Baba’s Bookshelf, Part I: The Detectives

Not long ago, I listened to a talk given by Meher Baba’s sister, Mani. She told the pilgrims gathered in Mandali Hall of Baba’s love of detective stories and mentioned with delight the enjoyment she felt when reading to Him. I began to wonder how and when His appreciation of detective stories began.

When Baba was still young and called Merwan Irani, He enjoyed Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and later Egdar Wallace. He also became a devoted fan of the detective Sexton Blake, whose early adventures appeared in the inexpensive boy’s weekly magazine, The Union Jack. The stories were exhilarating, with titles such as ”Doctor Zebra’s Doom,” “The Tsar’s Double,” and “The Stolen Mummy.” Merwan wrote a letter of appreciation to the author of one of the stories. The character of Sexton Blake first appeared on the scene in 1893, and over the next eighty-five years, 200 different authors contributed close to 4,000 stories.

Sexton Blake attended medical school. However, he chose not to practice medicine and instead set up a detective agency in rooms on Baker Street — just up the street from where Sherlock Holmes rented rooms. Sexton Blake was physically fit and ready for any fight or brawl, a master of disguise; he often went undercover to solve crimes from the inside. He was aided by his assistant, Tinker and his devoted bloodhound, Pedro.

Baily Jamshed Irani, Baba’s boyhood friend and later disciple, was studying English and preferred Gujarati magazines; he resisted reading the Sexton Blake stories in English that Baba encouraged him to read. However, Baba insisted and Baily finally promised to read them. Bailey later acknowledged, “Regular reading of Sexton Blake’s detective novels really developed my interest in reading English.” (1)

The Meher Ashram School for Boys opened its door in May 1927. Mandali member Ramjoo Abdulla, called it a “gem of an institution.” He once told Mani that one of the things initially drew him to Meher Baba was their shared interest in Sexton Blake. During those early days of May, after arti, Ramjoo told those gathered a Sexton Blake story every night. “Baba seemed to take a ‘keen interest’ in them and the mandali enjoyed them after the day’s work.” (2)

During the war years, Margaret Craske, who lived in India from 1939 to 1946, began reading to Baba and the women mandali in the East room of Meherabad. Delia de Leon and others from England would send Margaret books on a regular basis. During the Blue Bus Tours, Margaret would keep the books with her bedroll.

Baba was fond of Ellery Queen, as well as John Dixon Carr, the master of the locked door mystery. When it came to Agatha Christie, the Queen of Crime, He preferred the character Hercule Poirot over Miss Marple. Baba was especially keen on Rex Stout’s brilliant, portly armchair detective, Nero Wolfe, who rarely left his New York brownstone apartment, solving crimes while attending to his orchids and dining on gourmet meals, using the power of logic and deduction. Archie Goodwin, Wolfe’s young humorous assistant, pounded the pavement doing Wolfe’s legwork.

Rex Stout was a prolific author – some thirty three novels and forty-one short novellas and short stories were published between the years 1934-1975. Sometime after Margaret Craske arrived in the United States to teach at American Ballet Theatre, Baba wrote to her and asked her to send him every book that Rex Stout had written. Margaret enlisted her associates and dancers to seek out bookstores during their tours. She wrote, “Every one of the books that Rex Stout had written up to that time was found, parcelled and sent to the dancers’ beloved Master. It was fortunate for these young dancers that they were able to do some small personal service for Baba.”(3)

Mani said, “To read to Him was my greatest pleasure, and my highest award from Beloved Baba was when He turned around to Mehera and said, “I’m always happy when Mani’s reading to Me because it makes Me feel like I’m watching a play.” (4)

It is easy to imagine Mani, herself a master story-teller, imitating Agatha Christie’s Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, “The little grey cells— remember always the little grey cells, mon ami.”

Did Baba and Mani chuckle when she read to Baba from Rex Stout’s novel The League of Frightened Men, in which the great detective Nero Wolfe tells his assistant, Archie, “I love to make a mistake, it is my only assurance that I cannot reasonably be expected to assume the burden of omniscience”? Mani recalled, “I would use different voices as I am never tired of repeating. When you are Baba’s, everything that you have, no matter how silly, how insignificant that thing you have, He uses it. He uses it. It is for Him.“ (5)

It wasn’t always easy reading to Baba, for sometimes He’d stop the reader after a few minutes and other times the reading would go on for considerable time. On occasion, just as the mystery was about to be solved, He would smile, stop the reading and motion the reading would be continued later. When Delia de Leon returned to India in 1948 for a several month stay, she was given the opportunity to read to Baba from the thriller books that Margaret had sent to Baba. This could happen at any hour. She wrote, “He would start walking all about the house and insisted that I walk behind him still reading, much to the amusement of all” (6)

In one of the Family Letters, Mani summed up the role played by the detective novels and their authors: “Baba has said ‘Creation is really a mighty joke, but the laugh is at my own expense — and now the jest is proving a burden on my chest’. And so they too have served Him, all the authors whose stories have served to entertain the Author of Creation’s Story and helped ease to some extent the strain of His universal burden. Could we but say as much!” (7)

Many of the great detective novels that Baba enjoyed can be found on the shelves of the Saroja Library at Meher Spiritual Center.

1. From Baily’s Memoirs, by Baily Jamshed Irani, p.6
2. Combined Diary, Day 144 folios #2v252-2v255, May 7-9, 1927, AMBPPCT
3. The Dance of Love, by Margaret Craske, p.76
4. The Joyous Path: The Life of Avatar Meher Baba’s Sister, Mani,Vol II, by Heather Nadel, p. 619
5. “Reading to Baba” Mani S. Irani, Mandali Hall, Meherazad, India July 17, 1993, Mandali Hall Talks
6. The Ocean of Love: My Life with Meher Baba, by Delia de Leon, p.178
7. 82 Family Letters – To the Western Family of Lovers and Followers of Meher Baba,   p.269