Baba Black Sheep

Want a job, bank loan, a visa? Go to the neighbourhood baba ‘famous’ for solving your particular New Age problem. Urban Indians are increasingly turning to spiritual service providers who seem to take care of everything, except the soul

The baba rolls his bloodshot eyes, his head swinging like a pendulum, murmuring a mantra under his breath. He snatches an amulet and a red thread out of thin air, dropping them into the lap of the woman sitting in front of him. She lowers her eyes and bows, her head touching the baba’s feet. “Put this under your husband’s pillow for a week,” says the baba, a middle-aged man with a flowing grey beard. “Come back to me after seven days,” he whispers in her ear. Shikha Rai, 35, bows, quietly leaving the dimly-lit room, her eyes fixed on Baba Farid ji. It is her second visit to the baba she believes will bring her husband back to her. He has taken a lover in another city. “I am confident the baba’s magic will work,” she says as she drives away in her SUV.

Rai, who lives in a tony neighbourhood in Delhi, heard about the baba from a friend who was delighted with his services. Her son had a job in the US but could not get a visa. The baba arranged the visa in no time at all by performing a ritual. “She paid him only after her son got the visa,” says Rai, vouching for the baba’s honesty.

The visa is just one of a new slew of problems urban Indians are increasingly bringing to tantriks and babas. Want a job, bank loan, foreign travel? Go to the baba best known for his area of expertise. The number of babas operating in south Delhi localities has swelled in the last few years and so has the number of people making a beeline to them seeking answers to problems such as “marriage, break in films, modelling assignment, failure in love.”

In Delhi’s Nev Sarai area, there is a temple called “Chamatkari visa wale Hanuman ka Mandir”. The baba at the temple claims he can get any one any visa with his special prayers. Ahmedabad boasts a similar temple. In Hyderabad, the Chilkur Balaji temple is popularly known as “Balaji Visa temple”. Thousands visit it every week before they head for the local US consulate.

In Bangalore’s Cottonpet area, huge crowds can be seen outside three small counters of the Yenne Angadi Adishakti Mantralaya, which is famous for solving “all kinds of problems, including health, business and infidelity”. Here, there are young mothers and their babies, pregnant women, couples, fathers, traders, women in burkhas and those wearing the cross. “My son is down with diarrhoea since morning. It’ll be fine once he gets the thread tied around his neck,” says Shashi, a woman from a middle-class area of the city. “I have more faith in mantralaya than doctors.”

But the baba business doesn’t only run on faith. Money is a big factor. The babas don’t talk about the money they make but business must be good. “I paid Rs 20,000 to a baba and my bank loan for a shop got sanctioned quickly,” says Ramesh Arora, who recently opened a new sanitaryware shop in Delhi. No prizes for guessing who inaugurated the shop — the tantrik who arguably started it all by giving Arora a prayer cap and an amulet to wear for 15 days. On the 15th day, Arora’s phone rang: the bank had cleared his loan. “In future, if I need a loan again, I will go to this baba.”

Why is the educated middle-class rushing to the tantrik or baba to solve problems that belong to the temporal, not the spiritual world? Psychologists say the rise of godmen can basically be blamed on the paucity of mental healthcare professionals. “There are only 6,000 trained mental healthcare professionals in the country of a billion-plus. The need is 50 times more,” says Delhi psychiatrist Jitendra Nagpal.

But surely shrinks can only solve psychological problems; they can’t deliver what the babas can. In Katauli, a village near Lucknow, several families of tantriks claim that they can cure epilepsy by piercing one ear and looping a black thread through it. “Most of my epilepsy patients have one of their ears pierced,” says Dr Atul Agarwal, a Lucknow neurologist. But what really surprises Dr Agarwal is the high number of urban educated people who get their ears pierced to ward off epileptic attacks.

That may not be surprising if problemsolving is increasingly associated with money. In the world of babas, nothing is pronounced impossible if you are willing to pay the right price. In 2008, Reema Kamble, daughter of a retired assistant commissioner of police, came across an advertisement for Farid Shah, a tantrik who claimed to solve “all problems with a puja”. Kamble, a computer engineer, phoned Shah. “After listening to my problem, Shah asked me to perform a puja and sacrifice a hen or goat. Three weeks later, Kamble visited Shah who

asked her to sacrifice a rhino “I paid Rs 3 lakh to perform the puja. He told me that he would book air tickets to go to UP to catch a rhino and will return after completing the puja,” Kamble said in her police complaint. Shah was arrested in 2009.

Does Kamble’s story underline the new credulousness of the new India? Yes and no, says Professor Shyam Manav, convenor of the Akhil Bharatiya Andh Shraddha Nirmulan Samiti. Manav has been conducting surveys and providing the Mumbai police a list of over 20 ‘tantriks’ who go under the name of Baba Bangali. “We conduct the survey from different places in urban and rural areas and nab fake tantrik babas based on the complaints we receive,” he says.

The campaign seems to be having some effect. Embarrassed by recent sordid episodes involving self-styled godmen such as Nithyananda, (see box) the All India Akhara Parishad recently decided at the Mahakumbh in Haridwar to launch a campaign to “identify” and “throw out religious gurus” who “cheat and dupe people” in the garb of spirituality.

With reports from Shailvee Sharda in Lucknow, Aarthi R in Bangalore and V Narayan in Mumbai

* Some names have been changed