Innocently passing by a ramshackle old building on the bank of the river Ganges, we were invited to enter the house of a locally known guru, 'Lali Baba'. Lali, as I call him, is a tall naked man, aside from a delicately placed loin-cloth, covered in the human ash remains from a cremation. Quite the charmer. On a break from his duties at the burning ghats (cremation site on the riverside), he was most pleased to bring us into his office-cum-bedroom to chat about Karma, Dharma, and his latest pics on facebook! It was quite bewildering to find such a man, so steeped in tradition, the Indian holy-man archetype, to be twittering and checking hits on his website. I was quite interested to hear about his career pathway, and how a BSc in Science led to getting all naked and crazy looking. Would engineering not have been something that pleased his mother more?
Lali likes to perform the Gangaji fire ceremony on the river every day at dawn and dusk, swinging hot burning sticks over his naked body in reverence to this mighty life-giving 'Mother' river. He was amused to be paler than Neko in his ceremonial ash white appearance. Anyhoo, do look Lalibaba up online - it's most informative. Urban myth has it that the two skulls in his office are from people he has eaten. Other than that, he seems most agreeable, if slightly in need of a larger loin cloth.
Lali likes to perform the Gangaji fire ceremony on the river every day at dawn and dusk, swinging hot burning sticks over his naked body in reverence to this mighty life-giving 'Mother' river. He was amused to be paler than Neko in his ceremonial ash white appearance. Anyhoo, do look Lalibaba up online - it's most informative. Urban myth has it that the two skulls in his office are from people he has eaten. Other than that, he seems most agreeable, if slightly in need of a larger loin cloth.
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