary striving would be speeded through contact with the Master.

On the same afternoon of the momentous arrival of the monkey, BABA, followed by all the members of the Ashram, brought him up to me where I was temporary invalided by having strained a ligament on my right foot and therefore had to stay in bed in the upstairs dormitory under a mosquito net. BABA introduced me to ‘Lucky’ as his temporary mother with orders to look after him. But how lucky were we all because BABA would spend