Saint, Peace Seeker, Hero by Turns
Barreling down a sizzling-hot road, in a cloud of diesel fumes and dust, Ludkan Baba is on a serious roll.
He lies flat on the ground, turning himself over and over like a runaway log, limbs flailing as he bumps across potholes, splashes through mud puddles and falls deeper into a spiritual trance.
Like any sadhu, or Hindu ascetic, he undertakes severe penance to liberate his soul from reincarnation’s endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth. Stretched out in the middle of the road, rolling hour after hour, mile after mile through crowds and heavy traffic, he is making his trip to eternal bliss.
But this is no ordinary holy roller. He is also on a mission to bring peace to the world. His devotion, and alms-raising power, has earned him several disciples, many admirers and the title Ludkan Baba -- the Rolling Saint.
He has rolled thousands of miles in the last 19 years, turning round and round so many millions of times that just pondering the thought can make your head spin.
Yet to the 55-year-old sadhu, the constant turning is refreshing. He says he feels no pain. And except for a few blisters from rolling at high noon along gritty asphalt in 110-degree heat, his taut skin is baby-smooth.
When he stands, he is barefoot, around 5 feet tall, with a mop of matted black hair and a long black beard flecked with gray. He doesn’t look to be carrying more than an ounce of fat on his body.
When he left the road for a midday break recently, the faithful gathered to be healed with his swishes of a peacock-feather broom and sachets of blessed ashes. The sadhu said he had not suffered a single accident or serious injury in nearly two decades of long-distance rolling.
“I move during cyclones, during blazing summers and cold winters,” he said. “I think of God, I think of Mother Earth, and then I roll and roll and roll. I don’t feel dizzy. I don’t consume any food, just tea and cigarettes. At night, I eat fruits, roti [bread], whatever I can lay my hands on.”
As a sadhu, the Rolling Baba is a wanderer who survives on alms. In his quest for moksha, or release from the cycle of reincarnation, he must reject the comforts of ordinary life.
But sometimes even a sadhu can’t resist a good gadget. One member of the Rolling Baba’s small entourage carries a silver clamshell cellphone. So as long as there’s a good signal, the Rolling Baba is never out of touch.
He believes God’s hand propels him. How else, he asks, could a man spin round and round, along unforgiving ground, for months on end and suffer no injuries?
“All I do is put coconut oil on my hair at night, and even that, only when I feel like it,” the Rolling Baba said, between draws on a cigarette. “This is the power of nature, the power of the divine.”
He was born Mohan Singh in the northern Indian town of Dungarpur, and as a barefoot boy of 12, he rubbed the hands of a dying boy and saved his life, the Rolling Baba said. After performing that miracle, he said, he went to a temple, renounced the world and became a sadhu.
In 1973, he said, he entered a cave and stayed there, surviving on grass and water for 12 years, until a divine voice told him to start rolling for peace.
His first journey lasted just under 25 miles. On his third trip, in 1994, he rolled about 2,500 miles across India. Today, as he rolls toward Pakistan, the sadhu thinks he might go to Iraq next.
A 17-year-old girl, a disciple whom the Rolling Baba and his entourage call the Young Saint, said she joined his holy journey, or yatra, because she believed the example of his strength through suffering would move the world to be more loving.
“He has so much love within him that even streets -- the same streets that we walk on and which we consider one of the worst places to lie down upon -- become an object of love,” the Young Saint said.
“Just like a baby rolls on a mother’s lap, similarly this man rolls on the streets. So if he can do this, what is it that prevents others from loving each other?”
This is the Rolling Baba’s sixth yatra. He is heading toward the Pakistani city of Lahore, where he hopes to meet President Pervez Musharraf and urge him to reach a lasting peace with India.
So far, the Rolling Baba doesn’t have an appointment. He doesn’t have a passport, either, or a visa to cross the border. But those are problems for another day, some 380 miles, several weeks and countless rolls away.
“To make passports and obtain a visa is the job of the Indian government,” he said. “After all, I am not going there for professional reasons or to further any business interests. I am going there as a messenger of peace. If they want peace, then both nations will give me the chance to carry out my yatra.”
The Rolling Baba began his 800-mile journey on Jan. 28 at his home in India’s central Madhya Pradesh state. When he reached Hodal, a town 50 miles south of New Delhi, India’s capital, on Wednesday, he was roughly halfway to his goal.
The Rolling Baba travels light. Since becoming a child sadhu, he has worn nothing more than a dhoti, a cloth loosely wrapped around his groin, hips and buttocks. He made an exception to the sadhu’s rule of austere dress and wore a beige suit with a Nehru jacket and new shoes during a 1994 visit to London to help promote a documentary film about himself.
He still travels with pictures of himself -- standing -- in Piccadilly Circus, outside the gates of Buckingham Palace and at other London landmarks. The snapshots are tucked into a small photo album that is inscribed “Sweet Memories” on the cover, above a heart-shaped window.
While rolling, the only protection he wears is a blue T-shirt, wristbands and stretch bandages on his upper legs and forearms. He also holds tightly on to both ends of a strip of cloth, to help build up some torque as he spins.
He rolls right down the middle of the road, through cow dung, rotting garbage and cigarette butts. Two disciples walk in front and kick away the more dangerous bits, such as steel bolts, chunks of glass and sharp stones.
The Rolling Baba handles most potholes and puddles on his own, but when he nears an especially deep, mucky one, a disciple unfolds a yellow tarp and lays it down to ease the holy man’s path.
He rolls each day from 7 a.m. until noon and then from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., to escape the worst heat, which can reach 120 degrees or more. He takes short breaks, sitting entranced at the roadside, blessing crowds of people who press in to touch his feet and receive the blessing of a gentle swat from his cloth. They drop donations, usually a small coin, in two tin boxes.
The Rolling Baba clocked his pace at about 6 mph in this farm town, where traffic and well-wishers slowed him down. But when he hits open highway, or the down slope of a good hill, his speed reaches about 15 mph, he said.
After completing his morning spins and getting the dirt mopped off by a disciple one recent day, the sadhu sat in a steel-framed chair in the shade of a tree at a government high school. The sick and disabled gathered on a red and black striped carpet at his feet.
More than 60 people came for faith healing, including a blind boy, a boy with a lame leg, an old woman with a headache and a man with piles.
The Rolling Baba swept them all with his peacock-feather broom. He gently poked a few patients’ bellies with a curved, blunt-tipped sword, and made a whooshing sound, as if he had killed whatever ailed them and blown it away.
After each treatment, he handed out what one of his disciples said were holy ashes. Two men sat at the end of the carpet, spooning the gray powder onto pages torn from a school biology text and neatly folding them into packets.
“Have a bath with this for three days,” the Rolling Baba instructed an old man with heart trouble, who wheezed for each breath. “And don’t use soap.”
As they got up to leave, each patient dropped coins or bank notes in the slot of a donation box with a small padlock at the Rolling Baba’s dusty feet.
“Whatever blessings I have earned through my meditation, I distribute amongst the masses,” he said. “And it is because of these blessings of the Almighty that they get relief from their various ailments. It is on the strength of my sufferings that they are cured. The blessings that I earn are passed on to them.”