Dabholkaralias Hemadpant

Govind Raghunath Dabholkar was born in 1859 and rose to become the Resident Magistrate of Bandra. Friends such as Kakasaheb Dixit and Nanasaheb Chandorkar urged him to visit Shirdi, and in 1910 he finally came. On his first morning he saw Baba grinding wheat on a hand-mill. Village women took the flour and, at Baba's word, scattered it along the village boundary, and the cholera that had broken out in Shirdi died away. Dabholkar was so moved that he resolved to write down Baba's life.

Soon after arriving he argued with Balasaheb Bhate about whether one needs a guru. Baba later asked what the argument had been about, and from then on called him "Hemadpant", after a famous minister and scholar of old. When Hemadpant asked through Shama for permission to write Baba's story, Baba gave him udi and his blessing, saying that he would write it himself and Hemadpant would only be the instrument.

Hemadpant spent the rest of his life gathering stories from devotees and writing them in Marathi verse. The work, the Shri Sai Satcharitra, grew to 53 chapters. He passed away in 1929 before it was printed, and B. V. Deo completed the final part. Today the Satcharitra is read in many languages, and many devotees read it every day.