Who was Neem Karoli Baba? The quiet saint who touched and shaped the lives of Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Julia Roberts and Virat-Anushka |
There’s something almost poetic about the fact that some of the most powerful, most photographed people on the planet, a tech visionary, a social media billionaire, a Hollywood star, and India’s most-watched sporting couple, all found themselves, at different points in their lives, sitting quietly under the same small temple roof in the Kumaon hills.No red carpets, no headlines, just an old blanket-wrapped saint who asked for nothing and gave away everything. That’s the pull of Neem Karoli Baba, and decades after he left his body, his story still keeps finding new believers, famous and ordinary alike.
Who was Neem Karoli Baba, really?
Known as Maharaj-Ji by his devotees, Neem Karoli Baba was born in the Akbarpur Village in Firozabad district of Uttar Pradesh. Initially known as Lakshman Narayan Sharma the spiritual leader has spent his later years wandering between small ashrams across North India, most famously the one at Kainchi Dham near Nainital.He wasn’t a philosopher who wrote thick books or built an institution around himself. His whole teaching could fit on a postcard: love people, feed people, remember God, and don’t overthink the rest. He was deeply devoted to Hanuman, and that devotion, strength paired with humility, became the spine of everything he taught.He passed away in Vrindavan on 11 September 1973, but if anything, his following only grew after that, carried forward by disciples who couldn’t stop talking about him.Famous musician Jai Uttal, the author and meditation teacher Lama Surya Das, the singer and spiritual teacher Bhagavan Das, and the poet Krishna Das are some of his most famous disciples.
Steve Jobs and a journey that arrived too late
Steve Jobs is probably the reason most people outside India ever heard this name at all. In 1974, a restless twenty-something Jobs flew to India specifically hoping to sit at Neem Karoli Baba’s feet, only to discover, once he got there, that the saint had already died the year before.He never got that meeting. But Jobs stayed on anyway, travelling through India for months, and that stretch of searching is widely seen as something that shaped how he later thought about simplicity, intuition and stripping things down to their essence.So no, Maharaj-ji didn’t personally mentor him, but the pull towards Kainchi Dham was real, and it left a mark that outlasted the disappointment of missing him.
Mark Zuckerberg ‘s detour during Facebook’s darkest days
Years later, Mark Zuckerberg told a very public story of his own. Speaking at a town hall in India in 2015, he recalled a period when Facebook was struggling badly, and how Steve Jobs, of all people, told him to go visit a temple in India, one Jobs himself had been drawn to decades earlier.Zuckerberg took the advice seriously enough to spend nearly a month travelling around India, and he later credited that trip with helping him find his footing again and reconnect with why he’d started Facebook in the first place. Most accounts tie that temple to Kainchi Dham, even if Zuckerberg himself kept the details fairly general on stage.
Julia Roberts and a photograph that changed something
Julia Roberts’ connection is quieter, and in some ways more personal. She never travelled to meet Neem Karoli Baba; she couldn’t have, given the timing, but she’s spoken about how simply seeing a photograph of him stirred something in her and nudged her toward Hinduism.It wasn’t a Hollywood script that started it either; by her own account, her interest in Hindu practice existed well before she ever played a role connected to that world. Sometimes it really doesn’t take a meeting, a temple visit, or a grand pilgrimage, just an image, and something in it that quietly reorders your priorities.
Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma’s recurring pilgrimage
Closer home, Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma have made Neem Karoli Baba’s ashrams a fairly regular stop in their lives, not a one-off headline. They’ve been photographed at Kainchi Dham near Nainital in 2022 and at the Kakrighat temple and at the Vrindavan ashram as well with their daughter Vamika.Anushka’s family has reportedly followed Maharaj-Ji for years, and the couple has often turned to these visits during both tough phases and happy milestones, proof that this pull toward Kainchi Dham isn’t confined to Silicon Valley or Hollywood, it runs just as deep at home.What ties all these stories together isn’t fame, it’s that each of these people, in their own very different worlds, seemed to be looking for the same thing: a moment of stillness big enough to hold everything else. Neem Karoli Baba never asked to be anyone’s guru. He just kept the door open, and people, powerful or otherwise, kept walking through it.
