Something Great Will Happen
Source: Mani S. Irani, excerpted from family letter #77, dated 12 May 1968, in 82 Family Letters, pp. 315-16. Reprinted as “Divine Monkey Business!” in The Awakener Magazine, vol. 12, no. 3 (Summer 1968), pp. 38-39.
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, black-faced 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 comments after it was over. Baba said that the havoc played by the monkey on the roof of His room on the day He had decided to lengthen the Seclusion, was deeply significant to His work and that which is to happen after 21st May.
After this, it was natural for us not to dismiss as ‘coincidence’ a couple of incidents that made a tailpiece to the Monkey chapter. One was that just two mornings prior to our arrival in Poona a large black-faced monkey visited Baba House in Poona, the house where Baba’s brother Beheram lives with his family, where Beloved Baba lived as a youth. As reported by His niece Gulnar, the monkey settled down on the roof of Baba’s Room. It sat there for quite a while, seeming content and very much at home, enjoying the fruits it found on trees in the patio of the house. Then it loped off gracefully over the network of neighboring rooftops, and has not been seen around since then. The other incident relates to the Irani New Year, Jamshedi Navroz, which falls on 21st March when day and night are of equal length. Signifying the season of Spring and a day of thanksgiving, Jamshedi Navroz is believed to be Persia’s most ancient festival dating back to over 10,000 years, and is observed with much rejoicing in the home of every Irani. The turn of each new year is worked out with astronomical precision: the exact time it will begin to turn, the color it will signify, the form of animal it will symbolically assume. And this year, Navroz has assumed the form of a Monkey! This is predicted to indicate a lot of world trouble and chaos in the current year. . . .
- “In 1950, at Mahabaleshwar, dear Baba declared in the form of a ghazal, which was composed by dear Baba Himself, that the signal for his Silence to come to an end, would be when His Word and Message are on the lips of every single person — i.e. when there is a heart-rending cry from each soul. The “Awakening” and the Time for the Word are indeed close at hand.” — from a letter from Dadi Kerawala, Eruch’s cousin (1967)
- “The whole world will come to know who I am when I break my Silence.”
- “The fortunate ones are they who know me now, before I manifest universally.”
- Many years ago, when His Silence was in its teens, Baba told His disciples (to the effect) that “Now I am like a Lion that is caged — people come to see it and admire it, can afford to trifle with the majesty of its power, are indifferent or ignorant of its might. But none would be left in ignorance or doubt were the lion to spring from its cage! When I come out of my Silence, my Divine Identity will be manifest to all, my Glory will reveal itself, the impact of my Love will be felt universally.”
- “The fate of the Universe hangs on my Seclusion and the redemption of Mankind depends on my Manifestation.”