Aptavani-9
45
This is what happened. After ‘we’ attained Gnan, young
girls used to come to ‘us’ for vidhis (special spiritual blessing
from the Gnani Purush by touching His feet) when we lived in
Mamani Poda in Vadodara. Hiraba was innocent; she is a good
person. But women in the house across from ours instigated her
by telling her, ‘Oh my goodness! Young girls come to Dada and
touch his feet. It looks bad. It is not appropriate, is it? Dada is
a good man, but this looks bad. What about Dada’s reputation?’
People made all kinds of innuendos and brainwashed Hiraba
in this way. She worried that our reputation would be ruined.
She is a good woman but people put ‘salt’ in her (they instilled
suspicion in her mind). What happens to milk when you put
salt in it?
Questioner: It will go bad.
Dadashri: I knew that people had started to add ‘salt’ in
her and that one-day she would go ‘bad’, but I waited. One day
when a young lady was doing vidhi, Hiraba deliberately hit the
door as she was sweeping the floor. She had never done that
before. There was no such practice in our home. She did it to
scare the girl away; she did not do it to scare me. The girls
became anxious that Hiraba would scold them. So this girl got
scared. I immediately understood that there was some kind of
mischief behind this act; can one not recognize the mischief
behind it? Do you think that I was as naive back then as I am
now? So then, I told Hiraba, ‘From today onwards you and I
have to separate. We cannot afford this. You go and live in
Bhadran. I will arrange to send you seven hundred or so rupees
every month for your expenses. We should no longer be staying
together from now on.’ Chandulal and five or six other people
were sitting there at the time. Even they got the opportunity to
learn from this scene! Hiraba then started to make tea and while
doing so, she kept banging the stove. I said to myself ‘I will have
to tighten the screw before this gets out of control.’ So I went
into the kitchen and started to throw cans of tea, sugar, oil,