By Azera Rahman, IANS
Tinsukia (Assam) :Â Tucked away in a quaint little part of upper Assam and surrounded by lush green tea bushes is the Tilinga Mandir. Thronged by devotees of Hindu god Shiva, it is actually a huge banyan tree.
Flanking a Shiva Linga, its branches are adorned with, not hundreds or thousands, but a million bells. The temple gets its name from the bells, which is called 'tilinga' in Assamese.
Nestling close to the small town of Bordubi in Tinsukia district, the drive down to Tilinga Mandir rejuvenates ones spirits, thanks to the endless stretch of paddy fields and tea bushes on both sides of the road.
As one reaches the temple's premises, shopkeepers nearby invite you to buy a bell from their shops to present to the Lord. Once you step in, your gaze gets held at the thousands of bells hanging all over the place.
"I have no count of the number of bells that must be hanging here. But it's not less than one million," said a smiling Dhanajoy Pandey, the priest of the temple.
The temple is nearly half a century old. "In 1965, the tea garden workers of this area noticed a 'Shiva Linga' emerge from the ground near this banyan tree. The administrators of the garden then said that a small temple should be built here," said Pandey whose grandfather, Basudeo Pandey, was the priest of the temple then.
But what about the bells? "Initially when people came to pray here, they promised to come back and present a bell to the temple if their prayers were answered. It was a matter of belief.
"With time, more and more people came to know of this and started tying bells on the arms of this grand tree when their prayers got answered," Pandey told IANS.
From small ones, which might not weigh more than 50 grams to heavy 55 kilo ones, a whole range of bells hang in the temple's premises.
"There are so many bells and year after year the numbers only keep increasing. Some of them fall off but since the devotees have gifted them, we don't throw them. Instead we store them in gunny bags and keep them in a corner of the premises," said Sauji, the caretaker of the temple.
Many people even present pigeons to the temple when their wish gets fulfilled. "It's generally a norm that people either present a 'trishul', a pigeon or a bell in a Shiva temple when their prayers are answered," said Pandey.
"Our families visit this temple every Monday. We have immense faith on Lord Shiva and come to him time and again and he listens to our prayers," said Animikha Das, while tying a thread on the tree with her husband.
"The belief is that you tie a thread here when you wish for something and then come back and present a bell when your wish gets fulfilled," she explained.
People from as far as Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and other parts of Assam come to pray in the 'Tilinga Mandir'.
"When so many people come here from such far off places, there must be a reason behind it, right? It's faith that pulls devotees like us to this place," said Debojit Sharma before stepping inside the temple's premises.
"Earlier we didn't have so many devotees coming to the temple everyday. But for the past 15 years the numbers have been increasing steadily," said Pandey.
Â