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September 21, 2004

Rolling Baba

Ok here is some fun for every one:

There is this Indian Holy man rolling, that's right on his side, to Pakistan to spread his message of peace. I heard about it on NPR this morning, they only report the important news. I googled it and found this hilarious article about the 'Rolling Baba'. I was going to just paste in some good quotes but the whole article is just so funny I decided to paste it in entirety:

Hindu holy man rolling to Lahore

Daily Times Monitor

A Hindu holy man known as Ludkan Baba, or Rolling Baba, is rolling his way to Lahore on a mission of peace, Nick Meo reports in The Times.

It was in 1983 that the wandering holy man Mohan Das first decided to make his pilgrimages more of a challenge by rolling along the ground instead of walking. Since then he says he has rolled more than 20,000 miles across India to spread his message of love and peace. Before he started rolling, he had spent seven years standing up, leaning against a swing to sleep. Rolling is much more fun and has put him in the Guinness Book of Records, he says.

He set off on his latest adventure in January, inspired by the peacemaking efforts of Atal Behari Vajpayee, the former Indian prime minister.

He is currently rolling down National Highway No 2 Between Agra and New Delhi, still some 500 miles from Lahore. Every few miles traffic comes to a complete halt when villagers swarm on to the road to seek the holy man's blessing, forming a chaotic scrum with the entourage of hymn-chanting pilgrims trailing in his wake.

A smiling devotee with a red banner is the only warning to the lorries thundering down on Rolling Baba at 70mph. "Once a truck was about to hit us," he said. "Thanks to the Mother Goddess, it overturned at the last minute." He also trusts Kali will find a way round his lack of a visa or a passport. "The goddess will provide," he said. "Or the government will help us." He hopes to convey personally a message of peace to President Pervez Musharraf.

His progress is fuelled by endless cups of tea and five packets of cigarettes a day. Rolling Baba has even developed an impressive technique for smoking as he rolls.

Truck drivers brake furiously at the last minute in clouds of blue smoke. But when they realise that he is a holy man, they are rarely angry and often pull over for a quick blessing. In front of Rolling Baba a devotee kicks bits of glass and metal out of the way and holds an umbrella over his frenetically moving body.

"I joined Baba because his cause is a noble one," says the umbrella-holder Ajab Singh, a 32-year-old farmer who left his fields to join the pilgrimage two months ago when Rolling Baba passed through.

"My followers are from all religions and castes," Rolling Baba said with a gesture at the 30 men and women of all ages camped out with him in the grounds of a roadside temple south of Delhi. Most have been with him since he left his home in Ratlam, about 650 miles away in Madya Pradesh in central India.

"We don't believe Pakistan is our enemy," he said. "Those who are terrorists and warmongers mislead people. All kinds of cultures are necessary in this world - Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jains and Sikhs."

Soon after dawn, Rolling Baba set off in a shower of flower petals cast by his devotees, before the heat builds up to the 45 degrees Celsius afternoon maximum. His biggest problem then is melting tarmac. He is only 5ft but is fit and wiry and looks much younger than his 55 years. The exertion must be doing him good.

Heavy bandages on his legs and tennis-players' sweat bands on his elbows give some protection from the rigours of flailing along at a fast walking pace that leaves some of his older devotees puffing to keep up on foot. He is proud of his cracking pace. "When he gets into top gear he can go 18 miles a day," said Bhuvan Eshwari, a former newspaper reporter who renounced the world to follow Rolling Baba and now acts as his public relations man, complete with a mobile phone which he uses to take pictures to record the journey and send to friends.

"Baba has so much love he even loves the road and it loves him," Mr Eshwari said. Baba never gets dizzy and he says that he feels closest to God when he is on a roll. He is happiest rolling up mountains on pilgrimages to Himalayan temples.

A spokesman for the Pakistan High Commission in Delhi said: "We welcome all efforts to further the cause of peace. He really ought to apply for a visa, though. So far as we know, we haven't had any communication from this Rolling Baba yet."


The update that NPR gave me was that he is currently waylaid at the border since he has no visa or passport. We can only hope that the Mother Goddess will provide him with a passport soon or his pilgrimage may have to be cut short.

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