The manmade Bhool Bhulaiyaa

Mention Bhool Bhulaiyaa and the immediate reaction is that it is a 2007 Bollywood remake of the English film “The Maze”. The Hindi film starred Akshay Kumar, Vidya Balan and others.

The huge house that is shown in the film is in Jaipur and the many passages of the house and the staircases add to a sense of the mystery in the film.

However, India is fortunate to have a real maze, which is also called Bhool Bhulaiyaa. This structure is a Nawabi inspiration and it was built when the province was in the throes of a severe drought. The Nawab employed thousands of labourers to build the Bhool Bhulaiyaa.

One legend about the structure is that as soon as labourers finished construction of a portion of a wall, the Nawab sent away all the labourers from the work spot and had it pulled down so that the labourers would be reemployed in building it afresh.

Another legend associated with the Bhool Bhulaiyaa is that if common men were employed in the morning, noblemen and the landed gentry worked on it during the night. All in all, the Bhool Bhulaiyaa is a superb piece of architecture and it is a harmonious blend of  local, Mughal, Arabic and European architecture.       

A man made wonder, this structure is also well known as the gravity defying palace. This palace has more than a thousand narrow staircases with the stairs going up and down in a confusing manner.

It is this intriguing maze that lends the name Bhool Bhulaiyaa to the structure which comprises of a large mosque, the Bhool Bhulaiyaa or the labyrinth or the maze, a bowli, a step well with running water and two imposing gateways lead to the main hall.

This is the much visited and much admired Bhool Bhulaiyaa of Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh.

The Bhool Bhulaiyaa is mystifying palace complex commissioned in 1783 by Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula of Oudh or Awadh. This called the Bara Imambara and the Bhool Bhulaiyaa is an integral part of it. The Imambara’s central arched hall is almost 50 meters long and about three stories high. What makes this arch all the more astounding is that it has no pillars or beams. No iron is used. This is supposed to be the world’s largest unsupported structure. It contains the vaulted central chamber with the tomb of Asaf-ud-Daula.

The Imambara was designed by Kifayatullah of Delgi and even his tomb is in the main hall of the Imambara.

The main hall of the Imambara was constructed with interlocking brickwork and is  from here that the Bhool Bhuliayaa commences. There are eight surrounding chambers around the central vault and they are built to different roof heights. This allowed the Nawab to use he spaces above them to design the labyrinths with passages and stairs which are interconnected with each other through 489 identical doorways.

This is possibly the only existing maze in India and it today supports almost the entire weight of the building. The only other similar maze, though not as big or as confusing is the tunnels leading from the Ibrahim Rouza mosque or the stairs leading to the whispering gallery in Bijapur. Another similar monument would be the palace of thousand doors, several of them false, in Murshidabad.    

Coming back to Lucknow, this maze has more than 1,000 narrow staircase passages and old timers say that it was meant to prevent any possible intruders from gaining any easy access or easy egress from the building. Since the passages are open, you can roam around them but it is better to hire a guide. If not, follow the ray of sunlight that you can see at the end of the maze and you are sure to come out of  jigsaw.

Since there is an Asifi mosque, the structure is also called Asifi Imambara. There is also a Chotta Imambara nearby, a smaller and beautiful version of the Bara Imambara.

Bara in Urdu means big and Imambara means a shrine. This was built for Shia Muslims for Azadari (Azadari in Lucknow is the  practice during Moharram relating to mourning and commemoration of the anniversary of the death of Imam Husayn ibn Ali at the Battle of Karbala in 680).  

The construction of the Imambara was completed in 1791 and it was estimated to cost anywhere between half a million to a million rupees. Even after the building was completed, the Nawab spent every year several thousand rupees on its decoration.

There is also a tunnel which leads through a mile-long underground passage to a spot adjacent to the Gomti river. There are several other passages and they are supposed to lead to Faizabad, Allahabad and even to Delhi. These passages have now been sealed.

Take a look at the Imambara and explore its maze. I can assure you, it will be worth your while.

Millions take their bath here

The Kumbh Mela in India is a matchless congregation of devout Hindus and it has no peer anywhere else in the world. It is the largest gathering of people for a religious purpose and the largest gathering on the banks of the river.

As if this is not enough, it also is the largest gathering of people taking bath in a river and then going to a temple to pray. The Kumbh melas of Allahabad and Nasik are world famous and they draw millions of visitors.

The Kumbh in Allahabad this time is expecting anywhere between 80 million to 90 million devotees. Generally the Kumbh is held every third year in rotation at one of the four pre-designated places of  Haridwar, Allahabad or Prayag, Nasik and Ujjain.

Thus the Kumbh Mela comes to one of  the four places every twelfth year. Another Kumbh is the Ardh  or half  Kumbh Mela which is held at only two places- Haridwar and Allahabad, every sixth year.

The Purna Kumbh mela is held only at Allahabad every 12 years and the Maha Kumbh, again at Allahabad, every 144 years.

The rivers at these four places are: the Ganges or Ganga in Haridwar, the confluence or Triveni Sangama of the Ganges, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati at Allahabad, the Godavari at Nasik and the Shipra at Ujjain.

Though there is no scientific method of ascertaining the exact number of pilgrims, estimates of the number of pilgrims, including sadhus, heads of mathas and people bathing on the most auspicious day may vary; approximately 30 million people bathed on one day alone- February 10, 2013. You see, that day was Amavaysa and Hindus consider a dip in the river on that day to be holy.

The first written record about the Kumbh is in the writings of Huang Tsang during the reign of Harshavardhana. He visited Indian between 629 AD and 645 AD. However, the Puranas date the Kumbh to the Samudra Manthana episode and records of such bathing events are mentioned in Bhagavatha Purana, Vishnu Purana, Ramayana and Mahabharata.

The temporary tented city, that comes up adjacent to the river, is also the largest in the world and it is fully occupied from January to mid March 2013.

Over a lakh workers in Allahabad built 165 kms of roads, 18 bridges, provided thousands of fresh water connections, toilets, 200,000 electrical connections. The tent city can accommodate a minimum of  2 million pilgrims.

Make no mistake. The manmade tent city is a fully functional city with its own court house, police station and even administration. The roads in the tented city are lined with nationalized banks, post offices, mobile service providers, hotels, restaurants, bus and railway reservation counters, gas agencies, radio station.

Of course you cannot except nationalized banks to function from tents. Can you?

These banks operate from plywood structures. The court house has a judge posted who decided on offences committed in the mela area. He hands out punishment and the culprits are promptly whisked away by the anxiously waiting police.  

A district collector, superintendent of police, senior medical officer, chief engineer and a high-level group headed by a minister takes care of the Kumbh arrangements. There are 30 police stations with thousands of policemen in attendance.

The tent city has plumbers, electricians, builders, securitymen, divers, boatmen and even people specially designated to clear garbage. No wonder, it is the largest city on the world in terns of population density.   

The township has 156 km of steel-plated roads, 18 pontoon bridges, 980 km of electricity wires, 550 km of water pipelines and apart from all this a budget of Rs.1,200 crore. The electrical wires  connect 22,000 streetlights and provide 140,000 free connections to the akhadas and establishments of sadhus and matha. Of course the State Government  foots the Rs.4 crore electricity bill for the duration of the Kumbh.

One more thing. With millions wandering in and around the tent city, there cannot be any black out, power failure or even grid failure. The lights are turned on with clockwise precision every day and they will remain so till the end of the Kumbh. The power  system was so designed that the lines carried no more than 50 per cent of their capacity. Each of the 22,000 street light cluster was given a source to draw power from two different devices. In case, one of the power lines broke or did not function, the clusters had am  automatic three-second switch-time. The points were then connected to giant generators, and every second light cluster was run round-the-clock on these generators so that the mela would be lit even if there was a national grid failure.

There are 18 giant pontoon bridges to accommodate the teeming millions and so far the bridges have held and there has not been any major mishap. A total of 1,537 pontoons were needed for the bridges to be put into place. This also has to be the place with the largest number of toilets on earth-a mindboggling 35,000.
The total area of the Mela premises is 50.83 square kilometers and this is more than 200 times the area of Vatican City, which is considered to be the world’s smallest country
A temporary metropolis, conjured out of thin air, it will be dismantled after 55 days. And till it is dismantled, it will remain the world’s biggest City. Hats off to the people who made it happen. It shows India, if it want, can get going and even a State like Uttar Pradesh can show the way. Right.

The world's largest opium factory

This is the real setting of  Amitav Ghosh’s 2008 novel, Sea of Poppies. The novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker award and won that year’s Vodofone Crossword Book Award for fiction. It also bagged the British Book Design and Production Award for 2008.
Apart from the novel’s setting, this place contributed to roughly 20 per cent of England’s revenue from India for close to one hundred years. All the stolen treasures, artifacts, gold, silver and other articles could not even form a dot on the vast revenue that the British managed to extract from this place.
It also led to the Opium wars between England with China and the result was there for all to see. After Independence, this revenue earning enterprise was taken over by the Government of India (GOI) and to this day the GOI lords over it.

Unfortunately, not many know about this enterprise and even Indians were unaware of its existence till the novel by Amitav Ghosh hit the stands. It was then that the world woke up to the startling fact that the world’s biggest opium factory was not in the countries comprising the Golden Triangle but in India.

More astonishingly, the largest opium factory in the world is run by none else but the India Government itself.

What is amazing is that this factory has now been in existence since the early 1800s and in its almost 200 years of existence it has consistently first enriched the coffers of the United Kingdom and after 1947 of India.

All though its existence, the opium factory has been a steady and increasing source of revenue. The factory is at Ghazipur in Uttar Pradesh.

Coming back to the British and their opium trade, it was after the Battle of Plassey in 1757 that the East India Company began trading in opium. They found the trade to be an excellent revenue earner and slowly began perusing a policy of monopolising opium trade. This monopoly would include the production, preparation and export of opium.   

In 1773, the Bengal Government abolished the Opium Syndicate which was operating from Patna and gave the right to trade to itself. For the next fifty years, opium became the major source of revenue and export of the company from India. The trade steadily saw the rise of English economy while at the same time filling the lives of  millions of Chinese and thousands of Indians with opium.

When China banned import of opium, the company and British merchants and traders went about the sale both legally and illegally. The British merchants purchased Chinese tea in Canton and balanced it by selling opium at open auctions in Calcutta. The opium thus purchased would leave Calcutta in ships and clandestinely reach the Chinese coast.

Sensing the vast profits of such a trade, the company banned middlemen and Bengali merchants and entered into direct trade between opium growers and purchasers. The company also openly actively encouraged sale of opium to China. Exports to China grew from just 15 tons in 1730 to 75 tons by 1773. The opium was shipped to China in chests, with each chest containing 64 kilograms of opium.

The company then set up the opium factory at Ghazipur in 1820 to process, refine and package opium, which was mainly meant for the Chinese market.

The factory was the proverbial Alauddin’s cave for the British. It simply began giving he profits from the day it was set up and thus began enriching the British treasury.

The factory today is known as The Government Opium and Alkaloid Works and it is spread over 52 acres. It is on the banks of the Ganga and it must be one of the few factories in the world to have been making profits  every year ever since its inception.

The factory has a workforce of 900 people and it comes under the Department of Revenue in the Ministry of Finance.

While the Opium factory runs in two shifts, the Alkaloid workshop is a losing proposition. If the opium factory runs in two shifts - 8:30 a.,m, and 4:30 p.m., the Alkloid factory has only one shift.

Till1940, this factory was the only one in the British Empire to process opium extracts from raw stuffs and export it to China.

However, there was change in the priorities during the Second World War when the soldiers needed life-saving drugs like morphine. It was then that the Alkaloid factory was set up in the campus in 1943.

Today, the Alkaloid unit processes raw opium into alkaloids of pharmacopoeia grades to meet the domestic demands of all the major pharmaceutical companies in India.  It manufactures products such as Codeine phosphate, Codeine Sulphate, Morphine salts, Dionine IP, Nacopine B.P., morphine BPC, Morphine Hydrochloride, Thebaine Pure, IMO Powder, IMP cake, Cotarmine Chloride.

Interestingly, the Alkaloid unit is running in loss whereas the opium factory is still making huge profit every year. The total turnover of the Opium factory comes to about Rs 200 crores.

The factory exports opium to USA, Japan, France and Sri Lanka and Russia. Currently USA and Japan are the major importers of opium.

It is also here that the contraband opium seized by the police personnel are stored and there is a separate unit for such seized articles.

By the way, the purest form of opium in the world is made only here and nowhere else. This is so as the morphine content is 12 per cent.

The British found this factory and trade in opium so lucrative that they set up another factory in India in 1935. This is in Nimach in Madhya Pradesh. Nimach is an abbreviation of  North India Mounted Artillery and Cavalry Headquarters. It borders Rajasthan.

A temple and memorial to a son

Who has not heard the moving tale of Dasaratha, the father of Rama-Lakshmana, and Shravana Kumara. The tale ends with Dasaratha, the King of Ayodhya accidentally felling Shravana with an arrow.

The place where Shravana was killed is claimed by both Karnataka and also Uttar Pradesh. If it is Unnnao in Uttar Pradesh, the place in Karnataka is Dasaratha Rameshwara, a small hamlet in Chitradurga district.

It is in Karnataka that a memorial, if that can be called so, was installed in memory of Shravana by both Dasaratha and Rama. The village, which is in Hosadurga taluk of Chitradurga district later came to be known as Dasaratha Rameshwara.

The temple too is called by the name Dasaratha Rameshwara and it is located in the midst of a beautiful forest. The serene surroundings and the beauty of the area makes it difficult to believe that both Dasartha and Rama grieved for the slain Shravana that they built a temple in his name.

 This is a very popular temple and both Dasaratha and Rama have installed  a Shiva Linga to atone for the sin of killing Shravana and also to ensure that Shravana’s soul rested in peace.

This site is mentioned in the Ramayana too.

Shravana lived during the time Dasaratha lorded over Ayodhya. Shravana was born to a Vaishya father and a Shudra mother.

One day his parents told him that they had become quite aged and they wanted to go on a pilgrimage.

Shravana placed his aged and almost blind parents in two baskets and carried the baskets on his shoulders. He came to the village here where Dasaratha was out hunting. Dasaratha heard the sound of someone drinking water from a lake. Assuming it to be a dear, he shot an arrow. The arrow killed Shravana who was at the lake drawing water for his parents.  

Shravana then asked Dasaratha to carry the water to his parents. Even as Dasaratha prepared to do so, Shravana died of arrow wounds.

When Dasaratha gave water and informed Shravana’s parents of the death of their son, they both cursed him saying that he too would experience Putrashoka or the loss of a son in due course of time.

While in the south, Dasaratha Rameshwara is believed to be the exact spot where Shravana died, Sarwara village in Unnao district also lays claim to be the very place.

Locals will show you the place at Sarwara where Dasaratha shot his arrow. An old memorial for Shravana stands on the bund of a lake.

The memorial consists of a statue of Shravana. If the locals are to be believed, the stone statue still years for water. They say if water is poured into the navel of the stone figure, the hole never gets filled up. Villagers from Sarvan and adjoining places visit the spot every Monday to offer prayers to Shravana, who is revered as a dutiful son.

The place where Shravana’s parents died or heartbreak is called Samadha. Thus if one place has a temple to India’s most dutiful son, another has a memorial. Both the temple and the memorial like in opposite directions-one in the South and the other in the North, perhaps a standing testimony to the devotion of a son to his parents.

A broom to a deity

India is a land of temples and almost each temple has its own unique customs and traditions, Many of these customs have been handed down from generations and they have become the unique selling points (USPs) of these temples.

But what would you say if I told you that there is a temple in India where brooms are offered to the presiding deity. Incredible but true.

Read on………………..

Brooms are among the lowliest of  articles in any household irrespective of the language, religion , caste or class. Brooms are generally kept in a closet or in a place away from the main rooms of the house. This is because the brooms have a very low value and they are not considered to be auspicious.

In Hindu households, people wash their hands after touching the brooms. But what would you say to a Shiva Temple in north India where the devotees offer brooms.

This temple is in Sadatbadi village near Bajol in Moradabad district of Uttar Pradesh. The Shiva here is called Patakeshwar and every Monday, thousands of devotes throng the temple and offer brooms as offering to the God of Destruction.

The Pataleshwar Temple, as it is more popularly known, is located just six kilometers from Bajol on the Morabadab-Agra highway. The brooms are offered by those who have skin diseases and those who are cured of it. The devotes strongly believe that the Maheshwar (Shiva) has swept away the disease and, hence, the unusual offering.  

When devotes visit the temple, they pray to Maheshwar and take a vow to offer a broom if their skin disease is cured. The broom is given when the diseases disappears. Another belief is that if a broom if offered, Maheshwara will lessen the suffering of the devotee.  

By the way, there are no new brooms in circulation. The brooms offered to the god are always in circulation at the temple. Once offered with faith and devotion, the brooms are sold by the temple authorities to the shopkeepers sitting outside the complex. These shopkeepers once again sell the brooms back to the devotees. The cycle thus goes on.

This temple attracts attention not just for its unique offering but also for the peculiar belief attached to it. People say that offering brooms will ease suffering.

Since Monday is considered auspicious for Shiva, devotes throng in thousands from nay districts of Uttar Pradesh and even Bihar. The temple is more than a century old-it was built in 1902- and this is the only place in the world where brooms are offered. By the way, do not be deceived by this unusual offering. The rituals performed here are the same as at other Shiva temples.

The place where the Vedas were divided and Puranas written

It is a small town in the most populous State of India. Though it is near the State capital of Lucknow, it is not on any tourist map. Yet, if Hindu mythology is to be believed it is perhaps one of the most important places.

This is the place where the Puranas came to be written and the Vedas came to be divided. It is also the place of the deep well of Vishnu which has immense religious significance. This town is also one of the 108 Divya Desams of Vishnu and revered by the twelve saint poets called Alwars.

This is the town of Naimisaranyam or Naimisaranya also called Nimsar. It is located at the junction of the roads from Sitapur and Khairabad. It is 32 km from Sitapur and 42 km from the Sandila railway station and just 45 miles north of Lucknow.

The town is on the left bank of  the river Gomati. This is the place where the Visnhu Chakra created the highly revered well called Chakra Kunda. Every new moon day, a large number of people gather at the well and purify themselves with a dip. If the new moon falls Monday, it is believed that a holy bath in the well and offering to the presiding deity Lalitha will wash away all the sins committed in the lifetime.

According to Puranas, our Gods chose this place on Earth to establish Dharma. Their plan to spread Dharma on Earth went awry as a demon called  Vrittrasur was proving to be a major hurdle.

The Gods then requested Maharshi Dadhichi to give his bones to them so that they could create a weapon to kill the demon. The demon was finally killed.
To honor the sage, a festival is held every Phalguna and it is known as Chaurasi Kosi Parikrama.

As the Srimad Bhagavatam was narrated here, it is said that a pilgrimage to Badrinath and Kedarnath is incomplete without a visit to Naimisaranya. The Mahabharata itself says “Anyone who fasts, prays, and attains perfection at Naimisaranya finds happiness in all the worlds”.
There is another legend about this place. When Brahma contemplated a great wheel that would span the entire universe, the wheel’s center was at “Naimisaranya”.

The Puranas say that Naimisaranya has a parikrama (circumambulation) path of 16 kms, in which all the sacred places in India are located.
Rama, Balarama, Dadhuchi Muni, the Pandavas, Shankaracharya,  Ramanujacharya and several other saints of all beliefs and religious orders have come and visited the sacred spots here.

The Pandavas came here when they were in exile. Rama  performed sacrifice here for killing Ravana, a Brahmin.
The Chakra Kunda or Chakra Tirtha is a deep well whose depth has not been found out. When the Kali Yuga was about to commence, 80,000 sages headed by Saunaka Rishi approached Brahma and told him to identify the spot where they should hold the Yagna to ward off the evil effects of the Kali Yuga.

Thus at the end of the Dwapara Yuga and the beginning of the  Kali Yuga, Brahma released his Manonmaya Chakra to ascertain the impact of the impending Time. The Chakra travelled all around  the Earth and it finally came to a stop here.

Brahma then  prescribed the circumference or the ‘nemi’ of that zone, fit for Yagnas which were performed for ten thousand years even as he carried on the process of creation. Since the midpoint of the Chaka was here, Brahma declared this to be the center of the Earth

The Chakra Tirtha has no end. The British wanted to disprove this and they sank a cable for more than 1,000 metres (3300 feet) but they did not find the depth. They gave up.

Near the Tirtha is the Vyasa Gaddi. It is at this spot where  Veda Vyasa (Narayana), the author of Mahabharata is said to have divided the Vedas into four parts and also written the Puranas.

Locals point to a huge Banyan tree here which is said to be over 5,000 years old. They say this is the precise place where Vyasa sat and wrote the Puranas.

There are many places in and around the town, each with its own share of history, mythology and religion.

There is a temple of Hanuman with the idol of Ram and Lakshmana on his shoulders. It is said that Hanuman brought out Rama and Lakshmana from Patala Loka at this very spot.

There is a deity of Vyasa and the Pandavas in the temple.
The Hanuman Temple has a strange custom. Pilgrims buy sweets and put them in his mouth.
Other places to visit are the Suta Gaddi where the sage Suta Goswami sat while instructing other sages 5,000 years ago. He spoke about Srimad Bhagavat Geeta here. Ugrashravas, also Ugrasravas, Suta or Suta Goswami is the narrator of several Puranas, including Mahabharata, Bhagavath Purana, Harivamsa, and Padma Purana.

He narrated all these before a gathering of  sages here. Suta was the son of Lomaharshana and a disciple of  Veda Vyasa, the author of Mahābhārata. Ugrasrava belonged to the Suta caste, who were typically the bards of Puranic literature.

The entire Mahābhārata epic is structured as a dialogue between Ugrasrava Sauti or Suta -the narrator and sage Saunaka-the listener. The narration (Bharata) of the history of Bharata kings by sage Vaisampayana to the Kuru king Janamejaya was embedded within this narration of  Ugrasrava Sauti.

Vaisampayana’s narration (Jaya) in turn contains the narration of Kurukshetra war by Sanjaya to King Dhritarashtra. Thus the epic has as a story within a story.

There is also the Narada Deva Temple with 108 altars and the 1008 Sivalinga Temple containing copies of the four Vedas and Puranas, including Srimad Bhagavata (Bhagavat Purana). The Shiva temple here is also unique. The eyes of Shiva looking east in the morning and west in the evenings. The presiding deity of the town, Lalita Devi, has a temple around the Chakra Tirtha.

The best place to stay is either Lucknow or Sitapur. There are regular buses and taxis from Lucknow and Sitapur. If you want to visit all the holy places here, it is better to engage the services of a local guide. A smattering of Hindi will help as the guides and locals generally do not know any other language.