Pakistani photographer Sarmad Nayak met this amazing specimen on the way from Lahore to Naroval …
On the roads of Pakistan you can meet many wandering ascetic mystics - dervishes - who carry their voluntary poverty as a high religious title … Disheveled hair, strange beads and amulets, bells on their feet … The sight of another dervish, especially a wandering one, can frighten … Someone wears long hair, someone shaves their head and eyebrows … But this has never been seen …
Nobody doubted the "professional affiliation" of the tramp. But what is the origin of the growths on the skull and hump? Who is he? A street actor who put on makeup to get attention and get a lot of charity? Or a really sick person with a rare pathology that disfigured his skeleton?
Unfortunately, this question remained unanswered … Perhaps the photographer simply did not dare to ask..