“Hello—No Problem!!” bellowed the grimy dreadlocked Sadhu Baba for the umpteenth time that evening. His fixation was Derick, an egg-headed bull of a man in his sixties from Australia, who could easily have made a film career playing a Nazi or a skinhead. He was also the owner of the worst Royal Enfield imaginable—glitter and chrome but breaking down at every corner. We were sitting across in a former parachute-turned-tent at Sarchu, shared with a few dozen others—tourists, truckers, the owner’s family, and the Baba himself. Totally sozzled after helping the truckers with their booze and then stoned from countless chillums, he would first yell “Hello,” wave at Derick, and, once he had his attention, give a thumbs-up and roar again: “No Problem!!”
The “Techno Baba,” by contrast, was a self-styled sadhu—a young Bihari from Pasighat—living off an attractive but perpetually stoned Israeli blonde in an old Manali guesthouse where I stayed. With long shampooed hair, clad in a saffron lungi, and utterly ego-less, he was mercilessly mocked by the hotel owner and his lone helper—a lazy Nepali addicted to chess—both unsure about their roles as master and servant. The Baba, in turn, would mutter about these fallen times when holy men were no longer respected.
Bankrolled by his girlfriend, he ran a modest trade in hash. His routine was simple: slip into the guest circle on the balcony, light up his chillum, pass it around, then announce—“Anybody want good hash? Tell me, I got good hash!”
His girlfriend I only saw in fleeting glimpses. She mostly stayed in their room, except in the mornings, when she queued for the common toilet—oversized shades on, toilet roll in hand, tugging at her pyjamas stuck in her butt crack. Sometimes in the evenings she sat on a bench on the veranda, dragging a joint or just staring into the distance next to a mini boom box. She was hooked on techno, which they blasted at full volume. The Baba would thrash his body and long hair to the beats, leaping into the air whenever a vocal hook dropped—often it was “Om Namah Shivayaaaa!!”
And then, there was the “Unexplained Baba.” I came across him while riding down a lonely stretch between Tura in the Garo Hills and Mancachar in Assam, searching for the only Buddhist stupa in Northeast India. Out of nowhere, there he was: walking nonchalantly up the road, tall, broad-shouldered, muscular, dark as the night, with floppy curls and a distinctly Australoid face. He was stark naked and seemed utterly at ease in his sky costume. I looked at him, he looked back at me—disinterested—and kept walking. I saw no reason to stop—for his autograph or for a pic.
My pillion at the time, the sister of a very loud name in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, sat in stunned silence, then finally blurted out: “What was that?”
I could only reply: “No clue.”
Later that night, my Garo friends whispered that it was a "Mande Burung"—Meghalaya’s elusive cryptid, or perhaps a remnant of a lost Stone Age tribe, depending on whom you asked.
I would have said “Lord Bhairav on an earthly jaunt,” had there been a dog trotting along. But there wasn’t. John Keel would have been interested. But there was no UFO in the sky.
The Unexplained Baba he remains, his image still etched in my mind.
And no, I have no regrets for not stopping...
