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Baba said to His mandali a few days after we arrived here at Guruprasad:
"That which is to happen after 21st May 1968, will be something great, something that has never happened before, something that will not happen again for billions and billions of years."
Baba further remarked that the `something great' will happen of a sudden, not in developing stages. People will go about their daily affairs unaware till the moment of its happening.
On the morning of 20th February, the day Baba told us of His decision to continue the Seclusion till 21st May, an extraordinary thing happened at Meherazad. A large monkey, blackfaced and long-limbed, appeared as it were from nowhere and was seen sitting on the goldmohur tree by the house just as Baba entered His room on returning from the mandali. This lone monkey was obviously an exile from its tribe. At sight of it there was an excited chorus of suggestions from us women: “Shoo it away or its commotion will disturb Baba"; "leave it alone it will go away"; "give it a banana it must be hungry"; "don't go too near it's sure to attack"; "keep away or you'll frighten the poor thing". As it turned out, each suggestion was followed, beginning with the banana offering placed discreetly on the roof so as not so scare it. That didn't improve relations. ‘The poor thing' gnashed its teeth and furiously shook the branches, using the same brand of contempt for all friendly moves. In the end we decided to try the "leave it alone" formula, ignoring Monkey completely. Nothing could have been worse, as we soon found out. After an hour of peaceful indifference, Monkey suddenly went mad. Leaping on to the main house, it jumped about with astounding speed and force, from roof to roof to roof, of rooms on both floors, sending tiles flying and crashing. The climax of this swift crescendo of sound and fury, came when Monkey leapt down from the topmost point of the house on Baba's room below with a tremendous crash and impact. Baba was resting in His room at the time, and the mandali members who were with Him said they felt the ceiling would cave in! After that of course the "shoo away" operation was immediately put into effect — a fantastic chase involving more than a dozen Meherazadians waving bamboos, brooms, branches, umbrellas, round and round the compound as Monkey dodged from treetop to treetop, roof to roof. It was not far to sunset time before Monkey made up its mind to give up, making for the village of Pimpalgaon about a mile away. There, as we heard the villagers tell, it settled down quietly for over a month before vanishing as suddenly as it had appeared.
Interesting as this Monkey episode is, ordinarily it might not have been given space here. What makes it profoundly newsworthy is Beloved Baba's
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