I don't understand the story about the wheat grinding. Why did Baba suddenly start grinding wheat and then have the flour thrown away?

Baba's act of grinding wheat was a divine play with a deeper, symbolic meaning. As explained in Chapter 1, the wheat he was grinding was not merely grain but represented the cholera epidemic that was afflicting the village. By grinding the wheat into flour, he was metaphorically destroying the disease. He then instructed the women to throw this 'flour' on the village boundary stream. This action symbolically cast the epidemic out of the village, and as the narrative states, the disease began to recede from that moment. The people later explained that Baba had "completely driven away the epidemic" through this seemingly strange act.