Mehandipur Balaji

Balaji here is Hanuman as a child — Anjani's son, the son of the wind, Rama's own bhakta. At the feet of the image is a kund whose water, the trust says, never runs out, and at its heart a thread of water that falls even under the chola, and is given to those who come. Three seats stand together in one darbar — Shri Balaji Maharaj, Shri Bhairav Baba and Shri Pret Raj Sarkar — and it is their darshan together, the trust says, whose joined blessing lifts a devotee's distress.

To this darbar, for longer than anyone can date, people have brought afflictions of body and mind. The trust sets it down plainly: devotees come believing that the darshan of Shri Balaji Maharaj itself relieves the disorders of the body, the disorders of the mind and every kind of suffering. Pilgrims speak of laying an arji here, the plea a petitioner brings before a court. The darbar asks little in return: no ticket, no booking, no VIP darshan, no special puja — reverent darshan, it answers, is enough.

After the morning aarti Balaji is offered bal-bhog and rajbhog at noon, with bhog laid beside him for Shri Pret Raj Sarkar and Shri Bhairav ji. The sawamani, a quarter over a maund of cooked food, is the offering of thanksgiving, booked beforehand and given back to the devotee who brought it. Tuesdays and Saturdays draw the greatest crowds; the high day is Hanuman Janmotsav at the Chaitra full moon, with Holi at the Phalguna full moon and Dussehra kept in special shringar and bhog.

Mehandipur lies in the Dausa uplands of eastern Rajasthan, off the Jaipur–Agra highway: Ghata Mehandipur, tehsil Sikrai, district Dausa, on the Dausa–Gangapur City boundary the trust describes. The temple stands in the cleft between two low hills, in land its pages remember as forest. Here, they say, Shri Balaji Maharaj manifested of his own will, in his child form. How long ago the Shri Ghata Mehandipur Balaji Mandir Trust does not fix — hundreds of years on one page, about a thousand on another — but it counts some fifteen generations of the mahant family in unbroken service since.

The pragatya katha is the mahants' own. Gosai ji Maharaj, an ancestor of the family, was shown a dream in which thousands of lamps came on together and a great army came up, bowed to Shri Balaji Maharaj, Shri Bhairav Baba and Shri Pret Raj Sarkar, and withdrew the way it had come. A voice bade him take up the seva, and Balaji Maharaj gave him darshan. Next day he found the place and brought the villagers up to offer bhog. When some among them wondered whether the image was a craftsman's work it went out of sight, and returned when they asked pardon.

Gosai ji prayed that the worship pass to his own line for ever, and so it has. Mahant Ganesh Puri ji laid the foundation of the rebuilding; in 1965 he gave charge to Mahant Kishore Puri ji, who raised free schools for the district's daughters; and his successor, Mahant Dr. Naresh Puri ji, took charge on 21 August 2021.

The darbar is a modern building much extended and still growing: storeys of arcaded galleries and carved balconies above a broad flight of steps, chhatris at the roofline and red flags over them. The sanctum is plain, and so is the discipline within: no photograph or video, phones off, no lamp or incense inside.

About the courtyard stand the sannidhis of Shri Bhairav Baba and Shri Pret Raj Sarkar, the Balaji Rasoi where the bhog is cooked, a Radhakrishna temple and a Sitaram temple renewed in the present mahant's time, and the samadhi sthal of the mahants gone before.