Rocky Baba: Perhaps the Only Baba Who Will Ever Play Rock

Just the other day, during one of FHM's editorial meets, the team behind your favourite lad's magazine felt that there is no point featuring people who are already well known. So with that in mind, we approached pop artist, Ranjan Engti, who we had featured a few months back to suggest us people from any goddamn field who have a story of their own and would thus, make for an interesting read. Almost a month after the FHM team had this conversation with him, Engti finally pinged us saying, “I want to introduce to you a very interesting guy from the hill district of Karbi, Anglong, Assam – He is a sadhu, well a priest cum rockstar, and he is popularly known as Warklung and Rockybaba in the Northeast.”

A sadhu and a rockstar? Well that's interesting. So one day we met the priest with a set of the most obvious questions one would ask a sadhu who plays rock. The 39-year-old introduces himself as the founder of the Hemphu Bamon Ahamphang Society, an organisation that preaches Hemphuism and has a Ramayana of its own. “There are some differences between the Hindu Ramayana and the Karbi Ramayana. Our Sita is called Sita Kungri Mahadi and she was born out of an egg, and not as normal human beings are born. Isn’t it amazing how she was born? Also, our Ramayana is called Sabin Alun. Hemphu is the creator of all the planets and we believe he created all the Gods and Goddesses. Bamon are Hemphu's followers and Ahamphang stands for society."

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While we were completely astounded by this different take on the mythological book, we wanted to know why exactly do they believe that Sita was not born like other humans, but instead from an egg. Our overenthusiasm about the Karbi Ramayana kind of pissed Rockybaba because he thought we are questioning their beliefs. Asking us to refer to the subject over the Internet, he said, “That's what our ancestors told us. Believe it or not.”

Though we thought that a chat with him would be more enriching than just switching to Google, we switched our conversation to his music, and how it all began for him. “Music is born when you are inspired by the melodious tunes that come from nature. I was very fond of music since my childhood days when I learned songs in churches. Then I started listening to some western music and sometimes attended the Karbi spiritual ceremonies, where folk music are sung. There I got a chance to learn a few Karbi original folk songs and now it’s easy for me to blend together folk and rock.” He continues, “When I was 18, I had a band called The Dark Shadows, but that was disbanded and I was left alone with dreams of making music of my own. Sadly, I did not get any support, so I went to the caves in search of truth, to meditate and to get a deeper understanding of a few things, which led me to become a priest." He continued while we kept listening to him like completely engrossed students. It seemed as if we were hypnotised, but the kind of transformation story that he shared with us would lead anyone into a state of hypnotism.” I went to a place called Ningding Anglong, which is in the Ningding Hills of the Western Karbi Anglong. I meditated for three days without food and water, and after that people started calling me Phu (grandfather) Ningding (patience). I love that name. The moment I became a priest, I got sponsors for my first album, Warklung that released in 2003. My songs are about social reforms, unity, love peace and progress, and I get a very good response in the Karbi music market," he concludes as he looks at his watch and enters another meeting with the sponsors of his next show while we stare at him like we have just seen god playing cricket.

From the March 2013 issue of FHM India.