1is 1leasure 2 rKatie Drani: .21is Will, 1 &ograms I, 2, & 3—2kw Witness &ries
7YDs, !Released by 9ateway J4lediaworks
!&viewed by J’l4arilyn JIVtc9ivney, WasIiington DC n this three DVD set of one-hour meetings, Katie Irani quietlytells intimate stones ofand reflections on her first twenty-five years in the company ofMeher Baba, starting from the time she was three-years-old. In 1923 en route to Iran on His first journey outside of India, Meher Baba brought his disciples to Quetta, a miiitat-yr outpost on the border ofAfghani stan and what was then India, but now is Pakistan. Here Meher Baba stayed in the home ofRustom and Khorshed Irani and their seven children. Among the children were three-year-old Katie and her seven-year-old sister Goher. In this first DVD entitled Destined to Serve Him (previously available on VHS), Katie tells us that Baba once asked her mother how many children she had. When she answered that she had seven children, Baba told her that she had only five children. The other two children, Baba said, belonged to God and would serve Him all their lives. We learn about her family’s devo lion to Baba and his devotion to them, his mán3r visits to Quetta to see them and his several invitations to Khorshed, Katie’s mother, to take Katie into His ashram from the time she was eleven years old until she was eighteen when Khorshed finally gave her consent, and Katiejoined Meher Baba atlast on the first stop ofthe first Blue Bus Tour in December 1938. In the second DVD,JoiningMeher Baba on the Blue Bus Thurs, Katie tells us how she came to live with Baba and what life was like for a young girl who was eager to obey and serve Meher Baba, but who did not know as yet what obedience to Baba was nor how to do it. “More than love, Baba wanted obedi ence. You have to give up. You must bow down to His wishes.” She tells us of the times she unknowingly failed to obey and was chastised by Baba as he trained her in obedience, how she begged His forgiveness for her oversight, and how He forgave her and she tried her best not to make the same mistake again. Shortly after shejoined Baba on the first
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Blue Bus Tour, Baba assigned eighteen-yearold Katie and Eruch’s teenaged sister Manu thejob of cooking for the forty members of the tour. Baba’s regular cook, Naja, was then bedridden and could not manage the cooking. But neither Katie nor Manu had ever ‘
Photo byJohn Page
cooked before. There were no proper cooking vessels, and meals had to be prepared over wood fires. Katie and Manu learned to cook”on thejob”withlots offeedback from Baba and from others. Baba wanted meals served on time when the bus came to a rest stop. So Katie and Manu found themselves cooking in the earliest hours ofthe morning before their departure time at four or five in the morning and holding hot pots ofcooked dal and rice on their laps as the bus wended its way to the next stop when Baba would call for lunch. No matter how hard Katie tried to obey Baba, mishaps occurred, such as the time the dal and milk went sour and
Baba had them throw it away. Life on the Blue Bus Tours taught Katie flexibility and an appreciation of the pected. Each traveler had to carry in her bedroll a good sari or dress because traveling with Baba brought occasions for them to act as both beggars and princesses. Once they were invited by a rani (queen) to attend a garden party So with a little water and hand pressing, a wrinkled sari or dress stored in a bedroll quickly turned into a smart ouffit for a well dressed young woman. “Being with a king, you had to be prepared for whatever He wanted.” In the third DVD of the series, Storiesfrom the Blue Bus Years. On the roadandatMeherabac4 Katie continues her stories about life in the women’s ashram as “a miniature world where Baba did His work.” She reflects that Baba often asked the women to do things that seemed to anticipate actual world events, such as dividing the women into groups, partitioning rooms, and asking the women to re frairi from speaking to those outside their small group. She implies that the division of the women during a Blue Bus Tour stop in Lahore foreshadowed the partition of Pakistan from India. Katie also tells about the time Baba asked Maui to write a pantomime, and He cast Katie as Mussolini, Rano as Chamberlain, and Maui as Hitler. Katie tells us that life on the Blue Bus and at Upper Meherabad was so fhll that there was “no time for anything else, only to please Baba.” She talks about the menagerie ofanimals the women cared for, the songs they sang for Baba, the ways in which Baba demonstrated to each of them how much He loved her. Throughout these three hour-long meetings, Katie tells us how through Baba’s training she came to be the person we see in the video. As a girl, she was tall for her age and terribly shy. Baba instructed everyone in her extended family to tell her, “Baba says you must not stoop.” Over time, she began to stand up straight. In the photo montage of Katie that opens the ftrst DVD, Katie appears tall and regal in bearing. Through ‘5