Now it can be told - Kopchay Baba

This article, published in the "Now" weekly newspaper from Gangtok, is a memorable one for me. It was 2003, and I was working as a reporter in Weekend Review, a reputed weekly newspaper from Gangtok. In one of the assignments, I visited Kopchay, a small hamlet, on the way to Rongli, where a man was supposedly reincarnated as Lord Vishnu's avatar and performed miracles, curing illness beyond medical limitations.

I was at Kopchay by 10 am that day, and looking at the queue with around a couple of thousand followers, I thought I couldn't chat with the person. Yet I went to the registration counter and took out my journalist Identity Card, and immediately I found myself just at the door of the so-called "Kopchay-Baba". As I was about to enter the closed door from inside, a person from behind took my camera and my handbag, I was led to enter the room with an empty hand.

As I entered the room, I could see the man in jagged and torn trousers with a stinking shawl around his shoulder murmuring something in the ear of a mentally ill girl brought to his attention, and she was shaking all around. With his locked hair, it seemed he had not bathed for over months. I could see he was moving his toe on the surface in a circular motion and his one arm raised as Lord Vishnu does holding his sudarchan chakra. Little later, he placed his dirt-ridden shawl around the little girl, and I could figure out there was something that all of a sudden, the girl stopped shaking. I was silently watching all this as I waited for my turn, and there I was with the person I had to interview.

The Kopchay-Baba denied any interview as he did not want any unwanted publicity. After a few minutes of talking, I departed from his room and all my belongings. He just told me he would be visible for another year and then vanish. With many questions around me about the strange-looking baba, I returned back to Singtam on that particular day. I did not write any article about my visit. The same week, an article about the Kopchay-Baba was published in "Now," another newspaper from Gangtok.

Moment the article got released I began to receive numerous calls from my relatives from Rhenock, Rongli and Gangtok about the said Baba getting upset with me for having written an article when I was told not to do so. I had difficulty explaining that I was working for another newspaper and the article came from another. What was strange for me was the messages sent by the Baba said he would destroy me and my family! It really took me off my feet since, during that particular moment, my mother was in Chennai for Kidney transparency, and I feared negative thoughts coming to me. I immediately sent my message that if any sort of unwanted happening happened to my mother, then I was not letting the Baba off.

Though nothing as such happened, and at the same time, I, too, never received a reply to my message. But more than seven years later, I have shifted my profession, and Baba, who was supposed to vanish after a year, still survives and does jhak-phuk for his living. His two-minute fame had even the Chief Minister of Sikkim visiting his house and over 4-5 thousand followers in and across Sikkim daily for over half a year.