i.e., Ganpatrao Dattatreya Sahasra-buddhe, Brahmin, Kirtankar, aged about 78, residing generally at Nanded. (Nizam's State)
Poona, June 1936.
But Baba did not always respect orthodoxy, at least in some matters. My orthodoxy keeps me off from eating onions in any form. Baba on the other hand liked onions and would seldom have a meal without onions. He told me to prepare Pitla, i.e. sauce of onions, give to him and eat part of it. I prepared it and brought it to him. He asked me if I ate it at my lodgings. I said yes. But really what I did there was to touch the onion dish with a finger tip and touch my chin with it and draw a line from my chin to the nether lip, as a token of my tasting it and I would wash my hand and face thereafter. Baba knew (what is it he did not know?) how I practised this trick and he showed others how I did the trick. "He pretends he eats but only touches it with his finger and applies the finger over the chin", was what he said and showed. Then he told me that I should really eat onion. He had a high opinion of onion as an item of the daily fare -though orthodoxy rejects it, chiefly on the grounds of its immediate and ultimate odour and its aphrodisiac properties. "But if one digests it, i.e. overcomes its injurious i.e. lust-producing tendencies it does no harm but good", was what Baba said. So at Shirdi, as long as Baba was alive, I would take onion except on Ekadashi days.
Q. Did Baba rub coins smooth with mantra?.
Baba occasionally smashed my programmes for visiting holy places like Pandharpur. I was keen on Bhadrapad and Aswin months, especially Aswin Ekadashi to be at Pandharpur. In 1916, I met Nanasaheb Chandorkar at Manmad and told him I was going to Pandharpur as Bhadrapad was about to begin. He took me however with him to Shirdi and Baba made me do 'Saptaha' and Kirtan there for a week. When I originally began Kirtans, it was at the bidding of Nanasaheb Chandorkar and in Baba's Samasthan at Shirdi. In fact I had started it in the usual fashionable dress (i.e. head gear etc.,) of Kirtankars and shone in borrowed plumes - borrowed from Chandorkar. But Baba at once objected to my adopting that dress and made me doff it. I am doing Kirtans since then in orthodox "Dotar" (i.e. nether cloth). I was thus detained for over one month at Shirdi. Bhadrapad was gone and Aswin was to begin. I felt chagrined at being detained from going to Pandharpur even in Ashwin. N.G. Chandorkar wanted to detain me even then. I said within myself, "How is he (i.e. Baba) a Guru who blocks my way to God (of Pandharpur)?" Baba of course read my mind and told me to go away at once to Pandharpur and told N.G.C. not to stop me. So I gladly went to Pandharpur and was there for Ashwin.
Baba did not grant me some of my spiritual prayers. I wanted to get Sakshatkar (i.e. vision) of the God that I worship just as Namdev and others got. So I went to Baba several times with the request that he should give me Sakshatkar. He was saying each time, "Wait", "Wait". Finally (probably in 1916, the above period) I asked him, "Baba, you have been long putting off my request. When will you give me Sakshatkar?" Then he said, "You see me. That is Sakshatkar. I am God". I replied that I expected that he would say so; but that I was not satisfied with that. I consoled myself with the explanation that my destiny did not provide for my getting Sakshatkar and that Saints could not overcome destiny.
After Baba passed away, I have been seeing several Saints. But hardly any of them satisfied me. There was one that specially impressed me.
Near my place - Nanded, in 1919 there was a Virakta Brahmachari staying on a rock having no possessions and caring for nothing. I saw him first, when I was performing my wife's ceremony and was powerfully attracted. As I went there to take his Darshan, he turned away from me and prevented my taking Darshan. This happened thrice. I was deeply disappointed, nay mortified. Anyhow, let me have the merit of feeding him, I thought, and went home. I sent up a man to that Brahmachari with food. I was agreeably surprised to learn that he accepted it. Then I was emboldened to go to him once again and I asked him why he would not permit me to bow to him and to take Darshan. He said in reply.