Highlights of a Talk by Mehera’s Nephew Jangu

Jehangir R. Irani (known as Jangu) and his wife, Amy, on their very first visit to Myrtle Beach, were special guest speakers at Meher Center on a Wednesday evening, 7 July 2004. Jangu began by saying with a smile that he hoped we were a compassionate audience, as this was the first speech he had ever made.

Jangu is Meheru’s youngest brother, and Mehera to him was “Mehera Masi,” his maternal aunt (Masi literally means “like mother”). He was born in Nasik, north of Bombay, “in a taxi on the way to the hospital.” His mother was Mehera’s elder sister, Freiny R. Irani. His father was Rustom K. Irani, elder brother of Adi K. Irani, Meher Baba’s close mandali and secretary.

As an infant in 1939, Jangu was brought to Meher Baba’s Nasik ashram because his mother's health prevented her from looking after him. It was thus that Jangu came to spend his childhood under Baba’s care. “I was very lucky,” he told us, despite the separation from his mother and the loss of his father when still so young. Rustom mysteriously vanished in August 1941 while on a Himalayan pilgrimage; after some years Baba told Adi, “Rustom is no more,” and his fate remains unknown. This family tragedy was not a topic that Jangu wanted to discuss, but I mention it for background information.

Although Jangu used to feel deprived of his parents, especially compared with other children who had intact families, Baba assured him: “I am your father and mother, so don’t worry about anything.” Jangu spent a happy childhood in Baba’s embrace. He had the distinction of being taken along on the famous Blue Bus tours, in which Baba traveled with some of his Eastern and Western disciples to contact masts at different places in India. Jangu was too young at the time to have any specific memories of it. Mani told him later that whenever he cried — and apparently Jangu had “very good lungs”! – Baba would hold him and feed him.

Khorshed looked after Jangu till he was six or seven, and he regarded her as his mother (he did not meet his real mother till he was sixteen or seventeen years old). Later he lived at Eruch’s family home, Bindra House, in Pune. Baba visited Bindra House often, and Jangu has a memory of once being alone there with Baba, who looked into his eyes in an indescribable and unforgettable manner.

Jangu subsequently lived in Ahmednagar and then moved to Bombay for his college education, and it was at that time that he began to break contact with Baba, even though he was called to many meetings and programs. In the 1960s he lost almost all contact, although Baba knew of his marriage (a love match) to Amy, which took place during that time. Jangu’s uncle Adi K. Irani was present at the wedding as the representative of both Baba and Jangu’s father, and he told the couple that “Baba knows whom Jangu is marrying." Jangu and Amy settled in Nasik, in the same compound where Jangu had grown up in Baba’s ashram.

Amy came from a traditional Zoroastrian family and initially did not believe in Meher Baba, although a few years after their marriage she dreamed of Baba saying, “I am God, believe in Me.” In later years, when Freiny had a fall, Amy beheld a clear vision of Baba’s face on the wall, an experience that made a deep impression. Amy did not tell anyone about it, even her husband, for years. She never told her own family about Baba, apparently because of their conservative attitudes. Amy spoke very warmly of her mother-in-law, Freiny (“a wonderful lady”), who lived close to the couple, occupying her own independent section of the bungalow.

Nasik is a holy city with an illustrious history. As told in the Hindu epic Ramayana, it is the place where Lord Rama and his wife, Sita, lived in exile, and it was from Nasik that Sita was abducted by Ravana, the demon king of Lanka. Nasik is also one of the sites of the great pilgrimage fair known as the Kumbha Mela. Someone in the audience asked Jangu whether he could sense this sacred atmosphere in his hometown. He replied, “I don’t know, but I do know that my house is blessed.” He and Amy live in what was the main building of Baba’s ashram, where Baba and the women mandali stayed. Many things have happened in their home, they said, making them feel Baba’s presence. Amy, for example, had unusual experiences such as feeling a pat on the head and a kiss from a mysterious invisible source. And during an earthquake, her delicate glass collectibles were amazingly undamaged.

Jangu conveyed to us how strongly he had come to regret losing contact with Baba and breaking His orders. Baba had told him “Don’t gamble, don’t drink, and don’t go around with women.” He broke all three orders and felt guilty about it. Yet he always continued to remember Baba, especially in times of trouble. Several examples were given in which his remembrance of Baba helped to avert injury or other problems. For example, in a bad scooter accident he had in Nasik in 2002, he struck his head on a stone and sustained brain damage that caused him to lose memory of his past, even to fail to recognize his two daughters. But he had Baba’s photo and complete faith, so even though the doctors thought he was finished, in six months the scan miraculously showed healing and he recovered.

Another time, when it was very hot, one of his daughters was sleeping with a fan above her; the fan fell, and in the morning they found that its blades, going at full speed, were half a centimeter from her body, yet she was not hurt.

Referring to himself as a “stupid college kid” at the time, Jangu described how he and friends had mischievously mixed up people’s chappals (sandals) left outside during a Darshan program in Meherabad. Baba scolded him about the prank, pointing out that many Baba-lovers returning home had had to travel long distances with no shoes.

Jangu last saw Baba in 1962 at the East-West Gathering. On the last day of the Darshan he went out for a “joy ride” instead of staying with Baba, a source of deep regret later.

Jangu told a dream he’d had of Baba saying, “You have killed me”; then Jangu dug a grave and buried Baba’s head in it. “It was a terrible dream — but what can I do about it?” Jangu added with pained resignation. Another dream that Jangu recounted came after a fall in the bathroom that caused Jangu to faint for a moment. He feared he had broken something, and he took Baba’s name. He then dreamed that Baba laid him on a bed and then walked away very fast and had a fall. The dream seemed to express that Baba had taken on Jangu’s pain.

Although Jangu said that he had abandoned Baba, “Now [since 1969] I know that He is the Avatar, and He never abandoned me.” And to this day, whatever happens, the first thing Jangu thinks of is Baba.

The well-known photograph of Meher Baba at Arthur’s Seat in Mahabaleshwar in 1954 (p. 117 in Love Personified) was taken by Jangu at Baba’s request — it is the shot of Baba leaning back with arms outstretched on the railing against a mountainous backdrop. But on another occasion when Jangu tried to take a photo of Baba, Baba told him not to. Nevertheless, Jangu clicked the camera. Baba, who was seated in a chair, turned his head and shot him a glance that scared Jangu. Later, when the film was developed, Baba’s figure was not to be seen; only the chair appeared, along with a spot of light, even though the camera had no flash.

(Jangu’s gift as a photographer is evident from several snaps he took on the Center that were later shared via e-mail with my husband, Jonathan Burroughs, who had given Jangu and Amy a tour of the Center. One of them is a stunning portrait of Jonathan entering a doorway with a vase of flowers, beaming his characteristic smile. “It even cheers me up!” Jonathan said of the photograph.)

The Iranis’ talk left me with a warm sense of Baba’s presence, touched with poignancy, for Jangu’s feelings of regret — for his lost chances to be with Baba and the failure to obey His orders — were palpable. But even more tangible was his profound connection with Baba. Both he and Amy radiated a silent, gentle love for Meher Baba. Their visit to Meher Center was a gift to us — and, I am sure, to them.

Wendy Haynes Connor Remembers Baba

Baba hugs Wendy, photo by V. Sadowsky/D. Eaton

Wendy Connor’s world is made of stories—so many stories, she says, that it is hard for her to choose only a few to share with us in the time allotted for her talk, to demonstrate what remembering Meher Baba means to her. She recalls Mani clapping her forehead and saying, “Oh, too many stories!” because Baba’s hand is in every detail, so every detail is a story, and every story triggers another story.

On April 15, 2006, the day before Easter Sunday, Wendy gave a talk at Meher Center. Wendy tells us that Easter was always a very special time for Elizabeth Patterson. Even before she met Meher Baba, Elizabeth loved Eastertime, since she was raised as a Christian in the Episcopal Church. But it was particularly special to her because it was at Eastertime in 1934 that Elizabeth first saw the property in Myrtle Beach that was to become Meher Spiritual Center, though she did not know it then. At that time her father, Simeon Chapin, had invited Elizabeth and her husband, Kenneth Patterson, to his home, Youpon Dunes (where Baba was destined to stay while recovering from His 1952 automobile accident.)

In a March 1934 letter to her friend Norina Matchabelli (quoted in Kitty Davy’s book, Love Alone Prevails), Elizabeth described the beautiful property owned by her father. The land had seven freshwater lakes within sight of the ocean (an unusual feature), dunes with more underbrush and trees than the Pacific dunes, and many birds, deer, and other animals. At that time Elizabeth thought of this wild and unspoiled place as a potential spot for camping, which she and Norina enjoyed. Years passed and she never thought of the property in connection with Baba. Baba had dropped a veil over her eyes, mind, and heart, says Wendy. Not until a later visit with Norina to Myrtle Beach, in 1943, did Elizabeth realize that the property fulfilled Baba’s conditions for the site that was to be His “Home in the West.”

Wendy remembers the day she first met Elizabeth Patterson and Kitty Davy. Her mother, Jane Barry Haynes—Wendy’s link to Baba—brought Wendy to Youpon Dunes at age five. The little girl was all prettied up for the occasion, and when she walked up the steps of the house, she thought she was ascending the steps to heaven. Elizabeth was standing at the top of the steps dressed in her favorite shade of blue and holding her hand behind her back, as she characteristically did, because her back was a bit off kilter from her having fallen off a horse at age fourteen. With the sunlight illuminating her white hair, it looked as if she had a halo, and Wendy forgot all about her mother as she gazed up at Elizabeth.

Wendy reached the top of the stairs without feeling the least bit nervous, and Elizabeth said, “You must be Wendy. I’m Elizabeth, but you may call me Auntie Boo.” “Boo” was what Elizabeth had called herself as a child when she could not pronounce her own name. Ever since, it has been an effort for Wendy to refer to her Auntie Boo as “Elizabeth.”

Then a whirlwind appeared in the doorway behind Elizabeth in the form of a woman with incredible energy— Kitty Davy. Wendy, who was mesmerized, had never heard the name Kitty before and asked, “Like a kitty cat?”

In a sense, that first meeting was Wendy’s first meeting with Baba, because it was her first experience of complete acceptance and unconditional love from these two extraordinary women who greeted her like an old friend and who embodied the special qualities of naturalness, purity, and absolute surrender to the Beloved.

The following year, Wendy met Meher Baba for the first time, when she was two months shy of her seventh birthday. He had come to Center in May 1958, for the last of His three visits.

All Wendy knew about the man she was going to meet was that He was named Baba, which meant Father, and that He was from India (she had no idea where that was). She could feel how very excited Kitty and Elizabeth were in anticipation of Baba’s arrival. Imagine Kitty, already so full of energy, going into high gear!

In preparation, Jane took Wendy shopping for a dress to meet Baba in. They found the perfect outfit—a sleeveless purple dress in dotted swiss (a lightweight cotton with little raised white dots)—and there was one just like it for Jane to wear: their first mother-daughter outfits. Jane also took Wendy for a haircut, and her flaxen hair was styled with bangs for the first time. She was thrilled and excited, ready to meet Baba. Yet she had no idea, really, who she was going to meet.

Baba arrived in Myrtle Beach on May 17. Jane Haynes met Him on Monday the 19th (this powerful story is told in Jane’s book, Letters of Love for Meher Baba, the Ancient One). Baba had said Jane was not to take the three children out of school. Her eldest, John, met Him after school on the 20th, Charles on the 21st, and Wendy on the 22nd.

Kitty had the idea that Baba should see the film of His 1956 visit to America that had been taken by the Sufis of Sufism Reoriented, and the perfect place to show the films would be the summer stock theater in Myrtle Beach that Jane directed (the building that housed the theater—the Shrine Club—is still there on Highway 17). So, on the 21st, Baba told Elizabeth to tell Jane to bring Wendy to the theater a half hour before the films were to begin.

On the way to the theater, Kitty asked Baba, “What about Jane and Charles?”—referring to Jane’s husband, from whom she was separated. Baba made a gesture meaning that they were meant to be separated. Kitty said, “But what about the children? Don’t they need a father?” And Baba gestured, “What do you mean? I am their real Father.”

Wendy recalls, “My mother had become the center of my universe. I was holding on to her hand, not knowing what to expect.” Suddenly Baba appeared in the doorway, wearing His pink coat, carried in His chair by the dancers (four young men who were Margaret Craske’s ballet students). The sun pouring in lit up His head like a giant halo.

Baba gestured for the dancers to put His chair down. He had a big smile on His face. The very first thing He did was express His delight at how Wendy and her mother looked in their matching dresses. He put His fingers to His chest to show that His heart was touched. Baba also commented on how tall Wendy had grown. She replied, “Yes, Baba, I’m very tall.” She was not at all aware of His silence during this exchange.

Baba beamed and opened His arms wide. Wendy remembers letting go of her mother’s hand and running into Baba’s arms without any hesitation. In His embrace, time stopped. It felt as if that embrace went on for hours (Eruch later said it was maybe three minutes). Then Baba took Wendy by the shoulders and pushed/pulled her back and forth. His whole body was shaking with silent laughter and His face turned pink as He playfully squeezed her cheeks together and then told her to speak.

Someone said it was time to go into the theater, and Baba signaled for the dancers to pick up His chair. Wendy knew, “That was it for me,” and she started to panic. “Baba, may I stay with you?” she implored. Baba said she could walk with Him into the theater.

Inside, she plopped down by Baba’s right foot, while her brother Charles sat at His left foot. Suddenly she remembered her mother. Jane was signaling for the children not to be so forward. Immediately Baba told Jane to leave them be.

This story seems so natural that it wasn’t till later, after Wendy’s talk, that I thought of the famous scene in the New Testament (e.g., Mark 10:14) where Jesus admonishes the disciples, “Let the children come to me.”

The film was then shown to Baba and the others. “Can you imagine looking at a film of Baba while He is sitting right there? Even as a child I knew it was silly,” Wendy says. She could not take her eyes off His beautiful feet. Whenever she looked up at Him, He patted her on the head or stroked her cheek.

Baba left on May 30. In June, He wrote to Jane from Meherazad: “Keep happy in My Love and let your three dear little ones love Me more and more.” After that, Baba referred to the family of four collectively as “Jane Trio.”

Jane Trio saw Baba again in November 1962 at the East-West Gathering in India. Wendy was eleven—a huge difference from age six. She felt very shy, because now she had been told that she had met the Christ.

Wendy went up the steps to Guruprasad in Poona and saw Baba seated on the blue sofa, wearing a blue coat this time. Baba noted that now Wendy was even taller than at their first meeting. In fact, she was almost as tall as Mani by this time.

Baba saw the Westerners in groups, and the Haynes family was included with the Myrtle Beach group even though they lived in New York at the time. Baba asked everyone about their health. Did they sleep well? Did they eat well? He related to people on their level, in a way that even a child could understand—no discourses.

The women mandali dressed Wendy in a sari. She was very self-conscious and nervous when they pushed her in front of Baba. Baba stopped everything, as He always did for children, to say how beautiful Wendy looked. He gestured for her to sit, and she sat down at the edge of a semicircle of people. Then suddenly Baba asked her, “Who do you love more, Mommy or Baba?” At that moment, Wendy had been looking at her mother and wondering what she thought of her sari, so she began to say, “Mo—“ and then caught herself: “Oh, no, I love You more, Baba.”

Another time, Baba turned to Wendy and said directly to her, “Always keep cheerful in My love.” She didn’t know what that meant, but over the years she has come to understand that cheerfulness is not about pasting a smile on your face; it’s about an inner attitude of accepting His will. “For me it means not allowing yourself to be brought down by what He brings up.”

The Westerners got extra time with Baba—perhaps He felt they needed it more. On one of these occasions, Baba gave Wendy a tiny glimpse of His divinity.

He didn’t allow people to embrace Him every day, only on the first day and the last day. On the last day, when it was Wendy’s turn, she was walking toward Baba when something stopped her in her tracks. He was looking directly into her eyes. She felt a wave of love coming to her and then going back to Baba. Although her body was standing there, “Wendy” had disappeared. Thinking back on it now, she says, “I felt we were one.”

Wendy began to swoon and fall backward, but then Baba did something so that the feeling stopped and she recovered herself. Baba gestured as if to say, mischievously, “What did you think of that?” Wendy knew He was who He said He was—God in human form—and that if He really showed Himself to us, we would lose consciousness.

When they visited India in recent years, Wendy and Buz Connor had the privilege of accompanying Eruch on his early-morning walk. One time, Eruch stopped and said he’d just had a memory. He remembered something Baba had said:

To love Me is to love all.

To love all is not to love Me.

To love Me in all is to love Me.

Then Baba said, “How do you do this?” The mandali had learned early on not to reply to such questions but to let Baba give the answer. He said, “Be mindful of the goodness in each one, because I am Infinite Goodness.” And He added: “And leave the crap to Me!”

Eruch told of a time that Baba was sitting in Mandali Hall with the men. In a light mood, He was toying with a jar of sweets, twirling it in His hands. Suddenly the atmosphere changed and He became serious. Slowly and deliberately He opened the lid to the jar and picked out the sweets, one at a time, and distributed them to the men. He told them, “The sweets of My love are always available to you within. But the effort it takes to open the lid is in your hands.”

Now a story about Kitty. For Kitty, the high point of her day was getting the mail. When it came, she liked to read it by herself first; then she would call for Wendy. One time, she was quite serious when she asked Wendy to read a long letter, on four pages of yellow legal paper, from a couple who were describing their difficulties in deciding whether to buy a house or a condo. To Wendy, this was a joke—she was inwardly feeling very critical of these people. But Kitty took the letter quite seriously. She told Wendy to get paper and pencil and take down a reply. Then, in characteristic Kitty style, she dictated points:

Point #1. Baba loves obstacles and challenges. It’s His way of working.

Point #2. Kitty recalled a day in the early 1930s when the Western women on Meherabad Hill were arguing over whether or not the right decision had been made about something. Just then Baba strode into the compound. He pulled out His alphabet board and told them, “You Westerners are always worried about decisions. Don’t you know I made the decision long ago? It’s not in your hands.” And He said, “There is no such thing as a mistake. All I care about is the motive behind the decision: is it for Me, or is it for you?”

Wendy closed her talk with a story that took place on Saturday, February 1, 1969. She was at home getting ready for Happy Club (the Saturday program at the Center for poor inner-city children that Wendy started around 1965 or 1966). She was making the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that the children always had for lunch. The phone rang, and it was Kitty, telling her, “Auntie Boo wants you to come over.” Wendy said OK, and since she was not dressed yet, she took her time. Five minutes passed, and the phone rang again. It was Kitty, demanding to know where she was. Wendy was surprised—she’d thought Kitty meant she was to come just before Happy Club. Kitty replied that here wouldn’t be any Happy Club that day. And then Wendy knew.

She went immediately to Dilruba and walked in to find Elizabeth lying on the bed. Two tears rolled down her face—and Wendy had never before seen tears on Auntie Boo’s face, except tears of joy. Elizabeth told her that Baba had awakened her at four a.m. and she had spoken the words “My Redeemer liveth,” an Easter quote from the Bible (Job 19:25). Three hours later, the Western Union man called, the same messenger who had always brought cables from Baba, but this time he told Elizabeth, “In all the years I’ve delivered cables to you, Mrs. Patterson, this is one that I don’t want to give you.” And she said, “It’s all right. I know.”

The cable was from Adi K. Irani, saying that Avatar Meher Baba had dropped His physical body at Meherazad at noon on Friday, January 31st, “to live eternally in the hearts of all His lovers everywhere.”

And so the Easter talk came full circle. Jai Baba.