One summer a rich businessman was living in the ashram with his wife and two teenaged children for a month.

Seeing how the feeding was done every day, he expressed his interest in feeding sweets to the people visiting the ashram and sought Babaji's permission to do so.

He said he would get the required ingredients from the market and the sweets would be prepared in the ashram kitchen.

Babaji gave his consent, but he advised me not to get involved.

 The laddus were prepared and brought before Hanumanji's temple in the morning, but the method of distribution was far from satisfactory. Children were put to various kinds of tests before they were given the sweets. Some were sent to pluck leaves from the forest for serving them. Many children were sent away without any because they were suspected of coming for second or third helpings, no matter how they denied it.

Mangoes were a favorite delicacy of most of the people in Kainchi, but the poorer people could not afford to buy them.

Inder and jiban would send mangoes and we would distribute them. Later there was a serious failure of the mango crop and they became hard to get.

In 1972 and 1973, Babaji was giving up so many things: "This I do not eat, that I do not eat. . "

He not only stopped eating sweets, but also many fruits and other delicacies. In 1973, Inder and his wife came and they had managed to get twenty or thirty choice mangoes. They said, "Dada, take them to Baba."

Since it was hard to obtain, Didi had the sweetmeat seller prepare one kilo of sandesh to give as prasad.

She brought it when she returned from her college at five o'clock. As soon as she arrived, Baba came out of his room.

"Kamala, what have you brought? What have you brought?"

 She told him, "Sandesh," and showed it to him. He took it and ate one piece after another until not a single bite was left.

Buy: By His Grace: A Devotee's Story

In Baba's ashrams the storerooms would be full of all the essential things.

What was needed, where it was to come from, how the payments were to be made-that was all his responsibility. How he did this was a great mystery. Huge amounts of provisions would be used every day but he would always know the exact inventory, although no records were maintained.

 The provisions for the kitchen were purchased on credit from shops at Haldwani and other places. Haridas used to be in charge of ordering supplies and making payments.

One day Babaji reminded Haridas that a payment had not been made to a shopkeeper in Haldwani for a long time and shouldn't be delayed any longer. Haridas was certain the shopkeeper was owed 11,000 rupees. Babaji said the amount was less.

The next morning Haridas was given the 11,000 rupees and when he left Babaji told me he would only have to pay 7,000 rupees, which was in fact what happened.

People who saw Babaji in the ashram procuring supplies and urging their safekeeping could be forgiven for thinking that he was attached to these things.

But they were misled. If he had been indifferent or very slack, everything would have easily vanished in no time.

Once many stainless steel cups and plates came to the ashram, but within a few months most of them were gone.

I said, "It is surprising that ashram supplies go away like that."