Saint Gadge baba.

ng Point in Gadge Baba's Life

Then came turning point in his life, one day he had arrived at the farm early in the morning. The jowar crop had grown fully in the field and had to be watched to against predatory birds. He therefore climbed up and sat on the machan as tilted platform farmers raise for keeping a watch on the birds and scaring them away. By noon he was still sitting on the machan. The midday sun was burning in the sky and a bright haze quinvered on the hot air. The men working in the fields had retired to their resting places. Due to the heat Debuji was feeling drowsy when suddenly he saw a figure approaching his machan. As it neared the machan he could see it was a man. He was indeed a strange man , for he was wearing a white Kafani, a one-pieace dress that drapes a person from shoulder to feet. His long hair fell on his shoulder.He borrow to the man anything. At this moment the stranger smiled which gave him some courage and he said , “ Do you need anything ? what will you give ?” I have everything with me” the stranger said.
They could talk to each other. Then Debuji went Daryapur. But while he was off at Daryapur, a stranger came to the village. His hair were long and disheveled and the Kafni he was wearing was torn and soiled. He called loudly. “O Devidas! Devidas where are you ? “ The villagers told him that there was no person in the village- Devidas in name, but Devidas means Gods disciple!
Then Debuji went to the temple where a Kirtan was going on. The deeply devotional songs of Kabir and Tukaram’s abhangas sung in the Kirtan gave on edge his thought and an articulation his mind was struggling for. Returning home he did not to go sleep, Instead with his back to a pole he sat knees drawn up in the verandah outside. As the night deepened , he will still thinking of the way to emancipation of the soul about which the great teachers of the past had so eloquently spoken.
The story here after of Debuji’s life who come to be known as Gadge Baba all through his land-relates to his great wanderings.
First and foremost Gadge Baba was a simple, practical man, who never got himself enmeshed in to metaphysical complexities of thought. His teachings were thus, simple for even an uneducated and illiterate person to grasp their significance. There are two phases of his wandering pilgrimage. The first was sadhana, that is self preparation of education himself. In the second he was the educator, the social reformer, the preacher who preached not from the high pedestal of learning hut by practical demonstrations in self help. In all his life-Tukaram, the great Marathi saint was his guiding star, whose abhangas he profusely quoted in his Kirtans. They were often the starting point of his discourses. Gadge means an earthen pot and Baba is a nick name for father or a fatherly person. Gadge Baba always carried a broken pieace of an earthen pot on his head. Which he used as a dish for food and it also served as a skull cap. This made him quite conspicuous and that is how people came to call him Gadge Baba.