Merwan had a normal childhood and liked poetry and sports, especially cricket. When he was thirteen years old he started a boy's club with his best school friends called "The Cosmopolitan Club". The boys in the club kept up on the news, practiced public speaking at their clubhouse, and raised money to give to the poor. He graduated from St. Vincent's High School and attended Deccan College. In 1913, when Baba was nineteen, he was coming home from college riding a bicycle. A very old Muslim woman named Hazrat Babajan, referred to as a Perfect Master (God Realized), was sitting under a Neem tree, called for him to come over to her, he said he was drawn to her like iron to a magnet. He began spending time visiting with her and serving her. In 1914 she kissed him on the forehead, he then went home. Baba later said that he became so dazed after this kiss that he could barely find his way home, and that when Babajan kissed him, initially he lost all consciousness of the world, he then realized God within himself. He was so dazed he neither ate or slept for several weeks. Moving about semi-autonomously in 1915 Merwan was drawn to the other five Perfect Masters, beginning with Sai Baba of Shirdi who upon seeing Merwan called out to him "Parvardigar!" (Divine Sustainer). Upasni Maharaj, also a Perfect Master on seeing Merwan thru a stone, hitting him on the forehead where Babajan had kissed Merwan. He often went to live with Upasni at Sakori. The five Masters assisted Merwan in regaining his integration of the physical world of duality with the Divine Oneness that is the Avatar's natural state. Merwan served as their disciple while in fact he was already fully God Realized. 