CULTURE SHOCK - THE DEN OF THE STANDING BABAS

A Standing Baba is a Hindu who has vowed to stand, not sitting or lying down even to sleep. The vow is a form of Hindu Tapa or Tapasas, a self-inflicted corporal punishment intended to help bring spiritual enlightenment.  The Standing Babas are primarily found in Mumbai, in India.

The Standing Babas are men who’d taken a vow never to sit down, or lie down ever again for the rest of their lives.  They stood, day and night, forever.  They stood on their own legs for a possible longer period.  They stand for a specified number of years, 12 years seemed to be the target or they commit themselves never to sit for the remaining of their life.  

They ate their meals standing up and made their toilet standing up. They even slept while they were standing, suspended in harnesses that kept the weight of their bodies on their legs, but prevented them from falling when they were unconscious. 

The Standing Baba has a swing-like device that allows them to rest their arms during the day. During the night, a Standing Baba will support his torso on the swing as he sleeps. The swing usually has a sling beneath it. The sling can hold one of the Standing Baba’s legs at a time. It is unclear if this is intended to rest one leg or to increase the pressure on the other leg. While Standing Baba may walk about, they usually just stand/hang in their swing.

They are not the Hindu religious spiritual Sadhus who chant the Sanskrit mantras and sing the devotional songs.   They belong to the business class, politicians, military officers, rich and poor, educated or illiterate.  They belong to interesting sects and some are doing this as a penance for having spent their life in the fast lane.  They regret their past weird life style and vow to punish their body.

It’s fascinating.  Isn’t it?  

My revelation about the Standing Babas happened when I read the autobiographical novelization of the life story of the celebrated Australian author Gregory David Roberts.  The book – a 1000 page, international best seller, titled as “Shantaram” -  is an interesting read.  I highly recommend this book to you for a gripping, riveting edge of the seat thriller read. 

                

This is the story of an Australian junkie takes to armed robbery, goes to prison, escapes, makes his way to Mumbai (Bombay), ends up living in a slum then falls in with a faction of one of that town's many organized crime gangs. At one point in the book, new to Mumbai, his friend and guide takes him to the temple where the Standing Babas live, worship, and sell hashish.

The novel, full of amazing stories within stories, describes a religious sect known as the Standing Babas, who have vowed to remain standing for many years.

The book has many interesting stories within it like “The Night of the Blind Singers” and “The Village in the Sky”.  Some of the adjectives used in the book are like the magnanimous ocean waves or gigantic thunderbolts.  The book is a combination of reality with a miniscule dose of fiction and it also takes you to the magical world of the Standing Babas.

My research shows that “The Standing Babas” are real and not fictional characters.

While reading the book “Shantaram”, the story of the Standing Babas attracted me and I thought it is really good to write a blog post about the subject which will be interesting to many of you.

Also, Shenaz Treasurywala’s interview with the Standing Babas in You Tube is noteworthy.

Shenaz Treasurywala is an Indian actress, TV host, writer, and travel vlogger.

It was really interesting to view the You Tube video “Culture Shock – The Standing Babas” by Shenaz Treasurywala depicting the life of “The Standing Babas”.  I shall share the video link below -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojeR1fOKv_A&vl=en

(Please complete reading the blog post before watching this video.)

The den of the Standing Babas is really a corridor between two brick buildings at the rear of their temple.  Hidden from view forever, within the temple compound, were the secret gardens, cloisters and dormitories that only those who made and kept the vow ever saw. An iron roof covered the den.  The floor was paved with flat stones.   The Standing Babas entered through a door at the rear of the corridor.

The customers, men from every part of the country and every level of society, stood along the walls of the corridor.  They stood, of course no one sat in the presence of the Standing Babas.  These customers may become the future Standing Babas.  Some customers were wearing suites, designer jeans and other fashionable costumes.

 For the first five to ten years of that constant standing, the legs of the Standing Babas began to swell.  Blood moved sluggishly in exhausted veins, and muscles thickened.  Their legs became huge, bloated out of recognizable shape, and covered with purple varicose boils.  Their toes squeezed out from thick, fleshy feet, like the toes of elephants.  During the following years, their legs gradually became thinner, and thinner.  Eventually only bones remained, with a paint-thin veneer of skin and the termite trails of withered veins.   

The pain was unending and terrible.  Spikes and spears of agony stabbed up through their feet with every downward pressure.  Tormented, tortured, the Standing Babas were never still.  They shifted constantly from foot to foot in a gentle, swaying dance that as mesmerizing, for everyone who saw it.

Some of the Babas had made the vow when they were sixteen or seventeen years old.  They were compelled by something like the vocation that calls others, in other cultures, to become priests, rabbis or imams.  A larger number of much older men had renounced the world as a preparation for death and the next level of incarnation.  Not a few of the Standing Babas were businessmen who’d given themselves to ruthless pursuits of pleasure, power, and profit during their working lives.

They were holy men who’d journeyed through many other devotions, mastering their punishing sacrifices before undertaking the ultimate vow of the Standing Baba. And there were criminals – thieves, murderers, major mafia figures, and even former warlords – who sought expiation, or propitiations, in the endless agonies of the vow.

The Babas moved from man to man and group to group, preparing hashish in funnel-shaped clay chillums for the customers, and smoking with them.   They survived by selling hashish and enjoyed smoking the same with their clientele.

The faces of the Babas were radiant with their excruciation. Sooner or later, in the torment of endlessly ascending pain, every man of them assumed luminous, transcendent beatitude.  Light, made from the agonies they suffered, streamed from their eyes and there was no human source more brilliant than their tortured smiles.

The mystic Standing Babas were a fascinating sight with one of their legs as the axis and smoking hashish, charas or ganja enjoying crowd surrounding them.

The Babas were also comprehensively, celestially and magnificently stoned.   They smoked nothing but Kashmiri – the best hashish in the world – grown and produced at the foothills of the Himalayas in Kashmir.  And they smoked it all day, and all night, all their lives.   When the wish and the fear are exactly the same we call the dream a nightmare.

While on the subject, India’s  Hindu spiritual leaders arriving to attend “Kumbh Mela” is praiseworthy.  The pilgrims’ motive is cleansing need from sin.

They are the real Sadhus or Babas of Hinduism.  Kumbh Mela is an occasion once every 12 years the saints and yogis who live in Himalayan caves gather together to bless the people.   

At Haridwar and Allahabad, an Ardha ("Half") Kumbh Mela is held every sixth year; a Maha ("Great") Kumbh Mela occurs after 144 years.

 

The Allahabad Kumbh Mela is a mela held every 12 years at Prayag (Allahabad), India.  The Kumbha Mela, is a riverside festival rotating between Allahabad at the confluence of the Ganges.

Kumbh Mela or Kumbha Mela is a mass Hindu pilgrimage of faith in which Hindus gather to bathe in a sacred or holy river. Traditionally, four fairs are widely recognized as the Kumbh Melas: the Haridwar Kumbh Mela, the Allahabad Kumbh Mela, the Nashik-Trimbakeshwar Simhastha, and Ujjain Simhastha. These four fairs are held periodically at one of the following places by rotation: Haridwar, Allahabad (Prayaga), Nashik district (Nashik and Trimbak), and Ujjain. The main festival site is located on the banks of a river: the Ganges (Ganga) at Haridwar; the confluence (Sangam) of the Ganges and the Yamuna and the invisible Sarasvati at Allahabad; the Godavari at Nashik; and the Shipra at Ujjain. Bathing in these rivers is thought to cleanse a person of all sins.

The exact date of Kumbh Mela is determined according to Hindu astrology: the Mela is held when Jupiter is in Taurus and the sun and the moon are in Capricorn.

The Kumbh Mela is held for 55 days, once every 3 years at one of the 4 holy places (Haridwar, Allahabad (Prayag), Nashik and Ujjain) in a cycle of 12 years. The Kumbh Mela is said to be the largest gathering of human beings anywhere on the Earth, and in the year 2013 was the largest.  

The next Haridwar Kumbh Mela is in 2021-2022.

Many foreigners are fascinated about Indian spirituality and visit the Indian pilgrimage destinations.  Kumbh Mela is an added attraction for foreign visitors seeking Indian spiritual bliss.

One more image of the Standing Baba.