The Ashram at Mandla

Amiya had accepted a teaching job in Mandla that seemed to him to have come about through Beloved Baba's divine intervention.

Amiya explains that when Baba came to Jabalpur in 1938-39 He also went to Mandla, where people accorded Him a tremendous welcome. They showed such a reverence that some opulent persons transferred their property -- a land of about 80 acres named Lakham (means a hundred thousand mango trees, and indeed there were many mango trees on the property) -- and put the property in Baba's name. Baba was pleased with their love, and decided to establish an ashram in Mandla on that property. In response to His desire a structure was raised that in many ways resembles the samadhi structure at Meherabad.But subsequently, Baba decided not to go for an ashram there.

The Mandla people were very much depressed. Baba selected some of them and made them trustees of the property, and bade them to look after the place.

Continuing a literal rendering of Amiya's talk on the topic "When I (Hazra) was appointed as a lecturer in Rani Durgawati College (a college in Mandla) in 1957, I could meet only one trustee, Advocate Kaikhri. He was quite old and ailing and he told me that almost all of the trustees had died within the span of nearly 20 years, and that he was not in a position to take good care of the place, and that people were misusing the land and its yield. It was in a sorry state. Mangalananda was occupying the structure called Meher Kuti with the symbols of four religions. It looks like the samadhi, and it even has an underground room! Naturally, people might have been not very friendly towards Managalananda. That's where the reference in this letter comes from -- the reference to the atmosphere that prevails in Mandla.