What was the true meaning behind Sai Baba grinding wheat, and how did it demonstrate his compassion?

The act of grinding wheat, which initially baffled onlookers, was a profound display of Sai Baba's compassion. According to Chapter 1, while people wondered why a detached saint would perform such a task, Baba was engaged in a spiritual play. The wheat he was grinding symbolically represented the cholera epidemic plaguing the village. By grinding the wheat into flour, he was metaphorically destroying the disease. He then instructed the women, who had wrongly assumed the flour was for them, to throw it on the village boundary. As Chapter 1 explains, once the flour was thrown near the stream, 'the disease began to recede.' This incident shows that Baba's seemingly strange actions were born from his deep compassion for the villagers' well-being, as he took it upon himself to eradicate their suffering.