India’s Hindu ascetic says he’s on a rolls toward Pakistan roll for peace
By PAUL WATSON
Los Angeles Times
HODAL, India – 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.
“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 cell phone. 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.
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?”
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 on tightly to both ends of a strip of cloth, to help build 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 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 at his feet.
More than 60 people came for faith healing. 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 spooned the gray powder onto pages torn from a school biology text and neatly folded 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.”