A dream, a shrine and a viral video on social media; How thousands started gathering at Eolabari Temple

Ranabijoy Bhattacharjee, a priest popularly known as Buton Thakur bought 29 bighas (7.27 hectare) land in Bishkut gram – Eolabari located in the outskirts of Karimganj. He made a house and started living as any landlord would. He ventured into agriculture, gardening to utilise his huge plot of land. One night, Ranabijoy Bhattacharjee had a dream and that’s how Eolabari Monosha Temple came into being.

Situ Bhattacharjee, son of the late Ranabijoy Bhattacharjee explains the dream, “There is a shrine next to our house on a hilltop. That shrine appeared as Maa Monosha (goddess of snakes) in his dream and warned him to conduct Puja every day or else, an accident is waiting to occur. The accident was ready in the form of a tiger attack.”

No staircase to the hilltop, no safe passage either, so, Ranabijoy Bhattacharjee made a temple at his own house and started worshipping Maa Monosha. On the occasion of ‘Panchami’ Bhattacharjee would go to the hilltop and worship the Shrine. “We saw tigers walk around in our own courtyard but they never attacked us. We continued to worship Maa Monosha regularly and around 200 devotees are offered Khichuri Prasad during the Panchami. All he told us is that we cannot ask for any money as donations or chanda and hence, we don’t. Whatever we do here is all financed by us,” informs Situ Bhattacharjee.

Maa Monosha is being worshipped in that temple for the last 71 years. However, this summer, the temple started attracting thousands of tourists. “Eight years back, I started building staircases to the shrine. When we just started, two of the devotees came with the idea that we must build a flyover type foot-overbridge instead. When I said, I don’t have the money, they offered to pay, later 17 others joined in with voluntary contributions and so, the foot-overbridge to the shine got ready,” informs Bhattacharjee.

But even then, it hardly attracted any tourists and only the devotees, a couple of hundreds would visit. So, what changed this summer. “Bunch of explorers came here during the lockdown and I suppose, they have uploaded a video of the Shrine and the temple on social media. All of a sudden, we started getting 3000 people visiting the temple. The gathering went that far that the district administration had to intervene twice as it was a violation of Covid norms,” informs Bhattacharjee.

While it is great that the temple has now started attracting people from all corners of Barak Valley but it has given Bhattacharjee a new problem to handle. “They come here assuming it is a picnic spot. They consume alcohol, remove their shirts, touch the sacred Shrine and pose for pictures. This disrespect to the sacred shrine of Maa Monosha is worrying us and so, we have decided to keep the temple locked,” informs Bhattacharjee.

A little curse and some boon, that has been the story of Maa Monisha Temple in Eolabari. To summarise, a man buys 29 bighas (7.27 hectares) of land, gets a curse in his dream, discovers a shrine and then starts worshipping the Goddess on a daily basis. His son follows in his footsteps and builds easy access to the Shrine which gets explored and publicised on social media. Now, little known Eolabari is a busy place, but the devotion has taken a back seat and that is something keeping the Bhattacharjees awake at night.