He came one day and settled under the Banyan tree that grew in the garden of my building but branched carelessly into the street. Clad in saffron clothes as many wandering holy men do in India. Nothing special except if you looked carefully, his legs were unimaginably swollen as if he carried the weight of his self in his legs. Strange that it did not bother him at all.
\nWe were curious, especially as he seemed to decide that the tree was his home. This after all was no forest. It was Juhu. Smack in the middle of one of the more chaotic, bustling and yet up market real estates in suburban Mumbai. And there he stayed, night after night. Curiously never, ever sitting, or lying down. Day or night, the man always just stood. No wonder his legs were so swollen.
\nKhare Baba ( The standing holy man) as we affectionately began to call him, fashioned himself a kind of children’s swing which he slung over one of the many branches of the tree. And late at night when we would come back from drunken parties, Khare Baba as would still be standing, but with his arms strung through the swing, so that he would not fall down if he fell asleep. We would hoot greetings, while he would just look disdainfully at us, or sometimes raise a hand back in an affectionate greeting. Khare Baba soon became a fixture.
\nIf you asked him why he always stood, he would just say that it was his penance. To never again sit or lie down. To never rest again. What sin could a man have committed in his 20’s that required this kind of punishment upon himself ? He never told us. And as is believed in India, if a man is going through his Tapasya with such extreme penance, then he deserves to be worshiped. And so people from around Juhu would come to be blessed by Khare Baba. Into the same tree they carved a small temple to him. Khare Baba would calmly bless anyone that came, but at no time did he ask for anything. People just gave him food.
\nI remember sitting silently with Khare Baba late into the night waiting for dawn to come. Smoking hash sometimes, but never saying much. He would in any case refuse to talk about himself. And one day we suddenly noticed that Khare Baba had disappeared. Not just gone wandering around Juhu. He did not return. We never saw him again. We never found out where he went, but then we never knew where he came from either.
\nThe temple is still there. Occasionally I see Coconut shells and lit incense sticks, so I know that the temple still lives. People probably do not know the origins of the temple after 20 years since Khare Baba left. But so what ? it’s a temple in a flowing Banyan Tree, and how many of those are left in Mumbai ? The temple ensures this beautiful tree will never be cut down as thousands others are in Mumbai. And perhaps that was Khare Baba’s purpose. To stand tall with the tree, for when did a tree ever rest or sit down ?
\nAnd when people ask me why I keep coming back to India, I tell them the story of Khare Baba. Anywhere else in the world, the people would have been frightened by this man. They would have complained and worried that he maybe a child molester. The police would have come and taken him away, put him in jail. But in India we never questioned the wandering spirit. Just accepted his arrival with the same ease as we did his leaving.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
He came one day and settled under the Banyan tree that grew in the garden of my building but branched carelessly into the street. Clad in saffron clothes as many wandering holy men do in India. Nothing special except if you looked carefully, his legs were unimaginably swollen as if he carried the weight of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-short-stories"],"yoast_head":"\n