Shyama Rao Jayker
aged 70, painter. Ville Parle

jayker

18th September, 1936.

In 1916, we were living at Gajanan Rao's house at Mugabat, a part of Bombay. Baba's picture was kept in a room there. One night at about 2 a.m. thieves were trying to break into that house, beginning with the very room in which Baba's picture was kept. They had succeeded in pulling out by mere strength 1 or 2 iron bars from the window of that room. Entry into the house thereafter would naturally have followed and the whole house would have been pillaged and robbed. But a barber was sleeping in the verandah in a totally different part of the house. It was usual for him to get up at 4 a.m. and to go round the house for answering calls of nature. On this occasion most strangely and without any traceable reason, the man got up at 2 a.m. and went round the house for his necessary purpose. The thieves seeing him began to run. He saw them and shouted out Thieves, Thieves', and every one got up. We found we had got up just in time to prevent the robbers entering inside the house. Every one concluded that Baba took care of the house and took care to nip out the intended robbery when it began in his own room.

In 1917, we were living at Poona in a dilapidated house, the ceiling and walls of which were crumbling. To prevent the falling of dust from the ceiling, cloth had been stuck up under the ceiling. One night, in such a room, there was a picture of Baba with a kerosene lamp burning in front of it, and my one-year old child also sleeping close by. At dead of night, there was a sudden thud. The ceiling cloth had fallen. Loose bricks from some of the walls had fallen on the cloth and the debris came with the cloth on to the floor. As the ceiling cloth covered the whole ceiling, it might be expected to fall with the bricks on it, on the child and the lamp if not on Baba's picture. But Baba's providence willed it otherwise. The debris and the cloth fell within a foot of the child and the lamp and did not touch either the child or the lamp. If they had fallen on the child, it would have been crushed; if on the lamp, there would have been a choking fire on the child and other parts of the house might have been endangered.

In 1917, we went and stayed for 10 months at Shirdi. We put up at Bala Bhav's (i.e.) Sharadabai's house. A snake was living in a hole in the small portion in which we lived and we were in danger. One night, my son and others saw the reptile emerge from its hole and made short work of it.

In 1923, my son Surendra, then aged ten, had typhoid. In the course of his illness, he cried out one day, that gas was rising upward from his belly and pressing hard evidently against the diaphragm and heart etc. And he shouted, 'Save me, Save me'. He had become extremely weak from the typhoid and I feared even to touch him much more to press or massage him. I merely cried in a very loud voice, 'Baba.' The upward pressure at once abated.