A Nandi puja on Chamundi hill

I once overheard a foreign visitor asking a tourist guide,  ‘would anyone know how much this weighs’.   She was referring to the  Nandi on Chamundi Hill.  This kind of curiosity doesn’t bug you and I, and the rest of us in Mysore.  Tourists tend to be curious about matters to which we don’t give much thought.

But then a tourist guide is taken to be a know-all by visitors, and he/she can’t afford  to be ignorant,  not just about  Nandi’s tonnage but its other vital statistics  such as   age,  width,  height, the time it took to carve it, and  the number of artisans deployed.  A media  report says the 342-year-old Nandi carved in granite is 25 ft. wide  and 16 ft. in height.

Nandi was in the news for a mahabisheka performed  on the mega idol.  A platoon of priest chanted mantra as they poured  over the head of the bull 30 different items,  including  milk, honey,  curds,  ghee, and tender coconut water.

A Hajj roznamcha

Amir Ahmad Alawi of Lucknow went on Hajj pilgrimage in 1929. It took him five months those days;  and he maintained a diary of the pilgrims progress on a daily basis.  Alawi wrote,  not for publication,  but  for himself,  and for his circle of friends and relations.  Had they invented the Internet eight decades earlier Alawi would have blogged his Hajj roznamcha.

Alawi’s account  has now been published -  Journey to the Holy Land: A Pilgrim’s Diary – at a time that coincides with  the Hajj season this year.  Last year over 17 lakh Muslims from the world over visited the holy sites of Mecca and Madina. Hajji Alawi’s diary has been English translated and edited by Mushirul Hasan, historian, and Rakhshanda Jalil of jamia Millia Islamia.