The Rolling Saint

Lotan Baba, a holy man from India, rolled on his side for four thousand kilometers across the country in his quest for world peace and eternal salvation. — Reuters He started small: fasting here and there, days, then weeks. Once, he stood under a banyan tree for a full seven years, sitting for nothing—not even to sleep. It came to him in a dream:You must roll on this earth, spin your heart in rain, desert, dust. At sunrise he’d stretch, swab any cuts from the day before, and lay prone on the road while his twelve men swept the ground in front of him with sisal brooms. Even monkeys stopped and stared at this man rolling through puddles, past storefronts where children would throw him pieces of butter candy he’d try and catch in his mouth at each rotation. His men swept and sang, swept and sang of jasmine-throated angels and pineapple slices in kulfi cream. He rolled and rolled. Sometimes in his dizzying spins, he thought he heard God. A whisper, but still.